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ZEUS

Vatican, Rome

HERA

Terme Museum, Rome

We can picture the great statue of Zeus, possibly the most remarkable creation of the sculptor’s art in Greece. The features of the “Father of the Gods” are majestic, yet not unkindly; the arms and the upper parts of the body are fashioned from the gleaming ivory, the lower limbs being wrapped in the golden mantle. In the days of Pausanias there was a building outside the sacred Grove, which was still treasured by the people of Elis as the workshop in which, for five years, the sculptor wrought the image piece by piece. “Why,” says Pausanias, “the god himself bore witness to the art of Phidias. For when the image was completed Phidias prayed that the god would give a sign if the work was to his mind, and straightway, they say, the god hurled a thunderbolt into the ground at the spot where the bronze urn stood down to my time.” This second-century Baedeker has given us the greater part of our knowledge of the works of antiquity, which are now lost or survive only in Roman copies. He described the statue of Zeus by Phidias thus: