e meaning of Promachos may be given as champion or guardian,
and we know from existing descriptions that, with its pedestal, it must
have been at least seventy feet in height. It was made from the spoils
taken at Marathon; its pedestal was found, in 1840, standing between the
Parthenon and the Erechtheium. It has been called the "Pallas with the
golden spear," for this goddess was known as Athena, Minerva, and
Pallas, and it is said that Alaric was so impressed by its awful aspect
that he shrank from it in horror. The only representations of this
statue now in existence are upon Athenian coins, and the position of the
goddess differs in these, as you will see by the illustration (Fig. 23);
there are reasons for believing that the one in which the shield rests
upon the ground is correct, one of which is that some years after the
death of Phidias the inside of the shield was ornamented by a relief of
the battle of the Centaurs.

Though Phidias proved himself to be a great artist during the reign of
Cimon, it was not until the time of Pericles that he reached the
glorious height of his genius. Pericles and Phidias seem to have been
two grand forces working in harmony for the political and artistic
grandeur of Athens, and, indeed, of all Attica, for within a period of
twenty years nearly all the great works of that country were begun and
completed. Plutarch writes of these wonders in these words: "Hence we
have the more reason to wonder that the structures raised by Pericles
should be built in so short a time, and yet built for ages. For as each
of them, as soon as it was finished, had the venerable air of antiquity,
so now that they are old they have the freshness of a modern building. A
bloom is diffused over them which preserves their aspect untarnished by
time, as if they were animated with a spirit of perpetual youth and
unfading elegance."

It is quite impossible that I should speak here of the works of Phidias
in detail, and I have decided to speak only of the frieze of the
Parthenon, because the Elgin marbles enable us to give illustrations
from it and to know more about this than of the other works of the great
masters about whom whole volumes might be written with justice. But,
first, I will give a picture of a coin which shows the great Olympian
Zeus, or Jupiter, which Phidias made at Elis, after he was an exile from
Athens (Fig. 24). When Phidias was asked how he had found a model for
this Jupiter, he quoted th