The priests at Delphos, at a time when Greece abounded with the most exquisite Apollo-statues, still held to a pointed pillar as the emblem of the god of wisdom and the leader of the muses. Anthropomorphism was long opposed by the hierarchy of Delphi, but they encouraged the artists to produce beautiful vessels, tripods, lamps, sacrificial basins, &c., which had to be made according to certain prescribed forms. By degrees the Asiatic idea ‘that God created man in his own image’ was inverted by the Greeks, ‘and man began to create the gods in his own image.’ This one sentence embodies the cause of the progressive development of Greek sculpture on the one hand, and the ever-stationary forms of the East on the other. The Greeks had also idols that dropped from heaven, puppet-like forms or symbolic carvings, like the Artemis of Ephesus or the _four-armed_ Apollo of the Lakedemonians, reminding us of Vishnu. The discoveries at Athens, Kyprus, and most recently at Hassarlik by Dr. Schliemann, prove the gradual and slow progress of Greek sculpture in all its different phases. The first Parthenon, destroyed by the Persians, was adorned with divinities entirely different in shape from those which surrounded it after it had been rebuilt 444 B.C. The dresses, ornamentations, jewels, and pearls are of Assyro-Egyptian and Indo-Persian patterns. The faces of the divinities show far more of the Turanian than of the Aryan type. The eyes are protruding, the cheek-bones high, the drapery is extremely stiff, the anatomy doll-like, and the features bear a kind of repulsive grin. In the gigantic, rock-hewn bull, near Smyrna, we have a proof that the Indian Nundi and the Egyptian Apis must have had their worshippers in Greece. Of Daidalos it is reported that he was the first who improved upon these symbolic carvings. He made winking gods and walking images by means of mechanical contrivances. He is said to have been a contemporary of Theseus; both belong therefore to the mythical period. Though a statue of Herakles, holding in his right arm a club, whilst his left extended bears a lion’s skin as a shield, is attributed to him; and though Homer mentions Daidalos, of Krete, as having wrought a dance in metal for Ariadne, which formed the model for that wrought by Hephaistos on the shield of Achilles; the fact that the very word to ‘embellish’ is taken from his name, points less to a distinct person than to the period in which Greek art began to free itself from Asiatic bondage. The historical periods into which we may group Greek sculpture correspond to those of their architecture. First period, from the 8th century B.C. to the Persian wars, 470 B.C. Second period, from Kimon to the end of the Peloponnesian war, 470 B.C.-400 B.C. Third period, from the delivery of Athens to the conquest of Greece by the Romans, 400 B.C.-146 B.C. This third period comprises Greek sculpture in its decline.