The temple and the sanctuary
Olympia, in the western Peloponnese, became a centre for the worship of Zeus in the tenth century BCE, and from 776 BCE it hosted the Olympic Games every four years. In the sanctuary the Eleans built a new temple for Zeus from the spoils of their war against Pisa. It was a Doric temple with columns all round, built of local stone by the architect Libon, with roof tiles of marble. The statue was made for it.
What did it look like?
Pausanias, who described the sanctuary in the Roman period, gives a careful account. The god sat on a throne, made of gold and ivory. On his head was a wreath copying olive shoots. In his right hand he carried a Victory, also of ivory and gold, wearing a ribbon and a wreath; in his left a sceptre inlaid with every kind of metal, topped by an eagle. His sandals and his robe were gold, and the robe was decorated with animals and lilies.
The throne was a work of art in itself, adorned with gold, jewels, ebony and ivory, with painted figures and carved images: dancing Victories on its feet, sphinxes carrying off Theban children, Apollo and Artemis shooting the children of Niobe. On the pedestal, in gold, were the Sun on his chariot, Zeus and Hera, Aphrodite rising from the sea, and other gods. Pausanias knew that the statue’s height and breadth had been measured and recorded, and refused to repeat the figures: the numbers, he said, fell far short of the impression the statue made.
A god too large for his house
The scale was part of the effect. The geographer Strabo says Pheidias showed Zeus seated but almost touching the roof with his head, so that if the god stood up he would unroof the temple. He adds that the painter Panainos, Pheidias’ nephew and collaborator, helped decorate the statue, especially the colours of the robes, and that Pheidias took his model from Homer’s lines in which Zeus nods his dark brows and shakes Olympus.
The materials needed care. In front of the statue the floor was paved with black stone, with a raised rim of Parian marble to hold olive oil, which protected the ivory from the marshy ground of the sanctuary. On the dry Acropolis of Athens, by contrast, the Athena Parthenos was kept in good condition with water.
The workshop of Pheidias
Pausanias also mentions a building outside the sacred grove called the workshop of Pheidias, where the sculptor made the statue piece by piece. Excavations found it under the remains of a Byzantine church: a building whose plan matches the plan of the temple’s cella. Moulds and tools used to make the sculpture came out of the ground there, and so did a cup bearing Pheidias’ name, the final proof of the identification. The finds date the statue to about 430 BCE, a few years after Pheidias finished the Athena Parthenos.
One of the Seven Wonders
Ancient lists of the wonders of the world varied, but the most common one included the Zeus at Olympia, alongside the pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos, the temple of Artemis at Ephesos, the Colossus of Rhodes and the lighthouse of Alexandria. For Greeks who came to the Games from all over their world, this was how the gods are shown at their most powerful: a king enthroned, calm, holding victory in his hand.
How and when the statue was destroyed is not known. Unlike the temple, which still lies in ruins at Olympia, nothing of it survives.
Where to see it
The ruins of the Temple of Zeus and the workshop of Pheidias are in the Archaeological Site of Olympia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1989, and the finds from the workshop are in the Archaeological Museum of Olympia nearby. Check opening times before you go.
Sources
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.10.2-3, 5.11.1-10 and 5.15.1, trans. W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod (Perseus Digital Library).
- Strabo, Geography 8.3.30, trans. H. L. Jones (LacusCurtius).
- Perseus Digital Library, Ancient Olympics, “The Workshop of the Sculptor Pheidias”; UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Archaeological Site of Olympia” (517).
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Statue of Zeus”; “Seven Wonders of the World”.
