In the next place, it will be found, on careful examination of the ancient writers and of other facts bearing on the question, to be exceedingly doubtful whether Phidias ever made any statues in marble. If he did execute any works in this material, they were exceptions to his general practice, his art being chiefly in toreutic work, and in gold and ivory, or bronze. It was in these arts that he established his fame; and there is no mention of any work by him in marble within five hundred years of his death. Plutarch, in his Life of Pericles, says that “Phidias was appointed by Pericles superintendent of all the public edifices, though the Athenians had other eminent architects, and excellent workmen.” It is plain, however, that even if Phidias was director of the works, Plutarch does not mean to represent him as the architect or artist by whom they were either designed or executed; for he immediately adds that “the Parthenon was built by Callicrates and Ictinus.” Probably also Carpion was another architect actively engaged upon it, for he and Ictinus wrote a work upon it. Plutarch then goes on to enumerate other buildings built by different artists at this very period during which Phidias was director of public works. Afterwards he positively states that “the golden statue of Minerva was the workmanship of Phidias, and his name is inscribed on the pedestal;”[1] and adds that, “as we have already observed, through the friendship of Pericles, he had the direction of everything, and all the artists received his orders.” But he does not say or intimate that Phidias himself made anything in the Parthenon except the statue of Athena, unless “having the direction of everything” is to be understood as equivalent to making everything himself. Such an interpretation is, however, absolutely in contradiction with his statements that the Parthenon was built by Callicrates and Ictinus; that the Temple of Initiation at Eleusis was begun by Corœbus, carried on by Metagenes, and finished by Xenocles of Cholargos; that the vestibule of the Citadel was finished in five years by Mnesicles; and that the Odeum was built under the direction of Pericles, by which he incurred much ridicule. Strabo, however, would seem to differ from Plutarch on this point, and to attribute to Pericles himself, and not to Phidias, the general superintendence of the public works. Speaking of the Temple of the Eleusinian Ceres at Eleusis, and the mystic inclosure, Σηκός, built by Ictinus, he adds, “This person it was who made the Parthenon in the Acropolis in honor of Minerva, when Pericles was superintendent of the public works;” and in another passage he mentions “the Parthenon built by Ictinus, in which is the Minerva in ivory, the work of Phidias,”—thus clearly distinguishing the work of Phidias, and saying not a word about the metopes, _bassi-relievi_, or statues in the pediment, or indicating him as their author.