Temple of Zeus at Olympia

“ Every generation of man has put a new column here. That is why they are not alike. This is the ancient temple of Hera."
Then they entered the door. Down the long aisle they walked between small open rooms on either side. Here stood statues gazing out—some of marble, some of gold and ivory. The priests had moved to the front and stood praying before the ancient statues of Zeus and Hera. But suddenly Charmides stopped and would go no farther. For here, in a little room all alone, stood his Hermes with the baby Dionysus. ”

“ His temple lends sanctity to the meetings of the Amphiktyonic assembly, and he is always in filial subordination and harmony with his father Zeus: Delphi and Olympia are never found in conflict. In the Iliad, the warm and earnest patrons of the Greeks are Hêrê, Athênê, and Poseidôn: here too Zeus and Apollo are seen in harmony, for Zeus is decidedly well-inclined to the Trojans, and reluctantly sacrifices them to the importunity of the two great goddesses. ”

“ It is true He is unseen; and the unthinking multitude may pass heedlessly by. To the ignorant crowd, the history of the world presents a confused chaos; but to men of thought, it appears as a majestic temple on which the invisible hand of God is at work.
Modern minds might learn a lesson from heathen mythology. The name given by the ancient Greeks to the Deity shows that they had received some primeval revelation of this great truth. He was styled Zeus, or the life-giver to all that lives—to nations as well as individuals. ”

“ In the fifth century B. C. the flush of victory at Salamis not only lit up the Acropolis at Athens but spread to this green valley in Elis. The great Zeus temple was built. Its pediments, as we have already seen, were adorned with sculptured myths appealing at once to local pride and to wider Hellenic patriotism. In the eastern gable Zeus stood upright as arbiter in the 399chariot contest of Pelops; in the western gable the archaic yet majestic Apollo appeared as the defender against the Centaurs, the barbarian invaders. ”

“ Our Olympion at the North-West corner of the Acropolis would fit the scene somewhat better than the great temple near the Ilissos; but that is all, the passage proves nothing.
A question more important perhaps than any topographical issue remains. Do we know anything of the nature of the god worshipped in the ancient sanctuary, or of the character of his ritual? The question may seem to some superfluous. Zeus is surely Zeus everywhere and for all time, his cloud-compelling nature and his splendid sacrificial feasts familiar from Homer downwards. ”

“ The eyes are large, the head is crowned, and the face wears a look of complacency, without much dignity or refinement. Hera seems to have had much the same prominence in Olympia as she had in Argolis, where the family of Pelops was also in the ascendant.
It was only gradually that Zeus obtained general recognition as the chief deity in the court of Olympus, becoming the centre of the Pan-Hellenic religion reflected in Homer, which was as powerful a bond of union among the ancient Greeks as Christianity has{37} ”

“ In like manner the Homeric poems (which instruct us not merely by their direct statements, but also by their indirect allusions, not only by what they say, but also by what they do not say) , when attentively considered, clearly show how this ancient religion of nature sank into the shade as compared with the salient and conspicuous forms of the deities of the heroic age. The gods who dwell on Olympus scarcely appear at all in connexion with natural phenomena. Zeus chiefly exercises his powers as a ruler and a king ”

“ Or, again, there is nothing not explicable and natural in the conception of the Olympian Zeus as represented by the great chryselephantine statue of Zeus at Olympia, or in the Homeric conception of Zeus as a god who "turns everywhere his shining eyes, and beholds all things, and protects the righteous, and deals good or evil fortune to men." ”

“ Here too are images of the so-called 12 gods, the production of Praxiteles. He also made an Artemis of the Strongylii. And next, as you enter the sacred enclosure of Zeus called the Olympieum, there is a temple well worth seeing: the statue of Zeus is not finished in consequence of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, in which the Athenians every year by land and by sea injured the Megarians both publicly and privately, ravaging their territory, and bringing them individually to the greatest poverty. ”

