_Vatican Gallery, Rome_]
In the imagination of the Greeks Zeus was endowed with all the noblest
elements in human character. He ruled the affairs of men with fatherly
benevolence. He rewarded goodness, punished the wicked, and was withal
the fountain-head of justice. By a nod of his head he made known his
will, and there was no appeal from his decrees.
Naturally, the Greeks pictured this god as a being of majestic stature
and grand, benignant countenance, and sculptors did their best to make
statues worthy of this conception. By common consent a certain type of
countenance was accepted as the most fitting expression of this ideal.
At last a great artist named Phidias produced a statue which perfectly
carried out all the ideas at which other sculptors had aimed. It was of
colossal size, made of gold and ivory, and was set up in a temple of
Olympia. From this time forth every sculptor who had to represent Zeus
had only to repeat the design of Phidias.
Now we know that the farther an imitator gets from the original
standard, the weaker is his copy. The first successors of Phidias made
direct studies from his statue, but those coming after worked from
copies. Still later artists took for their models copies of these
copies, until at last much of the original grandeur of Phidias's
conception was lost.
The bust of Zeus reproduced in our illustration is thought to be a
far-away copy of the head of Phidias's statue. 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 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. The symmetrical arrangement of hair
and beard carry out the character of perfect evenness belonging to the
supreme ruler.
The forehead has the full bar of flesh which denotes virility. The brows
are straight, the nose finely modeled, the lips rather full, the
expression benignant. Altogether the impression is of a being of mental
and moral equipoise, full of energy and noble dignity.