“He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows,
Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod,
The stamp of fate and sanction of the god:
High heaven, with trembling the dread signal took
And all Olympus to the centre shook.”
Pope.
Phidias’ Zeus was represented seated on a throne; his left hand held the sceptre, his right bore a goddess of victory. Among all the statues of Zeus that have been preserved, the bust of Otricoli seems to approach most nearly to the ideal of Phidias. There is no absolutely accurate copy; but the descriptions given us by the ancient authors, as well as two coins from Elis, carefully described by Overbeck and Friedländer, afford a succession of by no means unimportant points.
The bust in Claudia’s boudoir may be imagined a duplicate of Otricoli’s Jupiter—only approximating somewhat more closely to the separate features of the original.
[67] Sardinian Mines. Sardinia played a similar part in the Roman Empire, to the one performed by Siberia in the kingdom of the Czar. Criminals, and often innocent persons, languished through a miserable existence in the mines there. Besides, the climate of the island was considered extremely unhealthy. (See Strab. V, 13. Mart. Ep., IV, 60.) In cases of less importance the culprits were simply exiled to Sardinia, without being condemned to enforced labor, and permitted to live there at liberty. (See Mart. Ep., VIII, 32.)
[68] Tigellinus. Sophonius Tigellinus, of Agrigentum, in Sicily, by his talents as a sportsman and horse-breaker, won Nero’s favor, and finally became commander of the praetorian guard. (Tac. Ann., XIV, 51.) Dissolute, revengeful, and unprincipled, he was regarded, with reason, as the evil principle in the life of the Emperor, whose last noble impulses he strove to stifle. He was most to blame for the majority of Nero’s crimes; even the horrible conflagration, that laid half Rome in ashes. (See Tac. Hist., I, 72, Dio Cass. LXII, 13, LXIII, 12.)