een made about 500 B.C., and is
called "The Harpy Monument," It is a tower, round the four sides of
which runs a frieze at a height of about twenty-one feet from the
ground. The frieze is of white marble, and is let into the frieze which
is of sandstone. The Lycians, in whose country it was found, were
accustomed to bury their dead at the top of such towers.

There is very great difference of opinion among scholars and critics
concerning the meaning of the various scenes in these sculptures; and as
all their writing is speculation, and no one knows the truth about it, I
shall only say that it is a very interesting object in the history of
art, and shall speak of the four corner figures on the shortest parts of
the frieze, from which the whole work takes its name. The Harpies are
very curious; they had wings, and arms like human arms, with claws for
hands, and feathered tails. Their bodies are egg-shaped, which is a very
strange feature in their formation. We cannot explain all these
different things, but there is little doubt that, with the little forms
which they have in their arms, they represent the messengers of death
bearing away the souls of the deceased. In the Odyssey, Homer represents
the Harpies as carrying off the daughters of King Pandareus and giving
them to the cruel Erinnyes for servants. For this reason the Harpies
were considered as robbers, and whenever a person suddenly disappeared
it was said that they had been carried off by Harpies (Fig. 19).

[Illustration: FIG. 19.--_From the Harpy Monument, London._]

Before leaving this subject of existing sculptures from the fifth
century B.C., I will speak of the two groups which belonged to the
temple of Minerva in AEgina, and are now in the Glyptothek at Munich. The
city of AEgina was the principal city of the island of AEgina, which was
in the gulf of the same name, near the south-west coast of Greece. This
city was at the height of its prosperity about 475 B.C., at which time a
beautiful temple was built, of which many columns are still standing,
though much of it has fallen down. In 1811 some English and German
architects visited this place, and the marbles they obtained are the
most remarkable works which still exist from so early a period.
Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor, restored these reliefs, and the King
of Bavaria bought them.

Upon the western pediment there were eleven figures which represented an
episode in the Trojan war; it was the strugg