“ The artist had designed and the spectator seemed to behold a concrete image of that Homeric Zeus who was the centre of his religious consciousness—the Zeus who "nodded his dark brow, and the ambrosial locks waved from the King's immortal head, and he made great Olympus quake." [Footnote: Iliad i. 528.—Translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers.] "Those who approach the temple," says Lucian, "do not conceive that they see ivory from the Indies or gold from the mines of Thrace; no, but the very son of Kronos and Rhea, transported by Pheidias to earth and set to watch over the lonely plain of Pisa." ”

“ Neither of marble nor of bronze was the statue, but of197 ivory and pure gold, ivory being used for the flesh, gold for the robe and armour, which was studded with precious stones.
Nowhere was there so marvellous a statue as this of the goddess Athene wrought by Pheidias, save perchance the Zeus at Olympia, which was also moulded by the famous sculptor.
The statue of Zeus had a strange power over those who gazed upon it.
‘Let a man sick and weary in his soul, who has passed through many distresses and sorrows, whose pillow is unvisited by kindly sleep, stand in front of this image ”

“ It had a statue of Jupiter, the work of the Greek artist Apollonius, made of ivory and gold, and said to be a copy of the Phidian Zeus.
Fig. 266.—Zeus of Otricoli, Vatican Museum.
Zeus is credited with a numerous family. He produced Pallas Athene from his own head; the birth of Athene is supposed to have formed part of the subject of the sculptures on the pediment of the Parthenon (Temple of Athene at Athens) the remains of which are in the British Museum, but unfortunately the central figures of the pediment are wanting which depicted the event. ”

“ Thus he is hardly anthropomorphized at all, whether named alone, or when conjoined with earth, and his worship is little removed from the direct adoration of the sky as a living being. No moral attribute belongs to him, nor is there any trace of sovereignty over the world or the other gods. The position of power and elevation which Greek mythology ascribes to Zeus is not accorded in full to any Vedic deity, but in so far as Zeus has a parallel, it is in Varuṇa, not in Dyaus. ”

“ Brave in heart and stout of body, so that no man might be matched with him for strength or beauty, yet was he to have no profit of all his labor till he should come to the land of the undying gods. But it grieved Zeus that the craft of Here, the Queen, had brought grievous wrong on his child, and he cast forth Ate from the halls of Olympos, that she might no more dwell among the gods. Then he spake the word that Herakles should dwell with the gods in Olympos, as soon as the days of his toil on earth should be ended. ”

“ As the worship of Zeus formed so important a feature in the religion of the Greeks, his statues were necessarily both numerous and magnificent. He is usually represented as a man of noble and imposing mien, his countenance expressing all the lofty majesty of the omnipotent ruler of the universe, combined with the gracious, yet serious, benignity of the father and friend of mankind. He may be recognized by his rich flowing beard, and the thick masses of hair, which rise straight from the high and intellectual forehead and fall to his shoulders in clustering locks. ”

“ He bided his time and, unseen by the gods, he made his way into Olympus, lighted a hollow torch with a spark from the chariot of the Sun and hastened back to earth with this royal gift to Man. Assuredly no other gift could have brought him more completely the empire that has since been his. No longer did he tremble and cower in the darkness of caves when Zeus hurled his lightnings across the sky. No more did he dread the animals that hunted him and drove him in terror before them.
Armed with fire, the beasts became his vassals. ”

“ As far as our knowledge goes, Greek mythology springs partly from this stratum of barbaric as opposed to strictly savage thought. Ouranos and Gaea, Cronos, and the Titans represent the primal beings who have their counterpart in Maori and Wintu legend. But these, in the Greece of the Epics and Hesiod, have long been subordinated to Zeus and the Olympians, who are envisaged as triumphant gods of a younger generation. There is no Creator; but Zeus—how, we do not know—has come to be regarded as a Being relatively Supreme, and as, on occasion, the guardian of morality. ”

“ From the marble of which it is made we know that it was executed in Italy, probably by some Greek sculptor who had come thither after his own nation had been conquered by Rome. The [Pg 6] marvel is that he preserved so well the noble dignity of the ideal Zeus. This is the father of gods and men in his most benign aspect. The massive head is crowned like that of a lion with long, overhanging locks with which the flowing beard is mingled. These are the
"Ambrosial curls
Upon the Sovereign One's immortal head,"
of which Homer writes in the Iliad. ”

