We have tried to see again the Zeus of Pheidias, but all the while we felt, with the bitterness of irreparable loss, that we were stretching empty hands to grasp a vanished image. When we come to the art of Praxiteles our fortune is a little happier. It is true his masterpiece, the Aphrodite of Cnidus, has perished, and we dare not even think of her in connection with such vile parodies as the Venus de Medici. The familiar “Faun” of the Capitol is, we know, but a late copy of his famous Satyr. But the last ten years have given to us a safer standard, one genuine piece of work from the very hand of Praxiteles himself, of little repute indeed among the ancients, but still undoubtedly authentic. Before we speak of the altered times in which Praxiteles lived, of the altered spirit he expressed, its many and complicated causes; before we gather from tradition his repute among the critics of antiquity, let us study this statue (Fig. 8), and glean all we can from this safest and surest of sources.

It was on the morning of May 8, 1877, when the season was all but at its close, that the German excavators at Olympia came suddenly, all unsuspecting, on this statue of the Hermes. It lay face foremost on a soft heap of clay and rubbish just where it had fallen. The limbs were in part shattered, but, to the infinite joy of archæologists, face and features are perfect.