Immediately to the south of the present Erechtheion lie the foundations of the ancient Doric temple[41], currently known by a pardonable Germanism as the ‘old Athena-temple.’ For its date we have a certain _terminus ante quem_. The colonnade was of the time of Peisistratos; it was a later addition; the cella of the temple existed before—how much before we do not know. The zeal and skill of Prof. Dörpfeld for architecture, of Dʳˢ Wiegand and Schrader for sculpture, have restored to us a picture of that ancient Doric temple all aglow with life and colour and in essentials complete[42]. [Illustration: FIG. 12.] Of all the marvellous fragments of early sculpture recently discovered, none is more widely known nor more justly popular than the smiling, three-headed monster known throughout Europe as the ‘Blue-beard.’ He belongs to the sculptures of the west pediment of the inner pre-Peisistratean cella of the ‘old Athena-temple,’ a portion of which is shown in Fig. 12. It is tempting to turn aside and discuss in detail the whole pediment composition to which he belongs. It will, however, shortly be seen (p. 37) that our argument forbids all detailed discussion of the sanctuaries of Athena, and the pediments of her earliest temple have therefore, for us at the moment, an interest merely incidental. Thus much, however, for clearness sake may and must be said. The design of the western pediment fell into two parts. In one angle, that to the left of the spectator, Herakles is wrestling with Triton; the right-hand portion, not figured here, is occupied by the triple figure of ‘Blue-beard,’ whose correct mythological name is probably Typhon[43]. He is no protagonist, only a splendid smiling spectator. The centre of the pediment, where, in the art of Pheidias, we should expect the interest to culminate, was occupied by accessories, the stem of a tree on which hung, as in vase-paintings, the bow and arrows and superfluous raiment of Herakles. It is a point of no small mythological interest that in this and two other primitive pediments the protagonist is not, as we should expect, the indigenous hero Theseus, but the semi-Oriental Herakles; but this question also we must set aside; our immediate interest is not in the sculptured figures of the pediment, but in the richly painted decoration on the pediment roof above their heads. The recent excavations on the Acropolis yielded a large number of painted architectural fragments, the place and significance of which was at first far from clear. Of these fragments forty were adorned with two forms of lotus-flower; twenty had upon them figures of birds of two sorts. Fragmentary though the birds mostly are, the two kinds (storks and sea-eagles) are, by realism as to feathers, beak, legs, and claws, carefully distinguished. The stork (πελαργός) in the Pelargikon is a surprise and a delight. Was Aristophanes[44] thinking of this Pelargikon when to the building of his Nephelokokkygia he brought