It is very different with the others. Of these the pediment sculptures—which were, of course, the most important, and which were probably the finest groups ever designed—are so much destroyed or mutilated that the effect of the composition is entirely lost, and we can only admire the matchless power and grace of the torsos which remain. The grouping of the figures was limited, and indicated by the triangular shape of the surface to be decorated—standing figures occupying the centre, while recumbent or stooping figures occupied the ends. But, as in poetry, where the shackles of rhyme and metre, which encumber the thoughts of ordinary writers, are the very source which produces in the true poet the highest and most precious beauties of expression; so in sculpture and painting, fixed conditions seem not to injure, but to enhance and perfect, the beauty and symmetry attainable in the highest art. We have apparently in the famous Niobe group, preserved in Florence, the elements of a similar composition, perhaps intended to fill the triangular tympanum of a temple; and even in these weak Roman copies of a Greek masterpiece we can see how beautifully the limited space given to the sculpture determined the beauty and variety of the figures, and their attitudes. It was in this genius of grouping that I fancy Phidias chiefly excelled all his contemporaries: single statues of Polycletus are said to have been preferred in competitions. To us the art of the _Discobolus_ of Myron seems fully as great as that of any of the figures of the Parthenon; but no other artist seems to have possessed the same architectonic power of adapting large subjects and processions of figures to their places as Phidias.(41) How far he was helped or advised by Ictinus, or even by Pericles, it is not easy to say. But I do not fancy that Greek statesmen in those days studied everything else in the world besides statecraft, and were known as antiquaries, and linguists, and _connoisseurs_ of china and paintings, and theologians, and novelists—in fact, everything under the sun. This many-sidedness, as they now call it, which the Greeks called _πολυπραγμοσύνη_ and thought to be meddlesomeness, was not likely to infect Pericles. He was very intimate with Phidias, and is said to have constantly watched his work—hardly, I fancy, as an adviser, but rather as an humble and enthusiastic admirer of an art which did realize its ideal, while he himself was striving in vain with rebel forces to attain his object in politics.