Phidias’s comprehensive grasp of broad artistic effects had as much to do, probably, with gaining for him the favor of Pericles as his technical skill. Quintilian calls him the “Sculptor of the gods.” He realized the greatness of large things and could calculate their power in influencing the imagination and understanding. He was once invited, together with his contemporary artist, Alcamenes, to design a statue of Minerva, destined to be placed upon a high column. When both statues were finished and exhibited, that made by Alcamenes was at once preferred on account of its elegance of finish, while that by Phidias was rejected as being rough and crude. Phidias, however, insisted that each should be shown from the high pinnacle upon which it might ultimately be placed. When this was done all the elegant graces of the statue of Alcamenes were lost to sight, as well also the apparent roughness of that by Phidias, which now took on the perfect proportions he had foreseen. This story will serve to illustrate the breadth of his artistic discernment. Of all the artists of his time, Phidias was by far the best gifted to have placed in his hands, by Pericles, the supervision of the public buildings of Athens, and to have entrusted to his discretion and judgment the planning, posing and arranging of the grand architectural _mise en scène_, which his patron had determined should be set there. If Phidias did not draw the actual plans of a building or other structure, his judgment could indicate its order, its location and such other characteristics it should possess to harmonize with the features with which it was to be associated. He could group the majestic masonry of his time in grand display, could beautify it with his own chisel, and could form and mould the complete architectural picture. If he was not the architect of the Parthenon, he at least enhanced its effect with the magnificence of his sculpturings and designs in the metopes of the frieze and the tympanums of the pediments, some of which are still to be seen among the “Elgin marbles” in the British Museum, of which Canova remarked they would alone compensate for a visit to England. It is not improbable, also, that he may have suggested the Caryatides of the Erechtheum, and proved to the Egyptians, from whom the architectural idea was borrowed, how far more beautifully and gracefully such figures could be carved in Athens than on the banks of the Nile.