The statue of Zeus at Olympia
Everyone knows the Olympic Games, but not many know that the statue of the god in whose honor they were held in ancient times was also one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Olympia was a sacred place: the temple and the altar of Zeus, the father of the gods, attracted pilgrims from every corner of the Greek world and the celebration of athletic competitions constituted a notable part of the ritual. The Olympic games were resumed in 1896 and winning them today is considered by many to be almost a political victory, just like in ancient Greece. Athletes gathered at Olympia from every corner of the then known world, and that small, remote location in southwestern Greece became the center of world attention.
The participants had to all be of Greek blood, because originally the games were a religious fact: the "barbarians", the non-Greeks, could not venerate Zeus in his sanctuary nor could they take part in the games. The heralds went as far as the most distant outposts of Greek civilization to invite young people to participate. From Sicily and Cyrene, Syria and Egypt, Macedonia and Asia, they flowed to Olympia, and during the course of the competitions, tradition imposed the cessation of all hostilities between the Greek cities. The southern part of Greece is known to be associated with the establishment of the Olympic games. In the western part of the Peloponnese, the city of Pisa constituted a small kingdom governed, it was said, by King Oenomaus; and in its territory was Olympia. Countless worshipers used to go there to pray for a good harvest.
According to a prophecy Oenomaus would have been killed by his future son-in-law, the husband of his daughter Ippodamia; this greatly agitated him when she was of age to marry. The king ordered that every suitor for his daughter's hand should compete with him in a chariot race from Olympia to the temple of the sea-god Poseidon at Istmia near Corinth, some eighty miles to the northeast. The young man was granted a clear advantage, but the agreement provided that, in case of victory, he would have obtained Hippodamia and the throne of Pisa, but if the victory fell to the king, the pretender had to die. Thirteen princes presented themselves and thirteen were put to death. Until young Pelops came forward. Some say that Poseidon himself intervened to crash Oenomaus's chariot, others narrate that Pelops bribed his charioteer by convincing him to remove the peg from a wheel and replace it with wax.
However things turned out, Oenomaus crashed and died, Pelops married Hippodamia and conquered the throne.
The chariot race, which was held at Olympia with other races, was believed by many Greeks to commemorate Pelops's victory. According to others, it was actually Heracles, son of Zeus and hero of all those who aspire to have vigor and strength, who founded the games in honor of his father. Today we know that the competitions were often linked to funeral ceremonies; like an Irish vigil, they served to ease the grief of the mourners. In Olympia they probably began as a commemorative rite held by the Greeks of the area around the tomb of Pelops, the one who had enjoyed the favor of the gods. The tomb, or rather his cenotaph, was the central point of the complex of sacred buildings. Over time this emphasis faded: the games were celebrated more and more in honor of Zeus and the part played by Pelops paled. The Greeks had a very personal concept of their gods, so much so that divine intervention in human affairs was an everyday thing. The deities were believed to reside on top of Mount Olympus, Thessaly, approx 175 miles from Olympia. Zeus was their ruler and, as such, combined the omnipotence of the great god of nature with the weaknesses of a mortal king, plus the qualities of a just and good father. On one side was Zeus the Thunderer, wielding thunder and lightning; on the other hand weakness for the opposite sex caused in his wife Hera outbursts of fury; and again, as the god of hospitality, offerings were due to him at banquets. Olympia, whose name echoes that of Mount Olympus, was the second home of Zeus and became, following the proclamation of the games, the center of his cult for over a thousand years. Today the groves of the sacred precinct of Zeus in the fertile valley of the river Alfeo, where it joins the Cladeo, are the meeting place for pilgrims from a different era. Tourists flock to see the remains of this great and sacred place. It is natural that archaeologists have devoted all their efforts to rediscovering the past history of the sanctuary. Since 1829, groups of French and German archaeologists have discovered a complicated network of religious monuments and buildings capable of satisfying all the requests of the athletes who went there every four years for the games. The gymnasium and stadium flank the temples and votive offerings erected in thanksgiving by the victors or their sponsors.
