he best works of all the greatest masters of Greece, puts
Calamis before them all for elegance and grace, and for the finer
expression of faces; when imagining a beautiful statue of a young girl
he declares that he would go to Calamis to impart to it a chaste modesty
and give it a sweet and unaffected smile.

PHIDIAS is the most famous of all Greek sculptors, and as Greek
sculpture is the finest sculpture of which we have any knowledge, it
follows that Phidias was the first sculptor of the world. And yet, in
spite of his fame, we do not know the time of his birth. We know that he
was the son of Charmidas, but we know nothing of the father except that
he had a brother who was a painter, and this makes it probable that the
family of Phidias were artists.

As nearly as can be told, Phidias was born about B.C. 500. This would
have made him ten years old at the time of the battle of Marathon and
twenty years old when Salamis was fought, while he came of age at the
time of Plataea. He seems to have begun his artistic life as a painter,
and we know nothing of him as an independent sculptor until the
administration of Cimon, about B.C. 471. But his finest works belong to
the time of Pericles, who was his friend as well as patron, and made him
the master over all the great public works at Athens during what we
speak of as the Periclean age.

It seems that the favor of Pericles was a dear privilege to Phidias, for
it exposed him to bitter envy and hatred; and those who feared to attack
Pericles himself avenged themselves upon Phidias, and accused him of
dishonesty in obtaining the gold for the robe of the statue of Minerva
which he made for the Parthenon. He proved himself innocent of this,
but he was accused of other crimes, and one account says that he was
thrown into prison and died there of disease or poison. Another account
relates that the great sculptor went into exile at Elis, where he made
his most famous statue, the Olympian Zeus, and that he was there
convicted of theft and put to death. With such contradictory stories we
cannot know the exact truth; but we do know that he went to Elis
accompanied by distinguished artists. He was received with honor, and
for a long time the studio that he occupied there was shown to
strangers. The Olympians also allowed him an honor which the Athenians
never extended to him--that is, to inscribe his name upon the base of
the statue of Zeus, which he was not permitted to do in the cas