We know that Rhodian artists worked on this altar, and Rhodian style is visible in some of the figures, but transparent drapery of the Rhodian type appears nowhere on the frieze. There seems to be no reason to date any figure wearing this drapery earlier than 190 B.C., and we should therefore attribute it to the second century. We have seen in the Antioch of Eutychides the Praxitelean type taken over by the earlier Rhodian artists in the third century. Have we any link by which we can connect the transparent mantle with the earlier form? [Illustration: 34] The answer to this question is provided by one of the greatest statues of antiquity, the Victory of Samothrace (Fig. 34). The date and school of this masterpiece are still warmly disputed, and the current view tends to connect it with the victory of Demetrios Poliorcetes in 306, by which he won the command of the sea. Coins of Demetrios show a trumpet-blowing Victory on the prow of a ship in an attitude closely resembling the Louvre statue. But the statue has no connexion with the coin, for a detailed study of the neck and fragments of the right shoulder reveals the impossibility of the trumpet-blowing attitude. The right hand and arm are raised high and backwards probably with a victor’s wreath. Moreover, the coin has a low girdle and no cloak, the statue the high third-century girdle and a great flapping mantle. The type is not so rare as might be expected. We have it in small bronzes, and we have it also _in situ_ on a votive statue in Rhodes. The Victory of Samothrace is a later version of the statue possibly erected by Demetrios. Its Rhodian origin depends partly on the extraordinary _finesse_ and delicate naturalism of its drapery, a study never popular in Pergamon, and partly on the strong probability, not yet decisively proved, that the marble of its base is Rhodian. The latter point may provide definite proof, but the former is the one on which we must at present rely. The Rhodian origin or at least the Lysippic connexions of the statue are further supported by the twist above the waist so universal among the followers of that artist and the strong vital momentary pose, which is wrongly rendered in the present attitude of the statue. It is not a standing figure, but a Victory who is just alighting after flight, and it should therefore be tilted farther forward. The only statue now existing which presents a real parallel to the intricate folds of the Victory’s drapery is the Magnesian statue already mentioned,[83] which belongs to the new Rhodian drapery school. But the mantle of the Victory is older in type. Thus the Victory’s drapery stands midway between the Antioch figure and the new Rhodian fashion. It shows just that scientific naturalism which we have noticed in the anatomy of the athletic figures, and just that tendency to miss the perfect whole by an over-anxious care for detail. The date for such work is 250 and not 300 B.C. The Chiaramonti Niobid[84] is a work of