This is the statue of the god in whose honor the Ancient Olympic
games were held. It was located on the land that gave its very name to the Olympics.
At the time of the games, wars stopped, and athletes came from Asia Minor, Syria,
Egypt, and Sicily to celebrate the Olympics and to worship their king of gods:
Zeus.
At the ancient town of Olympia, on the west coast of modern
Greece, about 150 km west of Athens.
The ancient Greek calendar starts in 776 BC, for the Olympic
games are believed to have started that year. The magnificent temple of Zeus
was designed by the architect Libon and was built around 450 BC. Under the growing
power of ancient Greece, the simple Doric-style temple seemed too mundane, and
modifications were needed. The solution: A majestic statue. The Athenian sculptor
Pheidias was assigned for the "sacred" task, reminiscent of Michelangelo's
paintings at the Sistine Chapel.
For the years that followed, the temple attracted visitors and worshippers from
all over the world. In the second century BC repairs were skillfully made to
the aging statue. In the first century AD, the Roman emperor Caligula attempted
to transport the statue to Rome. However, his attempt failed when the scaffolding
built by Caligula's workmen collapsed. After the Olympic games were banned in
AD 391 by the emperor Theodosius I as Pagan practices, the temple of Zeus was
ordered closed.
Olympia was further struck by earthquakes, landslides and floods, and the temple
was damaged by fire in the fifth century AD. Earlier, the statue had been transported
by wealthy Greeks to a palace in Constantinople. There, it survived until it
was destroyed by a severe fire in AD 462. Today nothing remains at the site
of the old temple except rocks and debris, the foundation of the buildings,
and fallen columns.
Pheidias began working on the statue around 440 BC. Years earlier,
he had developed a technique to build enormous gold and ivory statues. This
was done by erecting a wooden frame on which sheets of metal and ivory were
placed to provide the outer covering. Pheidias' workshop in Olympia still exists,
and is coincidentally -- or may be not -- identical in size and orientation
to the temple of Zeus. There, he sculpted and carved the different pieces of
the statue before they were assembled in the temple.
When the statue was completed, it barely fitted in the temple. Strabo wrote:
".. although the temple itself is very large, the sculptor is criticized
for not having appreciated the correct proportions. He has shown Zeus seated,
but with the head almost touching the ceiling, so that we have the impression
that if Zeus moved to stand up he would unroof the temple."
Strabo was right, except that the sculptor is to be commended, not criticized.
It is this size impression that made the statue so wonderful. It is the idea
that the king of gods is capable of unroofing the temple if he stood up that
fascinated poets and historians alike. The base of the statue was about 6.5
m (20 ft) wide and 1.0 meter (3 ft) high. The height of the statue itself was
13 m (40 ft), equivalent to a modern 4-story building.
The statue was so high that visitors described the throne more than Zeus body
and features. The legs of the throne were decorated with sphinxes and winged
figures of Victory. Greek gods and mythical figures also adorned the scene:
Apollo, Artemis, and Niobe's children. The Greek Pausanias wrote:
On his head is a sculpted wreath of olive sprays. In his right hand he holds
a figure of Victory made from ivory and gold... In his left hand, he holds a
sceptre inlaid with every kind of metal, with an eagle perched on the sceptre.
His sandals are made of gold, as is his robe. His garments are carved with animals
and with lilies. The throne is decorated with gold, precious stones, ebony,
and ivory.
The statue was occasionally decorated with gifts from kings and rulers. the
most notable of these gifts was a woollen curtain "adorned with Assyrian
woven patterns and Pheonician dye" which was dedicated by the Syrian king
Antiochus IV.
Copies of the statue were made, including a large prototype at Cyrene (Libya).
None of them, however, survived to the present day. Early reconstructions such
as the one by von Erlach are now believed to be rather inaccurate. For us, we
can only wonder about the true appearance of the statue -- the greatest work
in Greek sculpture.