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The sculptures of the metope, on the contrary, are in high relief, frequently giving the impression of marbles detached from the background altogether. They were, moreover, colored. Or course, Pheidias himself cannot have had more than the share of general director in the sculptures of the metope; many of them are manifestly executed by inferior hands.
But it is far easier to write good sonnets than good blank verse, simply because the constant restraint of the form stimulates thought and invention, prevents too great haste, exercises the ingenuity. In the same way the somewhat rigid laws of composition of pediment metope and frieze compelled the Greek artist to think out schemes suitable to those forms.
The same distortion occurs in a second metope of this same temple, representing Heracles carrying off two prankish dwarfs who had tried to annoy him, and is in fact common in early Greek work. The garments of Perseus and Athena show so much progress in the representation of folds that one scruples to put this temple back into the seventh century, as some would have us do.
There is fine action in the eighth metope , where the Centaur has seized his adversary by the foot, and is hurling him backwards to the earth. Under the Athenian the visitor will notice a circular drinking vessel, indicative of the revel at which the cause of quarrel originated. The drapery about the female is beautifully executed.
The metopes represent the battles between the Centaurs and Lapithæ, at the nuptials of Pirithous. Each metope contains two figures, grouped in various attitudes; sometimes the Lapithæ, sometimes the Centaurs victorious.
On the metope are represented the deeds of Theseus in beautiful reliefs. The interior of the temple is full of fine sculptures, epitaphs, and other works in stone, most of which belong to the other temples, but are collected here. Outside the temple stand several marble seats which have been brought from the neighbouring Areopagus, the former place of assembly for the patricians.
Methinks I have upon my tongue a whetstone of loud sounding speech, which to harmonious breath constraineth me nothing loth. Mother of my mother was Stymphalian Metope of fair flowers, for she bare Thebe the charioteer, whose pleasant fountain I will drink, while I weave for warriors the changes of my song.
Also in cases are: Head of a Lapith from the Parthenon; and Head of a woman attributed to the sculptor Calamis, acquired in 1908 from the Humphrey Ward collection. Three bas-reliefs from a temple of Apollo at Thasos show a marked advance in artistic expression, which reaches its ultimate perfection in the lovely fragment of the Parthenon frieze, and in a mutilated metope from the same temple.
Matters have arrived at a desperate pitch with the combatants represented on the tenth metope , where the Centaur, with starting eyes and uplifted arms, is about to strike a determined Athenian, who has planted his foot against the Centaur's breast, and is determined to do his work. The next metope is a fine specimen of sculpture. Here an Athenian has seized a Centaur by the jaw, from behind.
Many of his preliminary drawings and studies exist and we can trace, more or less clearly, the process by which the final result was arrived at. At first we have merely a peasant sowing grain; an everyday incident, truly enough observed but nothing more. Gradually the background is cut down, the space restricted, the figure enlarged until it fills its frame as a metope of the Parthenon is filled.
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