Olympia was not a city, an urban agglomeration, but a center around which grew buildings used for the needs of many pilgrims who came there for religious reasons or to participate in the games: it was a cross between Mecca, the great Muslim centre, and Wembley, the famous meeting point for sport. As happens in every place where human activity is intense, buildings from different eras also arose outside the initial circle, reflecting the growing rise of the sanctuary.
The Greeks believed that the olympic games began in 776 B.C., and they placed this date as the basis for counting the years, as today we count them from the birth of Christ; however today's archaeologists have discovered that the cult of Zeus at Olympia had much older origins. The first buildings had been made with wood and mud bricks, but with the development of civilization and the deterioration of the primitive material, they were replaced by more impressive stone works. The most splendid of these was the temple dedicated to Zeus himself. The large structure was erected between 466 and 456 B.C., the era in which new techniques and new perspectives heralded the age of classical Greece. The architect was Libone, from the nearby city of Elis, who for the construction chose a strange local stone, a conglomerate of fossil shells, perhaps a somewhat modest material for refined architectural mouldings, but sublimely natural to honor Zeus, the god of nature. The style, then widespread in southern Greece and similar in many respects to that of the more famous Parthenon in Athens, was very austere, according to the so-called Doric style, but not heavy like the overly decorated one of the sanctuary of Diana in Ephesus, a another of the Seven Wonders.
The temple was the sacellum of the god, not created to welcome a community. The sacrifice, the main moment of the collective cult, took place at the great altar of Zeus, outside the temple. On the middle day of the Olympic Games, one hundred oxen were slaughtered and burned as an offering to Zeus. The ashes, mixed with the water from the Alfeo, were placed on the altar in a compact heap which, century after century, assumed enormous proportions. The temple was built to protect the sacred statue from bad weather. This, in the innermost part of the sanctuary, is the sancta sanctorum, suggested to the faithful the presence of Zeus himself; over time Olympia was visited for its magnificence and for its antiquity more than for its sacred aspect. As is the case with many cathedrals today, it gradually took on the atmosphere of a museum.
For many years, after the new temple was finished, there was probably preserved an ancient and venerated object of worship, a shapeless block of stone or wood, taken from an earlier, smaller sanctuary; but the current taste in the fifth century B.C. required a much bigger symbol. The temple council appears to have long sought a sculptor capable of creating a work of sufficient majesty to portray the ideal of the king of the gods; and in the end it was decided to entrust the arduous task to Phidias, son of Charmides, an Athenian.
Phidias had already sculpted two mighty statues for the acropolis of his city, destined to remain among the most splendid sculpture products of the classical era for centuries. One is a gigantic figure of the goddess Athena, displayed outdoors, about ten meters high; it was said that her golden helmet could be seen by sailors on the high seas. The other was the stupendous gold and ivory statue dedicated to the cult of Athena for the new temple on the Acropolis, the Parthenon.
The architectural sculptures that decorated the Parthenon on the outside were also made to a design by Phidias, and it is not excluded that he himself worked there as a sculptor.
Many of them are now in the British Museum and offer the only surviving example of the magnitude of Phidias's genius and his style.
