around
the entire building, was 522.80 feet, of which about 410 feet remain.
Of this portion, 249 feet are in the British Museum in slabs and
fragments; the remainder is chiefly in the Louvre, with scattered
fragments in other places. As a connected subject this was the most
extensive piece of sculpture ever made in Greece. From all that can be
gathered from the study of the fragments that remain, the design of
the frieze was of the utmost simplicity and characterized by the union
of perfect taste and clear purpose that marks all the work of the
great sculptor. The subject begins in the frieze at the western end of
the temple, where we watch the assembling of the procession. It then
proceeds along the northern and southern sides of the building, in
what we are to suppose one continuous line, moving toward the east,
since all the faces are turned that way; and at the eastern end,
directly over the main entrance to the building, the two parts of the
procession meet, in the presence of the magistrates and of the
divinities who had places of worship in Athens.

Of the grace, the skill in arrangement, the variety of invention, the
happy union of movement and repose shown in this work, not only
artists--men best fitted to judge its merits from a technical point of
view--but the cultivated portion of the public, and a large and
ever-increasing circle of every-day people, have by common consent
agreed in praise. By the multiplication of casts, to be found now in
all our principal museums, we are enabled to study and to enjoy the
long procession even better than it could have been enjoyed in its
original place, where it must have been seen at a great disadvantage
in spite of the skill shown by Phidias in adapting it to its site;
for, as the frieze stood thirty-nine feet from the floor, and as the
width of the portico between the wall and the columns was only nine
feet, it was seen at a very sharp angle, and owing to the projection
of the roof beyond the wall of the temple the frieze received only
reflected light from the marble pavement below.

Apart from the marble sculptures on the exterior of the Parthenon, the
two most famous works of Phidias were the statues of Athena, made for
the interior of the Parthenon, and of Zeus for the temple of the god
at Olympia in Elis. Both these statues were of the sort called
_Chryselephantine_, from the Greek _chrousous_, golden, and
_elephantinos_, of ivory; that is, they were constructed