Pausanias was a Greek gentleman, native of Lydia, in Asia Minor, a geographer and traveller, who visited noted sites in Greece with the express purpose of seeing and describing all that was most beautiful and interesting in Greek art. He lived about one hundred and fifty years after the Christian era. His travels or “Itinerary” has come down to us, and a most curious and interesting work it is. He saw and described the Parthenon with much enthusiasm, with all its beautiful statues and works of art, as “still perfect,” though they were, even in his day, already considered as ancient art. He refers to the Homeric hymn as suggesting the subject of the group on the eastern pediment over the principal entrance to the temple. This Homeric hymn to Athéné gives the account of her fabled birth, full grown and fully armed, from the head of her father, Zeus (or Jupiter). It describes her, first as the goddess of war, and afterwards, when she has thrown off her arms, as the goddess of the peaceful arts. I give the hymn in full. HOMERIC HYMN TO ATHÉNÉ. “I sing the glorious power with azure eyes; Athenian Pallas! tameless, chaste, and wise. Trito-genia,[1] town preserving maid, Revered and mighty, from his awful head Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike armour dressed, Golden, all radiant! Wonder strange possessed The everlasting gods that shape to see, Shaking a javelin keen, impetuously Rush from the crest of Ægis-bearing Jove. Fearfully Heaven was shaken, and did move Beneath the might of the cerulean-eyed; Earth dreadfully resounded far and wide; And lifted from its depths, the sea swelled high In purple billows; the tide suddenly Stood still, and great Hyperion’s son long time Checked his swift steeds, till, where she stood sublime, Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw The arms divine; wise Jove rejoiced to view. Child of the Ægis-bearer, hail to thee! Nor thine, nor others’ praise shall unremembered be.” Such is the famous hymn. And from Pausanias we learn that it afforded to the sculptor, Pheidias, the subject for his chief group on the eastern pediment. But, exactly how he treated it we have no precise or definite knowledge. THE EASTERN PEDIMENT.—“Doubtless, in this composition, Jupiter (Zeus) occupied the centre, and was represented in all his majesty, wielding the thunderbolt in one hand, holding his sceptre in the other; seated on his throne, and as if in the centre of the universe, between day and night, the beginning and the end, as denoted by the rising and the setting sun.