The reliefs of the sixth century, and down to about B.C. 460, are excellent examples of the art of their time, in no way inferior to other contemporary works of sculpture. The relief of Pl. II introduces us to a school of artists of whom we have no other knowledge, a school localized in Peloponnesus, and trying to work out an independent line of art. The early reliefs of Athens and the Islands stand, however, on a much higher level. We have already seen that Professor Brunn, an admirable judge, had early discerned in the qualities of the Aristion relief (Pl. IX) the promise of the excellence of later Athenian art. The other stele of Pl. IX, that of Alxenor, shows similar merits, and a somewhat more advanced style. The group of mother and children (Pl. XIX) is a work of the greatest delicacy and charm: the forms of mother and infant, showing through the orderly folds of the Ionian dress, indicate genuine love of nature and appreciation of form; and the group is full of the same sentiment which charms us in the tombs of a later age. The reliefs of the sixth century were usually executed in honour of distinguished persons; they frequently bore the name of the sculptor, and that sculptor would usually be one whose fame was great. This shows that early sculptors were proud of executing tombs: at a later time tombs almost never bear an artist’s name. As we approach the middle of the fifth century, the art of the sculptor in Greece is taking constantly a higher and a wider range. Great temples are rising on all sides, especially at Athens, and offering to great artists noble opportunities of distinction to be won either by designing the great cultus-statues of the gods, or by fitly adorning the outsides of their temples. The sculpture of athletes also had, in the hands of Pythagoras of Myron and of Polycleitus, reached a perfection hitherto undreamed of. And at the same period the sumptuary laws of Athens, which were only gradually falling into neglect, closely limited the sum of money to be spent on tombs. Under these circumstances we cannot be surprised that the sepulchral monuments of the middle of the fifth century, of the age of the Parthenon and the Temple of Nike, are mostly of somewhat small size and poor execution. In their style they show something of the contemporary grand style, but it is only a distant cousinship to it which they display. They are not the work of great artists, but of workers scarcely above the level of the skilled stonemason.