The geographer Strabo, at the beginning of the first century B.C., wrote:
The ivory statue is of such great size that, although the temple is very large, it seems that the artist paid little attention to the proportions. In fact, he represented the seated god, who almost touches the ceiling with his head, so as to give the impression that if he stands up he will uncover the temple.(Strabo , Geography VIII 3.30)
In Strabo's thinking, the statue was too large to fit comfortably into the building complex. From a poem by Callimachus (305-240 B.C.), written, however, about two hundred years later, we know approximately the measures of the monument. The size of the base can also be measured by the excavation in the temple floor: the base was large 6.65 meters, about 10 meters deep and more than 1 meter high. The statue itself was 13 meters tall, that is, as much as a three-story house, a truly gigantic figure, which filled the western part at the back of the temple and imposed its presence throughout the sanctuary. For a detailed description of it we can turn to Pausanias, a Greek writer of the 2nd century B.C., who visited the Peloponnese, describing monuments and buildings of the cities where he stayed. Pausanias describes the statue of Zeus thus:
On the head is placed a crown made in the likeness of olive branches. In her right hand she holds a Victory also in ivory and gold […]. In the left instead the god has a scepter adorned with all kinds of metals, and the bird perched on the scepter is the eagle. Of gold are also the sandals of the god and so is his robe. On the mantle there are historiated figures of animals and the flower of the lily. The throne is variously decorated with gold and gems as well as with ebony and ivory.(Pausanias, Periegesis V 11.1)
In 174 B.C. a building outside the enclosure of the sanctuary and on its western side was indicated to Pausanias as the workshop of Phidias, the one where the great statue was born. The excavations carried out in 1958 proved unequivocally that Pausanias's informant was telling the truth. Two piles of rubble were found, real piles of debris cleared from that building, and also suitable tools for carving, scraps of ivory, glass and metal fragments, and even terracotta casts used for drapery. The debris could be dated to about 430 B.C. There can be no doubt that that material came from the workshop where a "chryselephantine" statue was being created, that is, of gold and ivory, and that this was the statue of Zeus by Phidias.
As further confirmation, the base of a broken kettle was also found, written in clear Greek letters from the 5th century B.C.:
«I belong to Phidias»
The statue could not have been completed in this workshop and then transported to the temple, although archaeologists at first assumed that this was the case: the workshop floor would not have supported its enormous weight. The problem of dismantling and transporting such a complex structure must also have been enormous. The various pieces were perhaps studied and finished in the workshop, then put together in the temple. The casts demonstrate how thin many of the gold plates must have been; nevertheless, a meticulous attention to detail was exercised, which characterizes the work of Phidias in the Parthenon of the Acropolis of Athens. Pausanias was an enthusiastic traveller, who devoured the details of Phidias's masterpiece with his eyes and faithfully handed down his annotations for us.
Figurines of winged Victories, placed back to back, decorated the legs of the throne, and "Theban children gripped by the claws of sphinxes" were placed above the two front armrests. The sphinx, a monster with the head of a woman, the body of a lion and the wings of an eagle, used to kill young Thebans unable to solve the riddle:
"What is the creature that can have two, three, four legs, and the more legs it has, the weaker it is?"
Close examination of the statue of Zeus depicted on a coin shows that the god's arm was supported by a crouching sphinx, with its wings just below Zeus's elbow. A clearer idea is obtained by observing a group of statues, discovered in Ephesus, with a young man seized by the sphinx just as Phidias must have sculpted it. Below the sphinx Apollo and Artemis were depicted intent on exterminating Niobe and her children with arrows. Niobe had boasted of being more prolific than Latona, mother of Artemis and Apollo, and so she paid for the excess of pride.
This scene was represented on the flanks of the throne. Traces of it remain in a red-figure vase from Baski in southern Russia. Other imitations can be found in numerous vases and bas-reliefs. Apollo and Artemis were placed facing each other, on either side of the throne, in the act of striking the children of Niobe, depicted in contorted positions of agony, according to the current methods of the fifth century.
Pausanias's narration is full of similar details and demonstrates how the statue was a true treasure trove of the repertoire of Greek mythology. He noticed that one of the decorated reliefs between the front two feet of the throne was missing one of the carved friezes; no one could explain to him why. Another figure on the same relief, "a boy who surrounds his head with a ribbon, they say is the portrait of Pantarce, a young boy of Elis who would have been Phidias' lover, and Pantarce won in the fight between young men in the eighty-sixth olympiad» (436 B.C.).
