[Illustration: FIG. 23.--ATHENIAN COINS WITH THE MINERVA PROMACHOS.]
Phidias executed many works under the patronage of Cimon, the greatest of which was the colossal statue of Minerva, which stood on the Acropolis. It was called the "Minerva Promachos," and was so gigantic that "the crest of her helmet and the point of her spear could be seen by the mariner off the promontory of Sunium glittering in the sunlight as a welcome to her own chosen people, and an awful warning to her foes." The meaning of Promachos may be given as champion or guardian, and we know from existing descriptions that, with its pedestal, it must have been at least seventy feet in height. It was made from the spoils taken at Marathon; its pedestal was found, in 1840, standing between the Parthenon and the Erechtheium. It has been called the "Pallas with the golden spear," for this goddess was known as Athena, Minerva, and Pallas, and it is said that Alaric was so impressed by its awful aspect that he shrank from it in horror. The only representations of this statue now in existence are upon Athenian coins, and the position of the goddess differs in these, as you will see by the illustration (Fig. 23); there are reasons for believing that the one in which the shield rests upon the ground is correct, one of which is that some years after the death of Phidias the inside of the shield was ornamented by a relief of the battle of the Centaurs.
Though Phidias proved himself to be a great artist during the reign of Cimon, it was not until the time of Pericles that he reached the glorious height of his genius. Pericles and Phidias seem to have been two grand forces working in harmony for the political and artistic grandeur of Athens, and, indeed, of all Attica, for within a period of twenty years nearly all the great works of that country were begun and completed. Plutarch writes of these wonders in these words: "Hence we have the more reason to wonder that the structures raised by Pericles should be built in so short a time, and yet built for ages. For as each of them, as soon as it was finished, had the venerable air of antiquity, so now that they are old they have the freshness of a modern building. A bloom is diffused over them which preserves their aspect untarnished by time, as if they were animated with a spirit of perpetual youth and unfading elegance."