How Phidias overcame the task of representing the goddess is well known. He generalized war and wisdom, and from his great work of the Parthenon there can be little departure in respect of bearing and attitude, so long as the province of war is symbolized in the design. The actual work of the Greek master has disappeared, but from various records and copies, it would appear that the Parthenon Athena was the loftiest conception ever worked out in sculpture, if we except the Olympian Zeus. Majestic grace and the unconscious power derived from supreme knowledge, seem to have been the first qualities exhibited in the statue. In the fourth century there was no great departure from the Phidian ideal, and it is difficult to see how there could be much modification in the direction of bringing the conception closer to earth, for the goddess had no special presumed form which could be adapted by the artist to popular ideas. A nude figure would be impossible because in this the force and power implied in a hero of war could not be combined with feminine attributes. The Greeks drew the line at observable muscular developments, invariably clothing nearly the whole of the figure, but they did not, and could not, free her general bearing from certain masculine qualities. It is true that the costume of the goddess might be modified, and Phidias himself represented her in one or two statues without a helmet, an example followed by several artists of the Renaissance,[a] but so long as the symbols of war are included in her habit, she can be only of formal use to the painter. [a] See Piero di Cosimo's Marsyas and the Pipes of Athena,[47] and Botticelli's Athena and the Centaur. APOLLO Although in mythology Apollo is connected with everything on earth which is useful or pleasing to mankind, in art custom has so confined his representation in respect of both appearance and symbols, that a type has been established from which it would be difficult to depart without a suggestion of incongruity arising. This type is of a more purely formal character than that of any other god, except perhaps Mercury, a circumstance probably arising from the fact that the reputed hard nature of Apollo fails to lend itself to sympathetic idealization. He does not appear to have been a favourite subject with the greatest sculptors of ancient times, for nearly all the innumerable statues of him which have come down to us, are reproductions of two or three types which in themselves vary but little. It is difficult to see how a really noble ideal of such a god can be suggested. Stern and inflexible, with many human vices but no weaknesses or gentle traits, and withal a model of physical beauty without strength or apparent power--in fact an emphasized feminine form: such is the Apollo of tradition and art. We cannot wonder that the type was quickly fixed, the limitations to avoid the abnormal being so well defined.