“It is probable that the figures on his right hand represented those deities who were connected with the progress of facts and rising life—the deities who preside over birth, over the produce of the earth, over love—the rising sun; whilst those on the left of Zeus related to the consummation or decline of things—the god of war, the goddess of the family hearth, the Fates, and lastly the setting sun, or night. Whilst the divine Athéné rose from behind the central figure in all the effulgence of the most brilliant armour, the golden crest of her helmet filling the apex of the pediment.” I quote this glowing description from Sir Richard Westmacott’s “Lectures on Sculpture.” This, however, is all conjecture, for the space is a mere blank. As some little aid to the imagination to help to fill the blank, I give a sketch of the same subject, viz., the birth of Athéné, copied from a painting on a vase now in the British Museum. The artist may have probably seen the Parthenon, and may have taken a free version of the subject, from memory, to decorate his vase. We find the same subject repeated, with variations, on other vases. Zeus (Jupiter) occupies the centre, a small Athéné springs forth from his head, Hephaestos (Vulcan) stands by with his axe (with which he has split open the thunderer’s head to let forth the infant deity), Poseidon (Neptune), with his trident, behind him; and Artemis (Diana), with her bow, and a nymph, on the other side, look on. The figures on the vases are so extremely stiff and formal as compared to the grand, life-like statues of the pediments, that I hesitate to give my illustration. But it shows the probable arrangement of the group. The figures on the vase are red on a black ground, treated perfectly flat, without the slightest modelling. To return to the pediment of the Parthenon itself, the space immediately surrounding the blank, on each hand, is filled with different gods, who appear to look with wonder and admiration towards the central group. At the extreme end on the left the rising sun, Phœbus-Apollo, drives the car of day out of the ocean; while Seléné, goddess of night, plunges downward with her team of steeds, into the waves, at the end on the right.