The mention of Pantarce tells us with a certain accuracy at what time Phidias worked in Olympia. According to another story, mentioned by the Christian author Clement of Alexandria, the phrase
"Pantarce is beautiful"
was scratched on Zeus's finger, so it can be thought that the young Pantarce was Fidia's lover. However, these connections between Phidias and Pantarce validate the findings of the excavations in the laboratory, namely that Phidias worked on the statue of Zeus after his escape from Athens.
«On the other parts of the throne stands those who fought with Heracles against the Amazons»
continues Pausanias describing the statue.
He tells us that there were twenty-nine figures in two groups and he underlined that these reliefs constituted a truly exceptional sculptural decoration.
Hercules's battle with the Amazons was the ninth of twelve labors imposed on him by Eurystheus, king of Argos. He had been commanded to obtain for the king's daughter the golden belt worn by Hippolyta queen of the Amazons, a race of female warriors who lived on the shores of the Black Sea. The ensuing battle is one of the most exploited themes in painting and from the sculpture of archaic Greece.
Pausanias also speaks of four columns, in addition to the four bases of the throne, which provided greater support. These do not appear in the thumbnail representations offered. Zeus holds the long scepter in his left hand. The figure of the winged Victory, which also must have been of not too modest dimensions, stood upright on her right hand, and her weight rested on the armrest of the throne. The god's feet rested on a large stool supported by two lions, also of gold; and Pausanias speaks of another scene from Amazons, but this time together with Theseus, the hero of Athens. The large base of the statue was in black and blue Eleusinian marble, richly decorated, with gold figures in relief, taken from the best-known legends of Greek mythology: the god of the sun, Helios, on his chariot; Zeus and his wife Hera; Eros greeting Aphrodite, the goddess of love, as she rises from the sea; the moonon a horse, and many more. The dark background of the stone emphasized the movement of the figures, arrested for a moment, according to a method of emphasizing color, also used for the friezes of the Erechtheion in Athens. Paneno was one of the most famous painters of his time. Pausanias indicates him as Phidias's brother, Strabo as his nephew. Whatever their kinship, their collaboration in the major works designed by Phidias is secure. The partition walls showed nine scenes, possibly a sequence of panels, separated on each side of the throne. The rear of this was protected by the building's wall. The theme of the paintings was not unique, but many were clearly chosen to recall the sculptures on the temple's outer walls. Two referred to the sculptures of the tympanums, ie the triangular spaces between the sloping roofs and the retaining walls. The wedding of Pirithous, king of the Lapiths in Thessaly (northern Greece), and believed to be the son of Zeus, was the subject of the western tympanum. The king had invited the Centaurs to the party, wild creatures of the mountain woods, half men and half horses; and they, being drunk, attacked the women and attempted to kidnap the wife of Pirithous.
Other frescoes by Paneno told of Hippodamia, of which we have already mentioned how it was connected with the foundation of the Olympic games, and which was celebrated in the sculptures of the eastern tympanum of the temple. The Labors of Hercules were also illustrated by Paneno in three frescoes, and also represented in the frieze carved along the walls of the temple. Another of the many legends around Heracles, represented by Paneno near the painting of Hippodamia, showed Heracles coming to the aid of the demigod Prometheus, punished by Jupiter for having transmitted the use of fire to men. Prometheus was chained to the rock and an eagle ate his liver, which he grew back at night as much as the eagle could devour during the day.
One of Paneno's most interesting paintings referred to a historical event of great relevance and resonance: the battle of Salamis, near Athens, in the 480 B.C., an event that happened a few years prior to the construction of the temple of Zeus in Olympia.
