n whose plays we find more than one reference
to the art. It cannot be thought unreasonable to suppose that two such
intelligences as these must have had an attraction for one another,
and that, as in the case of Dante and Giotto, the great poet and the
great artist would be drawn together by a likeness in their taste and
aims.

Phidias studied his art first at Athens, with a native sculptor,
Hegias, of whom we know nothing except from books. Later, he went to
Argos, and there put himself under the instruction of Ageladas, a
worker chiefly in bronze, and very famous in his time, of whom,
however, nothing remains but the memory of a few of his more notable
works. For us, his own works forgotten, he remains in honor as the
teacher of Myron, of Polycletus, and of Phidias, the three chief
sculptors of the next generation to his own. On leaving the workshop
of Ageladas, Phidias executed several statues that brought him
prominently before the public. For Delphi, he made a group of thirteen
figures in bronze, to celebrate the battle of Marathon and apotheosize
the heroes of Attica. In this group, Miltiades was placed in the
centre, between Athena, the tutelary goddess of Athens, and Apollo,
the guardian of Delphi; while on each side were five Athenian heroes,
Theseus and Codrus with others, arranged in a semicircle. This
important work was paid for by Athens out of her share in the spoils
of Marathon. Another important commission executed by Phidias was a
statue of Athena made for her temple at Plataea, and paid for with the
eighty talents raised by the contributions of the other Grecian states
as a reward for the splendid services of the Plataeans at Marathon,
where they played somewhat the same part as the Prussians at the
battle of Waterloo. The head, hands, and feet of this statue were of
marble, but the drapery was of gold; so arranged, probably, as in the
case of the great statue of Athena designed later by Phidias for the
Parthenon, as to be removable from the marble core at pleasure.
Phidias made so many statues of the virgin goddess Athena, that his
name became associated with hers, as at a later day that of Raphael
was with the Virgin Mary. In the first period of his artistic career,
moved perhaps by his patriotic gratitude for her intervention in
behalf of his native state, he had represented the goddess as a
warlike divinity, as here at Plataea; but in his later conceptions, as
in a statue made for the Athenians o