All these were mural paintings; the subjects were partly
mythical, partly historical. Thus in the Stoa Poikile were represented
the taking of Troy, the battle of Theseus with the Amazons, the battle
of Marathon. In the Temple of Theseus came the battle of the Lapiths and
Centaurs and the battle of the Amazons again. In the other two Athenian
temples he treated mythological subjects. These great public works were
executed during the administration of Kimon, to whom Polygnotos stood in
the same relation us Phidias did to Perikles, the successor of Kimon.
The paintings in the Stoa Poikile were executed by Polygnotos
gratuitously, for which service the Athenians rewarded him with the
freedom of their city. His greatest and probably his earliest works were
the two pictures in the Lesche at Delphi. Of these there was a very full
description in Pausanias. The building called Lesche was thought to have
been of elliptical form, with a colonnade on either side, separated by a
wall in the middle, and to have been about 90 ft in length. The figures
were probably life size.
According to the list given by Pausanias, there were upward of seventy
in each of the two pictures. In that representing the taking of Troy
Polygnotos had brought together many incidents described in the Cyclic
epics: Menelaos Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Neoptolemos, Antenor, Helen,
Andromache, Kassandra, and many other figures, with which the Homeric
poems have made us familiar, all appeared united in one skillful
composition, arranged in groups.
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