The great staue of Zeus at Olympia was sculpted by the Athenian artist, Pheidias, as can be seen in the inscription written under the feet of Zeus: Pheidias, son of Charmides, an Athenian, made me. After completing his work on the Acropolis in 438 BC, Pheidias was commissioned by the Olympian priesthood to design and produce a chryselephantine statue of the god, Zeus. The titanic temple measured 68 feet in height, 95 feet across, and fully 230 feet deep– nearly the size of an American football field.
The statue took Pheidias over 12 years to complete, and the result was so astounding that those who saw the statue marveled and placed it among the “Seven wonders of the world.” The temple this magnificent statue laid was built in the Doric style, of native stone and the outside had columns all around it.
Since, of course, photography did not exist back then, historians have no concrete record of what the enormous cult statue looked like. As a result, the Wonder’s historical image remains shrouded in mystery. And moderns, enamored by both the beauty of classical architecture and the Olympic tradition, have come up with several rather unusual notions and fanciful symbolic representations to conjure up the awe-inspiring Temple of Zeus. One such creation, shown to the world during the Opening Ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, wandered far from historical fact but did not fail– by any stretch of the imagination–to astonish and amaze. The statement credited to the geographer, Strabo, in the 1st century, “It seems that if Zeus were to stand up, he would unroof the temple,” showed how high this statue was. The details of the size and accoutrements of the cult figure was recorded by the Pausanias who were historians that traveled Greece, painstakingly took note of the region’s people, geography, and monuments. According to a contemporary source, the statue was about 12 metres (~37 feet) tall, it’s height up to the pediment is sixty-eight feet, its breadth ninety-five and length, two hundred and thirty.
Zeus was made of chryselephantine which is the plating of soft ivory with gold. It is seated on a throne made up of cedarwood, inlaid with ivory, gold, ebony and other precious stones. Upon it are painted figures and wrought images. On Zeus’s head, the sculptor placed a garland of olive shoots. “In his right hand he carries a Victory, which, like the statue, is of ivory and gold; she wears a ribbon and– on her head– a garland. In the left hand of the god is a scepter, ornamented with every kind of metal,” with an eagle perched atop it. “The sandals also of the god are of gold, as is likewise his robe. On the robe are embroidered figures of animals and the flowers of the lily.”
The statue sat in the naos of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia for approximately 800 years. The exact manner of its destruction is a source of debate: some scholars argue that it perished with the temple in the 5th century AD, others argue that it was carried off to Constantinople, where it was destroyed by fire in 475 AD.
Tags: Statute of Zeus, Seven wonders of the world
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