It was the second defeat of the Gauls, at the hands of Eumenes II., which led to the building of the great altar of Zeus on the Acropolis of Pergamus. It is worth while to reconstruct a picture of the huge edifice with the aid of our memory of the sister Acropolis at Athens. The Altar stood a little below the Temple of Athena, on the south-west terrace, and was surmounted by an Ionic colonnade, which enclosed the actual place of sacrifice. The worshippers approached by a broad staircase cut from the west side of the great pile. Around the whole structure ran the frieze, with its multitude of figures in the highest relief—the carvings, of course, being interrupted by the staircase. The whole work serves to carry the history of Pergamene sculpture beyond the stage when such a statue as “The Dying Gaul” was produced. The great frieze was discovered by a young German engineer named Carl Humann. During a business visit to Pergamus, Humann noticed the native workmen breaking up large fragments of sculptured marble, burning them in lime kilns and building them into walls. The exhibition of specimens in Berlin led to systematic excavations in 1879. All that remains of the great work is now exhibited in a specially designed gallery in Berlin, where the frieze can be seen in something approaching its original setting. No single slab can convey an impression of the bewildering power of the carvings as a whole. The best known is that called “The Triumph of Athena.” The colossal figures (the frieze is almost nine feet high) show the goddess seizing a young giant by the hair, while the serpent of Athena bites at her enemy’s breast. Nike bears a laurel crown in token of Athena’s victory. In the lower part of the slab, the Earth Mother of the giants is seen in anguish. “The Triumph of Athena” was the central group on the Eastern side, and, therefore, faced the square in which the people of Pergamus met. It was balanced by another mighty group, representing Zeus in conflict with three giants. Either affords a fine example of the theatrical style into which the later Pergamene sculpture degenerated. The artist is clearly more interested in the attempt to express excited action than in the more subtle phases of emotion. Nevertheless, mutilated as it is, a fragment like “The Triumph of Athena” testifies to an extraordinary level of technical skill and a magnificent vigour of imagination, even if it also proves an absence of the earlier emotional balance which gave “The Dying Gaul” a deeper beauty. [Illustration: TRIUMPH OF ATHENA From the Altar of Zeus, Pergamus (Berlin)] THE SCULPTURE OF RHODES AND ALEXANDRIA (300 b.c. TO 50 b.c.) If the fame of the school of sculpture at Pergamus is inextricably connected with “The Dying Gaul,” the sister school at Rhodes can claim the even more famous “Laocoon Group.”