The subject illustrated on the western pediment was the contest
between Minerva and Neptune for the honour of giving a name to Athens.
The relics of these sculptures will now engage the visitor's
attention. Undoubtedly the first object that will attract his notice
will be that numbered 99. This recumbent figure has a noble presence
even now, headless and otherwise mutilated as it is. Canova stood
undecided between this figure and that of Theseus (or Cephalus,
according to Mr. Westmacott) as to which was pre-eminently beautiful.
The figure before which the visitor now stands is generally received
as the statue of Ilissus, who was the Athenian god of the river
Ilissus, which watered the southern side of the Athenian plain. Others
have declared it to be Theseus reposing after his herculean labours,
and contemplating the contest between the two deities. Having fully
examined this fine sculpture, the visitor should turn to the fragments
of the Minerva. A small fragment of the upper part of a face (101) is
all that remains of Minerva's head, the holes being still visible by
which the goddess's bronze helmet was fastened to the statue.
Hereabouts, also, is a fragment of the statue (102), and a coil of the
serpent that was about the figure (104). The torso marked 100, from
the western pediment, is conjectured to be part of a statue that
represented Cecrops, the founder of Athens, at the contest. The next
fragment is the torso of Neptune (103); and hereabouts is the cast of
the group supposed to have originally represented Hercules and Hebe.
The second object, marked 104, is the cast, presented by M. Charles
Lenormand, of a head in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, supposed
to belong to one of the statues of the western pediment. A torso of a
wingless or Athenian Victory is the next object that demands notice
(105): the figure was represented without wings, in token of the
inseparability of the goddess from the Greek capital. Another object
is marked 105: this is the head of the Victory; or rather a cast from
the original head presented to the trustees by Count de Laborde.
Lastly, of the western pediment sculptures, the visitor will remark
the lap of a figure, with a portion of an infant remaining: this ruin
is all that is left of Latona and her two children, Diana and Apollo.
Having fully examined these ruins of the Parthenon, the visitor must
direct his immediate attention to the remains collected from the ruins
of the celebrated