They once filled the pediments of a Doric temple
of Aphaia, of which considerable remains are still standing. There
is no trustworthy external clue to the date of the building, and
we are therefore obliged to depend for that on the style of the
architecture and sculpture, especially the latter. In the dearth
of accurately dated monuments which might serve as standards of
comparison, great difference of opinion on this point has
prevailed. But we are now somewhat better off, thanks to recent
discoveries at Athens and Delphi, and we shall probably not go far
wrong in assigning the temple with its sculptures to about 480
B.C. Fig. 52 illustrates, though somewhat incorrectly, the
composition of the western pediment. The subject was a combat, in
the presence of Athena, between Greeks and Asiatics, probably on
the plain of Troy. A close parallelism existed between the two
halves of the pediment, each figure, except the goddess and the
fallen warrior at her feet, corresponding to a similar figure on
the opposite side.
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