PHIDIAS, AND THE ELGIN MARBLES. (continued 2)

Why did not Plutarch tell us who were the sculptors of the marbles in the Parthenon? Probably for the very simple reason that he did not know. He wrote many centuries after Phidias was dead (about B. C. 66), and tradition may not have brought down the names of any who were concerned in the building of the Parthenon, save those of the architects and of Phidias. He did not attempt to supply the hiatus—being, to use his own words, convinced “of the difficulty of arriving at any truth in history: since if the writers live after the events they relate, they can but be imperfectly informed of facts; and if they describe the persons and transactions of their own times, they are tempted by envy and hatred, or by interest and friendship, to vitiate and pervert the truth.”