be, what human
need do they express. The Parthenon frieze is in the British Museum, the
Apollo Belvedere is in the Vatican at Rome, but is readily accessible
in casts or photographs. The outlines given in Figs. 5 and 6 can of
course only serve to recall subject-matter and design.

* * * * *

The Panathenaic frieze once decorated the _cella_ or innermost shrine of
the Parthenon, the temple of the Maiden Goddess Athena. It twined like a
ribbon round the brow of the building and thence it was torn by Lord
Elgin and brought home to the British Museum as a national trophy, for
the price of a few hundred pounds of coffee and yards of scarlet cloth.
To realize its meaning we must always think it back into its place.
Inside the _cella_, or shrine, dwelt the goddess herself, her great
image in gold and ivory; outside the shrine was sculptured her worship
by the whole of her people. For the frieze is nothing but a great ritual
procession translated into stone, the Panathenaic procession, or
procession of _all_ the Athenians, of all Athens, in honour of the
goddess who was but the city incarnate, Athena.

"A wonder enthroned on the hills and the sea,
A maiden crowned with a fourfold glory,
That none from the pride of her head may rend;
Violet and olive leaf, purple and hoary,
Song-wreath and story the fairest of fame,
Flowers that the winter can blast not nor bend,
A light upon earth as the sun's own flame,
A name as his name--
Athens, a praise without end."

SWINBURNE: _Erechtheus_, 141.

Sculptural Art, at least in this instance, comes out of ritual, has
ritual as its subject, _is_ embodied ritual. The reader perhaps at this
point may suspect that he is being juggled with, that, out of the
thousands of Greek reliefs that remain to us, just this one instance has
been selected to bolster up the writer's art and ritual theory. He has
only to walk through any museum to be convinced at once that the author
is playing quite fair. Practically the whole of the reliefs that remain
to us from the archaic period, and a very large proportion of those at
later date, when they do not represent heroic mythology, are ritual
reliefs, "votive" reliefs as we call them; that is, prayers or praises
translated into stone.

[Illustration: Fig. 3. Panathenaic Procession.]

Of the choral dance we have heard much, of the procession but little,
yet its ritual importance was grea