Olympius

“ To the Rhodians he gave presents of every kind that their convenience required, but none very remarkable. Of the magnificence of his notions, in every thing respecting the gods, the temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens can be a sufficient testimony: being the only one in the world, the plan of which was suitable to the greatness of the deity. He likewise ornamented Delos with altars of extraordinary beauty, and abundance of statues. ”

“ There among the elders who had gathered round Olympius to meditate devoutly on the coming doom and on the inmost meaning of the mysteries—among the adepts who were anxiously noting, in the observatories of the Serapeum, the fateful courses of the stars, the swirling of the clouds and the flight of birds, she would doubtless find her father ”

“ Gladly will I die if only I may first live to see the smoking offerings sending up their fragrance to the gods before the open doors of every temple in Greece; see the young men and maidens dancing in rapt enthusiasm to the sound of lutes and pipes, and joining their voices in the chorus! Then light will shine once more on the world, then life will once more mean joy, and death a departure from a scene of bliss."
"Aye, and thus shall it be!" cried Olympius, fired by this eager exposition of his own excitement, and he wrung the musician's hand. ”

“ His old comrades in arms had not forgotten how to defy the tempest, and their captains had been well advised in preparing to attack first what seemed the securest side of the temple. The struggle, he foresaw, would be against tried soldiers, and it was with a deep curse and a smile of bitter scorn that he thought of the inexperienced novices under his command. It was only yesterday that he had tried to moderate Olympius' sanguine dreams, and had said to him: "It is not by enthusiasm but by tactics that we defeat a foe!" ”

“ Some had dropped on their knees and were praying with uplifted hands, or murmuring incantations; and a poet, who had been crowned for a poem entitled: "Man the Lord and Master of the Gods," had fainted with fear, and his laurel-wreath had fallen into a dish of oysters.
Olympius had risen from his place as Symposiarch and was leaning against a door-post awaiting death with manly composure. Father Karnis, who had made rather too free with the wine-cup, but had been completely sobered by the sudden fury of the storm, had sprung up and hastened past the high-priest to seek his wife and son ”

“ The site of the Olympieium ('0u>iiriiut) , or Temple of Zeus Olympius, is indicated by sixteen gigantic Corinthian columns of white marble, to the south-east of the Acropolis, and near the right bank of the Ilissus. This temple not only exceeded in magnitude all other temples in Athens, but was the greatest ever dedicated tn the supreme deity of the Greeks, and one of the four most renowned examples of architecture in marble, the other three being the temples of Ephesus, Branchidae, and Eleusis. ”

“ Nature has taken Olympia into her loving arms. She has shed her pine-needles and her leaves of the golden autumn upon the seats where the wrestlers reposed. She has set her grasses and flowers among the stones of the Temple of Zeus. Her vines creep down to the edge of that cup of her earth which holds gently, as a nurse holds a sleeping child, palaces, temples, altars, shrines of the gods and ways for the chariots. All the glory of men has departed, but something remains which is better than glory—peace, loveliness, a pervading promise of lasting things beyond. ”

“ Alone he knelt down and prayed to Apollo, his god.
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‘Hear me, god of the silver bow!’ he cried. ‘If I have built thee a temple that is fair in thine eyes, and have offered unto thee there the flesh of bulls and goats, hear me! Let the Greeks be paid by thine arrows for my tears!’
High up amongst the peaks of Olympus Apollo heard the prayer of his priest, and great anger filled his heart. ”

“ Olympia sat lonely and deserted by her river banks. Summer winds whirled dust under her porches. Rabbits made burrows in Zeus' altar. Doors rusted off their hinges. Foxes made their dens in Hera's temple. Men came now and then to melt up a bronze statue for swords or to haul away the stones of her temples for building. The Alpheios kept eating away its banks and cutting under statues and monuments. Many a beautiful thing crumbled and fell into the river and was rolled on down to the sea. Men sometimes found a bronze helmet or a marble head in the bed of the stream. ”

