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But this is not all. He has left out something else which was a most essential, nay, an all important part of his first mental vision of the scene. He has actually left out–guess what–some son or daughter of Niobe?–has run counter to the tradition of the seven girls and seven boys?–oh, in comparison, that would be nothing. He has actually and absolutely left out the god and goddess–left out the murderers from the representation of the murder. Why in the world has he done this? Granting that he need not transfer to his group all the terrible details he has seen in his mind, why should he leave out Apollo and Artemis? They need not be convulsed, or writhing, or grimacing; on the contrary, they ought to be quite calm and passionless in their cruel beauty. There is nothing unbeautiful in Apollo and Artemis surely. No: not in Apollo and Artemis, taken in themselves; but in Apollo and Artemis considered as part of this group. Listen: we will explain. Since Apollo and Artemis are, between them, slaughtering all the Niobides, closing them in with their arrows, it is obvious that Apollo and Artemis must be placed in such a manner as to command the whole family of Niobides; there must be no Niobides behind them, for that would mean that there are Niobides who are out of danger and can escape. So the god and goddess must be placed in one of three ways: either back to back in the very centre of the group, each shooting down one half of the family; or else entirely separated, each at one extremity of the group, so as to face each other and enclose all the Niobides between them; or else above the Niobides, floating in mid air and raining down arrows like hail. Now, which of these three arrangements shall the sculptor select? He rejects at once the plan of placing the god and goddess back to back in the centre of the group, and we agree with him; for the two figures, thus applied to each other, each more or less in profile, would form the most ludicrous double-headed Janus. Place, then, Apollo at one end and Artemis at the other. There is nothing ugly in that, is there? There would not be were the sculptor modelling the oblong bas-relief of a sarcophagus; but there would be something very ugly now that, as it happens, he is modelling a group for the triangular gable of a temple. For, as the sides of the triangle slope sharply down, the figures beneath them necessarily become smaller and less erect in proportion to their distance from the vertex; so the god and goddess, if placed at the extremity of the group, must be flattened down in the acute angles of the base, must crouch and squat with their bows barely on a level with the knees of their victims. So this arrangement will not do; there remains the third plan of placing Apollo and Artemis above the Niobides. This is an admirable idea: the vertex of the triangle is filled by the floating figures of the gods, who appear calm, beautiful, mysterious, showering down death from inaccessible heaven. Will this do? Alas, much less than either of the others. The arrangement would be beautiful if the triangle of the gable, instead of being filled with a group of statues, were walled up, plastered, and could be painted on in fresco. The colour, light and shade, and perspective of painting, by creating a seeming depth of back-ground, by hiding one figure partially behind another, so as to make them appear not in actual contact, by piling up aetherial clouds or waving light draperies, would permit the artist to show the Niobides on solid ground below, and the gods in the air, high, distant above. But the sculptor, without any such means, could only suspend Apollo and Artemis (at tremendous expense of iron clamps) in such a way that they should seem to be standing on the shoulders of the Niobides; or interpose between them a thick bolster of marble clouds, a massive flutter of streaming marble draperies. Now do you think that the marble clouds and the marble fluttering drapery would be conducive to the beauty of the group, to the perfection of visible forms? Certainly not. And, therefore, Apollo and Artemis, gods though they are and chief actors in the story, have simply been left out in this its artistic representation.