So serious have these difficulties appeared to some, that they have actually suspected Pausanias of being misled, and having falsely attributed the work of obscure local artists to Alkamenes, and perhaps also falsely to Pæonius. They say that nothing is more common with vulgar cicerones than to attribute to a great master any old work of uncertain origin. Others, who will not proceed to such extremes, hold that only the general design was made by the two sculptors, and its execution handed over to local artists. This may probably have been the case. But I am disposed to infer from the overpraised _Niké_, which certainly is the work of Pæonius, that he was not an artist of the quality of the great Attic school.(119) The whole external work of the temple seems to represent a stage of art rather earlier and ruder than the school of Phidias. This is eminently the case with the Metopes, which can hardly be later in date than 460 B. C., or pre-Phidian in time. Very different is the impression produced by the greatest and most priceless gem of all the treasures at Olympia—the Hermes of Praxiteles, which was actually found on the very spot where it was seen and described by Pausanias, fallen among the ruins of the temple which originally protected it. This exquisite figure, much smaller than life-size, represents the god Hermes holding the infant Dionysus on one arm, and showing the child some object now lost. The right arm and the legs from below the knees are gone; the right foot with its sandal, an exquisite piece of work with traces of gold and red, has been recovered. It is remarkable that the back of the statue is unfinished, and the child treated rather as a doll than a human infant; the main figure, however, now widely known through copies, is the most perfect remnant of Greek art. The temple in which the statue was found, the venerable Heræon, is the most interesting of all the Olympian buildings in its plan, and has solved for us many problems in Greek architecture. The acute researches of Dr. Dörpfeld have shown that the walls were not of stone, but of sun-dried bricks, and that the surrounding pillars had gradually replaced older wooden pillars, one of which was still there when Pausanias saw the building. The successive stone pillars and their capitals were of the same order, Doric, but varied in measurements and profile according to the taste of the day. So then this ancient building showed, like our English cathedrals, the work of successive centuries in its restoration. The roof and architrave were evidently of wood, for all trace of these members has vanished; but we learn from remains of the old “treasuries” described by Pausanias that in very old times wood and mud bricks were faced with colored terra cotta, moulded to the required form, and that this ornament was still used after stone had replaced bricks and mud as the material of the walls and architrave. These curious details, and many others, have