“ Thirty or more there were—Apollo, Zeus, heroes, women, centaurs, horses. Arms were gone, heads were broken, legs were lost. The excavators fitted together all the pieces and set the mended statues up side by side as they had been in the gable. They found, too, the carved marble slabs that showed the labors of Herakles. But even these were not the lovely things that people had hoped to see from Olympia. They were rather stiff and ungraceful. They had not been made by the greatest artists. In the temple of Hera one day men were digging in clay. Over all the rest of Olympia was only sand. ”

“ The river Alphe'us, which the poets have made the most celebrated of the rivers of Greece, flows westward through Elis to the Ionian Sea, and on its banks was Olympia, the renowned seat of the Olympian games. Here, also, was the sacred grove of olive and plane trees, within which were temples, monuments, and statues, erected in honor of gods, heroes, and conquerors. In the very midst stood the great temple of Jupiter, which contained the colossal gold and ivory statue of the god, the masterpiece of the sculptor Phidias. ”

“ After the terrible night of the middle-age, and the dolorous legends of spirits and the damned, it was a delight to see again Olympus shining upon us from Greece; its heroic and beautiful deities once more ravishing the heart of men, they raised and instructed this young world by speaking to it the language of passion and genius; and the age of strong deeds, free sensuality, bold invention, had only to follow its own bent, in order to discover in them the eternal promoters of liberty and beauty. Nearer still was another paganism, that of Italy ”

“ Their position in the Olympian system, if we are to adopt the common genesis of the Olympian system, is one of hopeless and unaccountable solecism.
The gods of Olympus are arranged generally in two generations. If we put Apollo and Minerva out of view, then, with the exception of a deity like Dione, introduced to serve as a mere vehicle of maternity, and inferior in weight, if not in rank, to her own offspring, the majesty and might of Olympus, following the order of [57] nature, are entirely in the elder of these generations, and reside with Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, and Aidoneus or Pluto. ”

“ From the hand of wrathful Jupiter fierce thunderbolts were hurled, while the lightning flashed and gleamed through the darkness of the forest, searching out the guilty mortal who had dared to climb too high.
No human eye had ever seen the glories of Olympus, no human foot had ever stepped within its sacred halls, where the ceiling was of gold and the pavement of pearl and the thrones of the gods shone with a thousand glittering jewels. ”

“ A magnificent temple at Olympia, on the Peloponnesus, was also dedicated to Jupiter; and here every fifth year the people of Greece were wont to assemble to celebrate games, in honor of Jupiter’s great victory over the Titans. These festivals were known as the Olympian Games; and the Greeks generally reckoned time by olympiads, that is to say, by the space of time between the celebrations. Within the temple at Olympia stood a wonderful statue of gold and ivory, the work of Phidias. ”

“ All the gods of Olympos were there, and athletes of years gone by, wrestling, running, hurling the disc. There were bronze chariots with horses of bronze to draw them and men of bronze to hold the reins. There were heroes of Troy still fighting. And here and there were little altars of marble or stone or earth or ashes with an ancient, holy statue. At every one the procession halted. The priests poured a libation and chanted a prayer. The people sang a hymn. Many left gifts piled about the altar. Before Hermes Charmides left his little clay image of the god. ”

“ Olympia thus became the centre of an amphictyony (q.v.) , or federal league under religious sanction, for the west coast of the Peloponnesus, as Delphi was for its neighbours in northern Greece. It suited the interests of Sparta to join this amphictyony; and, before the regular catalogue of Olympic victors begins in 776 B.C., Sparta had formed an alliance with Elis. Aristotle saw in the temple of Hera at Olympia a bronze disk, recording the traditional laws of the festival, on which the name of Lycurgus stood next to that of Iphitus, king of Elis. ”

“ Calling upon Apollo and all the other gods to witness him, he seized a lightning bolt, and for a moment the deathless Zeus and all the dwellers in Olympus looked on the fiery chariot in which stood the swaying, slight, lithe figure of a young lad, blinded with horror, shaken with agony. Then, from his hand, Zeus cast the bolt, and the chariot was dashed into fragments, and Phaeton, his golden hair ablaze, fell, like a bright shooting star, from the heavens above, into the river Eridanus. The steeds returned to their master, Apollo, and in rage and grief Apollo lashed them. ”

