ed in the decoration
of the Poecile or Painted Portico, one of the many beautiful buildings
erected by Cimon. The Poecile was simply a long platform, with a roof
supported by a row of columns on one side and by a wall on the other.
It was called "the painted," because the wall at the back was covered
with a series of large historical pictures containing many figures,
and recording some of the chief events of the time, together with
others relating to an earlier and more shadowy epoch. The subject of
the painting, executed, at least in part, by the brother of Phidias,
was the Battle of Marathon, in which great event it is thought he may
himself have taken part.

The boyhood of Phidias fell in a time of national revival, when under
the influence of an ennobling political excitement, all the arts were
quickened to a fresh, original, and splendid growth. The contest
between the Greeks and Persians, which had begun with the Ionian
revolt, was in full activity at the time of his birth. He was ten
years old when the battle of Marathon was fought, and when he was
twenty, four of the most striking events in the history of Greece were
crowded into a single year; the battle of Thermopylae, the victory at
Salamis, and the twin glories of Plataea and Mycale. His early youth,
therefore, was nourished by the inspiring influences that come from
the victorious struggle of a people to maintain their national life.
He was by no means the only sculptor of his time whom fame remembers,
but he alone, rejecting trivial themes, consecrated his talent to the
nobler subjects of his country's religious life and the ideal
conception of her protecting gods. No doubt, Phidias, like all who are
born with the artistic temperament, would be interested from childhood
in the progress of the splendid works with which Athens was enriching
herself under the rule of Cimon. But his interest must have been
greatly increased by the fact that his brother Panoenos was actively
engaged in the decoration of one of those buildings. It would be
natural that he should be often drawn to the place where his brother
was at work, and that the sight of so many artists, most of them young
men, filled with the generous ardor of youth, and inspired by the
nature of their task, should have stirred in him an answering
enthusiasm. It gives us a thrill of pleasure to read in the list of
these youths the name of the great tragic poet, Euripides, who began
life as a painter, and i