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Fig. 21.—Two Figures, from the West Pediment of the Temple on Aegina. Glyptothek, Munich.

These groups represent the highest period of Aeginetan art. They have been dated anywhere from the end of the sixth century B.C. down to a period after the battle of Salamis.963 Probably a date just after that battle is correct, as Aeginetans won prizes of valor there.964 Any attempt to assign them to this or that artist is merely conjectural. The general similarity in subject to that of the Delphi group by Onatas, which represented the death in battle of Opis, the king of the barbarian Iapygians, at the hands of the Tarentines,965 and the group at Olympia already mentioned as representing a Trojan subject, led earlier scholars to assign the slightly more advanced statues of the East Pediment to Onatas and the more archaic ones of the West Pediment to Kallon. But we know both these sculptors only as bronze workers. The violent action of some of the figures reminds us at once of Pausanias’ description of the statue of the boxer Glaukos by the sculptor Glaukias, which we have already mentioned. But on the whole, though they are violent, the slight proportions of these athletic figures do not fit the appearance of boxers and pancratiasts, which, as we have seen, formed the staple of Aeginetan sculptors, but rather those of runners. We see a good wrestler in the Snatcher of the East Gable (Fig. ssss1),966 and the corresponding figure in the right half of the same gable.967 The Champion of the West gable (Fig. ssss1, left),968 of the finest Parian marble, represented as lunging forward, pressing on the enemy armed with helm, spear, and shield, would pass as a good example of a hoplitodrome, far freer and more individual than the warrior from Dodona.