ly left out the god and goddess--left out the murderers from
the representation of the murder. Why in the world has he done this?
Granting that he need not transfer to his group all the terrible details
he has seen in his mind, why should he leave out Apollo and Artemis?
They need not be convulsed, or writhing, or grimacing; on the contrary,
they ought to be quite calm and passionless in their cruel beauty. There
is nothing unbeautiful in Apollo and Artemis surely. No: not in Apollo
and Artemis, taken in themselves; but in Apollo and Artemis considered
as part of this group. Listen: we will explain. Since Apollo and Artemis
are, between them, slaughtering all the Niobides, closing them in with
their arrows, it is obvious that Apollo and Artemis must be placed in
such a manner as to command the whole family of Niobides; there must be
no Niobides behind them, for that would mean that there are Niobides who
are out of danger and can escape. So the god and goddess must be placed
in one of three ways: either back to back in the very centre of the
group, each shooting down one half of the family; or else entirely
separated, each at one extremity of the group, so as to face each other
and enclose all the Niobides between them; or else above the Niobides,
floating in mid air and raining down arrows like hail. Now, which of
these three arrangements shall the sculptor select? He rejects at once
the plan of placing the god and goddess back to back in the centre of
the group, and we agree with him; for the two figures, thus applied to
each other, each more or less in profile, would form the most ludicrous
double-headed Janus. Place, then, Apollo at one end and Artemis at the
other. There is nothing ugly in that, is there? There would not be were
the sculptor modelling the oblong bas-relief of a sarcophagus; but there
would be something very ugly now that, as it happens, he is modelling
a group for the triangular gable of a temple. For, as the sides of
the triangle slope sharply down, the figures beneath them necessarily
become smaller and less erect in proportion to their distance from the
vertex; so the god and goddess, if placed at the extremity of the group,
must be flattened down in the acute angles of the base, must crouch and
squat with their bows barely on a level with the knees of their victims.
So this arrangement will not do; there remains the third plan of placing
Apollo and Artemis above the Niobides. This is an admirable