“ In lordship of all things sat on Olympus’ snow-crowned height;
And how Ophion must yield unto Kronos’ hands and his might,
And she unto Rhea, and into the Ocean’s waves plunged they.
O’er the blessed Titan-gods these twain for a space held sway,
While Zeus as yet was a child, while yet as a child he thought,
And dwelt in the cave Dictaean, while yet the time was not
When the Earth-born Cyclops the thunderbolt’s strength to his hands should give, {510}
Even thunder and lightning: by these doth Zeus his glory receive. ”

“ Moreover, this god was represented as seated on his throne, so that by no possibility could it have been in scale with the building so far as the architecture was concerned. Even the gigantic temple of Zeus at Agrigentum with its external columns 61 ft. 9 in. in height, and large enough for a man to stand within one of the flutings of the columns, could hardly have stood up to figures on such a scale as this. Such a violent contrast in scale broke the principle of συμμετρια, that strict relation of the part to the whole which the Greek artists maintained elsewhere with scrupulous care. ”

“ When their trees fastened together proved too short, Otus and Ephialtes set about another attempt: upsetting Mt. Ossa they began to roll it toward Mt. Olympus, intending to pile the lofty peak of Pelion on that, and thus reach their enemies.
Then Zeus rose in his majesty. With a thunderbolt he hurled the mountain back to its former place, the Olympians all dashed down, riding on the winds, and a mighty battle followed which lasted a whole day.
Heracles drew his great death-dealing bow and slew Alcyoneus with an arrow. ”

“ This is the Zeus of the philosophers, of the Stoics, of Cleanthes: but he was already the Zeus of the ancient poets. Powerful, omniscient, and just is the god of Æschylus, as that of Cleanthes: he is the king of kings, the blessed of the blessed, the sovereign power among all powers, the only one who is free among the gods, who is the master of the mightiest, who is subservient to no one’s rule; above whom no one sits, no one to whom from below he looks with awe; every word of his is absolute ”

“ Just as Prometheus was but the Greek counterpart of the Hindu Krishna, so also were Apollo, Hercules, Iao, and Dionysos precisely the same. Each was the new-born sun, bringing back light and glory to suffering humanity; and each passed through the very same periods of power, decline, and misery before being born again.
Zeus was the sun-god par excellence, residing on the summit of Olympus, or in the highest part of the heavenly vault, during the summer months, when he was called Olympian Zeus, and down in Hades during the winter period, when he was known as the Stygian Zeus ”

“ Zeus is the king of all gods and father of some, but he cannot keep his subjects and family always in order. In the first book of the Iliad, Achilles reminds his mother, the sea-nymph Thetis, how she once "rescued the son of Cronus, lord of the storm-clouds, from shameful wreck, when all other Olympians would have bound him, even Hera, and Poseidon, and Pallas Athene." ”

“ It is only in its callow infancy that the full force of a myth is felt, and its period of luxuriant development dates from the time when its physical significance is lost or obscured. It was because the Greek had forgotten that Zeus meant the bright sky, that he could make him king over an anthropomorphic Olympos. The Hindu Dyaus, who carried his significance in his name as plainly as the Greek Helios, never attained such an exalted position ”

“ In Zeus begin we—let no mortal voice Leave Zeus unpraised. Zeus fills the haunts of men, The streets, the marts, Zeus fills the sea, the shore, The harbors; everywhere we live in Zeus, We are His offspring too. ”

“ They say that the new temple of Zeus, now being built of glorious marble by Kallaeschrus, Antistates and Porinus (who must be known to you, Theodorus) , will surpass every building that has yet been erected by the Hellenes. He understands how to attract poets and artists of all kinds to Athens, he has had the poems of Homer put into writing, and the prophecies of Musaeus collected by Onomakritus. He lays out new streets and arranges fresh festivals; trade flourishes under his rule, and the people find themselves well off, in spite of the many taxes laid upon them. But what are the people? ”