As regards the monuments of the earlier pre-Pheidian period the most interesting question is how far they contain the germ of the Pheidian masterpiece, how far the artists had anticipated Pheidias in the discovery of forms appropriate to the ideal. But our evidence of the earliest archaic period is most scanty; no statues have survived, and probably very few existed; we have to collect testimony from coins, vase-paintings, and reliefs, and most of these belong to the later archaism. The means of expression that the workers in this period possessed was chiefly external and mechanical; character and personality were chiefly manifested by attributes. The most usual of these was the thunderbolt, whether he was represented in action or repose; also on some archaic works, there was not only the thunderbolt in his hand, but on his head a garland of flowers, and the character becomes more manifold by the accumulation of attributes. Nothing is told us in the ancient literature about the form or pose of these representations; but examining the series of archaic coins and vases, we gather that there were three commonly accepted types showing three varieties of pose: (i) we see the striding Zeus with the thunderbolt in his right hand levelled against an imaginary enemy or transgressor on Messenian tetradrachms, on later Attic coins, and in the very archaic bronze from Olympiaa, and the eagle is sometimes flying above his extended left arm or perched upon it; (2) the standing figure of Zeus in repose—for instance, on the coin of Athens holding the thunderbolt in his lowered right hand, and stretching out his left as though demanding libation.