This is all the testimony we have as to any work by Phidias in marble. Has it any real weight? But grant all these statements, vague and visionary as they are, to their fullest extent, what do they prove? Not that Phidias was especially a marble-worker, but only that he made, exceptionally, one or two statues in marble, and was supposed by some writers five hundred years after his death, to have had a connection with two more, though other testimony, and the facts and dates, clearly show that he could not have made them, or at least throw the very gravest doubts upon his having done so. In this way, we might assert that Raffaelle was a sculptor, because he is supposed to have made, or helped to make, the statue of Jonah in the Santa Maria del Popolo at Rome. But to jump from such shaky facts to the statement and belief that Phidias was the author, or at all events the designer, of all the marble figures in the pediment, theme topes, and the frieze of the Parthenon, is truly “a long cry.” Where is the ground on which such a belief can be founded? There is not a statement or even an allusion by any ancient writer to justify it. The testimony of Plutarch, so far as it goes, is directly opposed to it, and all the known facts are in contradiction of it. Plutarch says that Phidias was appointed general superintendent of public works; that he made the statue of Athena in the Parthenon; and that, through the friendship of Pericles, he had the direction of everything, and all the artists received his orders. But he contradicts this immediately, if he is understood to mean anything more than that Phidias generally ordered who should be employed to do this or that work; for he distinctly says that Ictinus and Callicrates made the Parthenon,—and we know that Ictinus and Carpion wrote a book upon it. If Phidias designed or executed anything else than the Athena, why does not Plutarch say so, when he takes pains to tell us he made the Athena? The mention of the one excludes the other. If Ictinus and Callicrates made the building, why may they not have made all the rest of the work? Were they not able to do it? There is no reason to doubt their ability to design and execute all the decorative figures belonging to the temple they built. To Ictinus was intrusted the building of the Temple of Apollo at Phigaleia, in the sculptures of which there is shown remarkable ability; and he also built the Temple of the Eleusinian Ceres, and its mystic inclosure or Secos. If Ictinus and Callicrates, or Carpion, did not execute these marbles of the Parthenon, why may they not have intrusted them to some of the numerous artists with whom Athens swarmed at that time? Libon the architect built the temple of Zeus in which the Zeus of Phidias stood, and its pediment figures were sculptured by Alcamenes and Pæonios. Is there any reason to reject such a theory? However, as to this we are entirely in the dark; all our suppositions are purely speculative.