There can be no doubt as to the value of statuary, which was the special province of Phidias, in enhancing the _ensemble_ of Grecian architectural grouping, and particularly valuable was the colossal figure of Minerva Promachus in contributing to the grandiose effect of the Athenian Acropolis. This noble work of Phidias was seventy feet high and made entirely of bronze, said to have been taken from the Medes, who disembarked at Marathon. The colossal goddess stood exposed, and in a position where, in looking far away over the Ægean sea, she might be an inspiration to the returning Athenian mariner, and where, in glancing from her lofty eminence, “she seemed, by her attitude and her accoutrements, to promise protection to the city beneath her, and to bid defiance to her enemies.” Another architectural statue, if it may be called such, was that of the same goddess, in gold and ivory, which dominated the interior of the Parthenon. This work of Phidias, second only in beauty and size to the chryselephantine statue of Jupiter at Olympia, is said to have cost $465,000. The figure of Minerva was forty feet in height, and was presented standing in a tunic which reached to her feet. A casque covered her head, her right hand held a spear, and her left a figure of Victory. The exquisite workmanship of the carving on the buckler resting at the feet of the deity came near involving Pericles and Phidias in another web of trouble, for it was asserted that the sculptor had introduced his own portrait and that of his patron among the combatants of a battle between the Athenians and Amazons, there portrayed. The captious objection was set up that such a liberty was insulting to Athene. Phidias, as related by some writers, was cast into prison for this act of impiety, and died there. Others claim, however, that this was not so, but that Phidias, before sentence could be passed, fled to Elis, where he at once entered upon the work of modelling the great statue of the Olympian Jupiter. In respect to both statues, he was implicated with Pericles, as accused by his enemies, with pilfering the gold donated for their construction. These various accusations have led to considerable confusion in respect to much of his personal history and final end, and although it was proved by removing the gold plates and weighing them, that he was not guilty of the alleged crime, it is very probable that his death was as much due to disappointed hopes and mortification consequent upon the false charge as it was to any public executioner of the time. CHAPTER VI. THE ARCHITECTS OF THE AGE OF PERICLES. It is not the intention, in recalling some of the more conspicuous architects who flourished in the time of Pericles, to confine them to those only who were directly in his employ, but to group together all who became prominent factors in the architectural development of that age, both for some years before and after Pericles’s reign of power.