“ Their names were Otus and Ephialtes; and they threatened to make war even against the deathless ones who dwell on Mount Olympus. They boasted that they would pile Ossa on Olympus, and Pelion, with all its woods, upon the top of Ossa, that so they might make a pathway to the sky. And, had they lived to manhood's years, no one can say what deeds they would have done. But silver-bowed Apollo, with his swift arrows, slew the twain ere yet the down had bloomed upon their cheeks or darkened their chins with the promise of manhood. ”

“ Surely Olympus was a great place, where one who appeared in the guise of a beggar was treated like a regiment of prodigal sons, furnished with a gorgeous apartment, and supplied with a wardrobe that would have aroused the envy of a reigning sovereign. ”

“ The Love of Apollo I Like his father, Jupiter, the young Apollo was not content to stay always in the shining halls of Olympus, but spent many days wandering over the broad lands of Greece in search of adventure, or for the sake of some maiden's love. There were many fair ones among the daughters of men, and they were wont to look with favor upon the beautiful young god who came down from the high heavens to woo them. ”

“ Or shall I sing how at the first you went about the earth seeking a place of oracle for men, O far-shooting Apollo? To Pieria first you went down from Olympus and passed by sandy Lectus and Enienae and through the land of the Perrhaebi. Soon you came to Iolcus and set foot on Cenaeum in Euboea, famed for ships: you stood in the Lelantine plain, but it pleased not your heart to make a temple there and wooded groves. ”

“ Nevertheless the rocks, ceaselessly clashing, shore off as she passed the extreme end of the stern-ornament. But Athena soared up to Olympus, when they had escaped unscathed. And the rocks in one spot at that moment were rooted fast for ever to each other, which thing had been destined by the blessed gods, when a man in his ship should have passed between them alive. And the heroes breathed again after their chilling fear, beholding at the same time the sky and the expanse of sea spreading far and wide. ”

“ Apollo himself, it was proclaimed, had fought for Rome and for Octavius on that auspicious day; the same Apollo, the Sun-god, had shuddered in his bright career at the murder of the Dictator, and terrified the nations by the eclipse of his divine countenance." ... Therefore, "besides building a temple to Apollo on the Palatine hill, the Emperor Augustus sought to honour him by transplanting to the Circus Maximus, the sports of which were under his special protection, an obelisk from Heliopolis, in Egypt. ”

“ In the dark he lies forsaken! All Lo, we race with death, we perish, Dionysus, here before thee! Dost thou mark us not, nor cherish, Who implore thee, and adore thee? Hither down Olympus' side, Come, O Holy One defied, Be thy golden wand uplifted o'er the tyrant in his pride! A Maiden Oh, where art thou? In thine own Nysa, thou our help alone? O'er fierce beasts in orient lands Doth thy thronging thyrsus wave, By the high Corycian Cave, Or where stern Olympus stands ”

“ The god looked up at the high, cold Olympus, and looked down upon this warm land, upon this great, golden sun, these clear, blue nights, these ever-blooming perfumes, these cypresses, these myrtle and laurel woods, and said, 'Here is elysium, not in the subterranean world, not on Olympus.' Then Momus gave him a laurel-twig from Virgil's grave, [109] and said, 'That is thy Daphne.' Now did his great sister Diana grow indignant. She gave Daphne her form and dress, as if she had come over out of the woods of the Pyrenees; but he recognized his beloved, and went back with her into Olympus. ”

“ When the children were grown, Jupiter took33 them to Olympus, though not without much protest from the ever-jealous Juno. The young Apollo's beauty and his skill in music gained him great favor among the gods, and found him worshipers in every town and city throughout the land of Greece. So conscious of his power did Apollo become, that he sometimes dared to assert his authority, unmindful of the will of Jupiter; and on one occasion he so angered his divine parent that he was banished to the earth, and made to serve Admetus, king of Thessaly. ”