school of Sicyon, wrought a group of boys riding race-horses, and thus belongs to the list of sculptors contemporary with Pindar who took subjects from the games.
§ 25. But the school of Aegina is that of which we naturally think first in connection with Pindar. Of his extant epinicia, Sicily claims 15; the Epizephyrian Locrians, 2; Cyrene, 3; the mainland of Greece, 13, of which 4 are for Thebes; Aegina, 11. In the island which was so fertile of athletes, the sculptors of Pindar's day had begun to take as their model an ideal athlete, of a type characterised by spareness of form, showing the bones at knee-joints, in chest and ribs, with the legs rather too long and the arms too short; whence the "Aeginetan" manner means for Pausanias "archaic" as distinguished from "Attic" or mature art[1]. The temple of Athene at Aegina had groups of sculpture on both pediments,—the east (which was the front), and the west. The Aeginetan marbles at Munich are statues which formed parts of these groups. Their date falls within Pindar's lifetime. The subject of the east pediment (it is unnecessary to enter on controverted details of restoration) was that war against Laomedon in which Heracles was helped by Telamon. The subject of the west pediment was one probably connected with the death of Patroclus, and the chief figure was Ajax, son of Telamon. All through Pindar's odes for Aeginetan victors the dominant mythical theme is fitly the glory of the Aeacidae,
- ↑ See A. S. Murray, History of Greek Sculpture, pp. 147, 160.
