But the archæological method can be illustrated even more happily by the critical history of the Vatican “Meleager.” The stripling stands with his dog, careless of any danger which the future may have in store. The artist would seem to represent a youthful huntsman impatient for his quarry, rather than the trusty hero who sailed with the Argonauts and freed the chace of Calydon from the devastating boar of Artemis. As is the case with most of the well-known Greek sculptures, no signature or inscription connects it with any particular artist. The exceptional evidence present in the case of the “Hermes” of Praxiteles is, as we shall see, also absent. The first clue comes from the pages of Pausanias, who names Scopas as the architect of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, and speaks of him as the sculptor of the pedimental groups. Pausanias goes on to describe the marbles, and gives a list of the figures in the eastern pediment whereon was figured, as he says, “The hunting of the Calydonian boar.” These facts, together with the emotional character of the “Meleager,” justified the statue being associated with the sculptor of the Tegean group. But the evidence did not end here. During recent excavations, two heads, which had evidently fallen from the eastern pediment, were discovered. (“Journal Hellenic Studies,” vol. xv.) They showed the passionate insistence upon vitality, particularly in the intensity of the gaze of the eyes, which we have already noted in the “Mausoleum Charioteer,” and which certainly characterises the “Meleager” at Rome. Here was fair material for a dogmatic superstructure of really imposing dimensions. The scientific critic had, of course, to seek for further instances of the sharply rounded eyeballs. He had to find other cases in which the intensity of expression was clearly due to the deep setting of the eyes. Upon the results of these researches he could assign a certain number of the sculptures to Scopas, and by a process of exhaustion many another fourth-century work to the numerous sculptors mentioned in Pliny and Pausanias. So far all was plain sailing. The attributions were admittedly risky, but the interest of the results seemed to justify the method. Unfortunately the matter did not end here. While one party of excavators was working at Tegea, another party was unearthing a disconcerting inscription elsewhere. This suggested that a statue known as the “Agias,” a figure of an athlete found at Delphi, was a marble copy of a work by Lysippus. The discovery necessitated a fresh examination of fourth-century works, and as a result, such an authority as Mr. Percy Gardner now feels compelled to doubt whether the “Meleager” can be properly associated with the influence of Scopas any longer. Guided by resemblances to the “Agias,” he suggests that the “Meleager” is much more probably after a work by Lysippus.