Panenos, in the famous Stoa painted in the market square of Athens, had also frescoed the battle of Marathon, the one in which in 490 a small Athenian army had prevented the much larger army of the Persian king from landing in Greek territory at Marathon Darius. According to Salamis that battle was considered the victorious challenge of the Greeks against the barbarian peoples of the East. The painted parts were the last touch to the great decoration of the statue of Zeus. Phidias appears to have lived to see his work completed, although he was already in his fifties when he began it. It seems that in 432 B.C. he had returned to Athens, and that he died there assassinated by his political opponents. If it is true that the entire work was completed in five years or so, we must assume that Phidias was surrounded by a team of sculptors, as certainly was the case for the sculptures of the Parthenon in Athens.
When the statue was finished, Phidias asked the god to show with a signal if the work was to his liking; and immediately, they say, lightning struck the spot on the floor where there was an amphora for cover. The whole floor in front of the statue is made up of black, not white slabs; however, a border of Parian marble surrounds the black one to retain the olive oil that runs along the statue.
Thus concludes Pausanias his lively description of the statue of Zeus.
From the moment of its construction, it was admired as the great masterpiece of the golden age of classical sculpture. Its maintenance was entrusted to the "burners", who were said to be descendants of Phidias. The strange custom of sprinkling it with olive oil, reported by Pausanias, perhaps derived from the severe cracking that occurred in the ivory, given the humid climate of the sanctuary: particularly strong humidity in the mid-2nd century B.C., so much so that Damofone, a sculptor from Messene, a city in the southern Peloponnese, was called to repair the statue. It is said that he worked very skillfully, and it may be that on that occasion the four columns mentioned above were placed under the seat, to prevent it from collapsing under the enormous weight of the figure above.
Around the same time (167 B.C.) the king of Syria Antiochus IV dedicated a woolen drape "woven with Assyrian motifs and Phoenician dyeing" to the temple of Zeus. Perhaps this curtain of Asian origin, important enough to attract Pausanias's comments, hung behind the statue. Antiochus is the same king who, having sacked the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, had given the order to rebaptize it as the temple of Olympian Zeus. Among the treasures that he stole from the temple there may also have been the great veil that divided the interior. With not much imagination it can be asserted that precisely that was the curtain later dedicated by Antiochus to the father of his gods in Olympia. The statue was always a source of amazement and wonder for the faithful of Zeus. More than four hundred and fifty years later, the Roman emperor Caligula (37-41 B.C.), according to the tradition of the Roman conquerors regarding the treasures of Greek art, did his utmost to have the statue in Rome. Workers were sent to figure out how to transport it, but the statue
"suddenly emitted such a loud laugh that it caused the scaffolding to collapse and the men to run away"
It is Suetonius, Caligula's biographer, who enjoys relating this anecdote about the hated emperor. But the statue could not remain intact for eternity. In 391 B.C. the triumphant Christian clergy persuaded the emperor Theodosius I to ban pagan worship and to order the closure of the temples.
The statue, which was more than eight hundred years old at the time, was eventually transported from the temple at Olympia to adorn a palace in Constantinople. Fidia's workshop was transformed into a Christian church. The temple was seriously damaged by a fire around 425 and in the 6th century the river Alfeo changed its course. The entire area of Olympia, abandoned to neglect, was destroyed by landslides, earthquakes and floods. For more than a thousand years the area lay under a thick layer of sand, mud and debris. Having transported the statue to Constantinople saved it from disaster, but in 462 a great fire broke out in Constantinople and destroyed the palace that housed it. As the temple of Olympia crumbled into the oblivion of the Peloponnese, so did the beautiful statue, considered the greatest masterpiece of classical sculpture.
No copies have survived to tell us in greater detail what he looked like. In Cyrene, Libya, a very large copy was venerated in the local temple of Zeus. The base was found during excavations, but nothing more. It seems that the sculptors were decidedly reluctant to copy Phidias's masterpiece, even in a small way. We are already fortunate enough to be aware of the impression it made through the writings of authors such as Pausanias. If the statue had remained in Olympia, even if stripped of its precious materials, perhaps some fragments would have survived to be offered to our admiration today.
