There is very great difference of opinion among scholars and critics concerning the meaning of the various scenes in these sculptures; and as all their writing is speculation, and no one knows the truth about it, I shall only say that it is a very interesting object in the history of art, and shall speak of the four corner figures on the shortest parts of the frieze, from which the whole work takes its name. The Harpies are very curious; they had wings, and arms like human arms, with claws for hands, and feathered tails. Their bodies are egg-shaped, which is a very strange feature in their formation. We cannot explain all these different things, but there is little doubt that, with the little forms which they have in their arms, they represent the messengers of death bearing away the souls of the deceased. In the Odyssey, Homer represents the Harpies as carrying off the daughters of King Pandareus and giving them to the cruel Erinnyes for servants. For this reason the Harpies were considered as robbers, and whenever a person suddenly disappeared it was said that they had been carried off by Harpies (Fig. 19).
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--_From the Harpy Monument, London._]
Before leaving this subject of existing sculptures from the fifth century B.C., I will speak of the two groups which belonged to the temple of Minerva in Ægina, and are now in the Glyptothek at Munich. The city of Ægina was the principal city of the island of Ægina, which was in the gulf of the same name, near the south-west coast of Greece. This city was at the height of its prosperity about 475 B.C., at which time a beautiful temple was built, of which many columns are still standing, though much of it has fallen down. In 1811 some English and German architects visited this place, and the marbles they obtained are the most remarkable works which still exist from so early a period. Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor, restored these reliefs, and the King of Bavaria bought them.
Upon the western pediment there were eleven figures which represented an episode in the Trojan war; it was the struggle of Ajax, Ulysses, and other Greek warriors to obtain the dead body of Achilles, which was held by the Trojans. The story is that the goddess Thetis had dipped her son Achilles in the river Styx for the purpose of making him invulnerable, or safe from wounds by weapons. But as she held him by the ankles they were not wetted, and so he could be wounded in them. During the siege of Troy Apollo guided the arrow of Paris to this spot, and the great leader of the Greeks was killed. It is believed that the warrior in this picture who is about to send his arrow is Paris. In the central or highest part of the pediment the goddess Minerva stands and tries to cover the fallen body of Achilles with her shield. These figures are on the side where the space grows narrower. You can judge of what the action and spirit of the whole must be when these smaller figures have so much. We are sure that the arrow will shoot out with such force as must carry death to its victim, and the second warrior, who braces himself on his feet and knee, will thrust his lance with equal power (Fig. 20).