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.