The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.81.2

v2.c16.81.2

Besides, it is not at all necessary to identify the visitor, the combatant, and the ravisher, to be the same person represented in different stages of the story. In archaic sculpture, whether Egyptian, Greek or Assyrian, nothing is more common, in representing contests between two different classes of opponents, than the endeavour to show the unequal, and yet equally balanced, "fortune of war" by giving *here* an instance of one side vanquished, *there* of another, Taking the two favourite subjects with the Greeks, the contest between the Lapithae and the Centaurs (Phigaleian, Parthenon and Theseum sculptures in the British Museum), and those between the Greeks and the Amazons, we find in one slab a Lapith or an Amazon worsted, and in the next he or she victorious over a Centaur or an Athenian ; and this is exactly what occurs in the frieze under notice,—in the middle a battle, with a man vanquished and led in as a prisoner by a woman on the one side, and a woman overcome on the opposite side, and, instead of being dragged or led along, is, as may be expected, carried away in his arms by the man, who is in this case the victor. The first couple may be husband and wife [12] friendly to the cause of the Amazonian ladies. There is nothing inconsistent in this, and a fight between men and women cannot be improbable, where women go about armed with swords and shields.