s
not of great importance, except as showing that the supposed mention of
the statue of Athena in the Iliad had little, if any, influence on later
tradition; and in any case it is isolated, and does not refer to a
Greek, but a foreign temple. On the other hand, we find frequent mention
in later writers of primitive statues of the gods which were said to
have been set up or dedicated by various persons in the heroic age. An
example is offered by the Trojan Palladium already mentioned; another
was the statue of Artemis carried off from Tauris by Iphigenia and
Orestes; rival claimants to this identification existed at Sparta and at
Brauron in Attica. The legends of dedication are of no historic value;
the story of the Palladium itself was unknown to Homer, though it
occurred in later epics. All that can be asserted of such images is that
they were of unknown antiquity, and that local patriotism claimed for
them a heroic origin. Much the same may be said of Daedalus. It need not
be discussed here whether an actual artist of this name ever existed.
The information we have as to Daedalus is of two kinds; on the one hand,
we find tales of a mythical craftsman and magician, to whose invention
many of the most typical improvements in early Greek sculpture are
attributed; on the other hand, we have records of many statues of the
gods, extant in historical times in various shrines of Greece, which
were attributed to him. Such attributions are not really of greater
historical value than the traditions of dedication in the heroic age
which we find elsewhere. The name of Daedalus having once become famous
in this connection, it was natural that many statues of primitive style
and unrecorded origin should be attributed to him. More importance may
be attached to the fact that the sculptors who actually made some of the
early statues of the gods in Athens and in the Peloponnesus are
described as the pupils or by some as the sons or companions of
Daedalus. In this way his name is associated with some of the early
schools that had the greatest influence in Greece, especially on the
representation of the gods in sculpture. There are other traditions of
early schools of sculptors, the marble workers of Chios, the bronze
founders of Samos, who devoted themselves mainly to making statues of
the gods, some of which survived throughout historical times. When we
turn from tradition and consider the early examples of statues of gods
that may still