Urlichs has tried to show that all the historical indications which may be derived from the frieze of the siege and from the presence of the flying Nereids may be explained if we assign the tomb to the king or satrap, Pericles of Xanthus, who, as we learn from a fragment of Theopompus, laid siege to the neighbouring city of Telmessus, and after a stubborn resistance compelled it to capitulate. Before we can accept or reject this theory we must briefly consider two questions. Is an actual historic event depicted on the tomb, or is the representation merely of a mythical siege of the past? And what is the date of the monument? As to the first of these questions I have already sufficiently indicated my view. The sculptural history of the siege is too detailed and precise to be a rendering of a merely typical or ideal siege. The two emissaries of the besiegers must have had prototypes, and recent prototypes, in real life; and the king before whom they stand is no mythical chief, but the ruler for whom the tomb was made. This has been disputed by Wolters, but the general consensus of archaeologists is against him. On the other point, the date of the monument, there has been much wider divergence of opinion. At first, in England, it was placed in the sixth century, as a monument of the conquest of Xanthus by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus. This, however, is quite impossible. Soon the pendulum swung too far in the other direction, and the sculpture was brought down to the fourth century, and even connected with the school of Scopas. The date fixed by Furtwängler[296], the latter part of the fifth century, is now generally accepted. In the forms of the Nereids we may trace the artistic influence of the Victory of Paeonius, set up about B.C. 424. And if some of the figures of the friezes be carefully considered they will be found to show traces of undeveloped art, even of archaism. The Nereid monument belongs to the age of the Parthenon and the temple of Athena Nike, not to the age of the Mausoleum.