Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Part Four. Fifth Century. The name of Pheidias, which is lastingly and firmly connected with the Greek Sculpture of the fifth century before Christ, has led many people to believe that his works are that sculpture. Pheidias, however, was only one of many artists who, receiving a rich inheritance, added to it from the proceeds of their genius, and created works which not only pleased their fellow men, but which exerted through centuries, and down to our own generation, influences of supreme nobility. Pheidias, too, was a beginner once, and his early works, no doubt, showed signs of the novice. We think of him, however, as of the man of matured ideas, and judge him by his later works, the more so as it has proved difficult to identify any of his earlier creations. It is the quality of his masterpieces that has given to the century in which he lived the now traditional character. For this reason it has seemed wise to detach the first thirty years after the Persian wars, and to treat of their sculpture in a separate period as works of Transition. The word of suggestion uttered above, not to believe that every work, because discussed in the Transitional Period, must have been made between 480 and 450 B. C., but rather to consider the affinity of spirit which classes it with indubitable works of that period, holds good also here All that is meant by placing a statue in the so-called FifthCentury group rather than in the Transitional Period is that it shows less of traditional conventions and more of the genius of the artist. In the case of a few statues it has been very difficult to decide which was the case. They have been included in the " fifth century" if they are important for the understanding of a later type. Properly speaking, the Fifth-Century group includes the per...