The Statue of Zeus at Olympia

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In his right hand a figure of Victory made from ivory and gold. In hisleft hand, his scepter inlaid with all metals, and an eagle perched on the sceptre. Thesandals of the god are made of gold, as is his robe

This is the statue of the god in whose honor the Ancient Olympic games were held. It was located on the landthat gave its very name to the Olympics. At the time of the games, wars stopped, andathletes came from Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt,and Sicily to celebrate theOlympics and to worship their king of gods: Zeus.

Location

At the ancient town of Olympia, on the west coast of modern Greece, about 150 km west of Athens.

History

The ancient Greek calendar starts in 776 BC, for the Olympic games are believed to havestarted that year. The magnificent temple of Zeus was designed by the architect Libon andwas built around 450 BC. Under the growing power of ancient Greece, the simple Doric-style temple seemed too mundane, and modificationswere needed. The solution: A majestic statue. The Athenian sculptor Pheidias was assignedfor the "sacred" task, reminiscent of Michelangelo's paintingsat the Sistine Chapel.

For the years that followed, the temple attracted visitors and worshippers from allover the world. In the second century BC repairs were skillfully made to the aging statue.In the first century AD, the Roman emperor Caligula attempted to transport the statue to Rome. However, his attempt failedwhen the scaffolding built by Caligula's workmen collapsed. After the Olympic games werebanned in AD 391 by the emperor Theodosius I as Pagan practices, the temple of Zeus wasordered closed.
Olympia was further struck by earthquakes, landslides and floods, and the temple wasdamaged by fire in the fifth century AD. Earlier, the statue had been transported bywealthy Greeks to a palace in Constantinople.There, it survived until it was destroyed by a severe fire in AD 462. Today nothingremains at the site of the old temple except rocks anddebris, the foundation of the buildings, andfallen columns.

Description

Pheidias began working on the statue around 440 BC. Years earlier, he had developed atechnique to build enormous gold and ivory statues. This was done by erecting a woodenframe on which sheets of metal and ivory were placed to provide the outer covering. Pheidias' workshop in Olympia still exists, and iscoincidentally -- or may be not -- identical in size and orientation to the temple ofZeus. There, he sculpted and carved the different pieces of the statue before they wereassembled in the temple.
When the statue was completed, it barely fitted in the temple. Strabo wrote:

  ".. although the temple itself is very large, the sculptor is criticized for not  having appreciated the correct proportions. He has shown Zeus seated, but with the head  almost touching the ceiling, so that we have the impression that if Zeus moved to stand up  he would unroof the temple."

Strabo was right, except that the sculptor is to be commended, not criticized. It isthis size impression that made the statue so wonderful. It is the idea that the king ofgods is capable of unroofing the temple if he stood up that fascinated poets andhistorians alike. The base of the statue was about 6.5 m (20 ft) wide and 1.0 meter (3 ft)high. The height of the statue itself was 13 m (40 ft), equivalent to a modern 4-storybuilding.
The statue was so high that visitors described the throne more than Zeus body andfeatures. The legs of the throne were decorated with sphinxes and winged figures ofVictory. Greek gods and mythical figures also adorned the scene: Apollo, Artemis, and Niobe's children.The Greek Pausanias wrote:

  On his head is a sculpted wreath of olive sprays. In his right hand he holds a figure  of Victory made from ivory and gold... In his left hand, he holds a sceptre inlaid with  every kind of metal, with an eagle perched on the sceptre. His sandals are made of gold,  as is his robe. His garments are carved with animals and with lilies. The throne is  decorated with gold, precious stones, ebony, and ivory.

The statue was occasionally decorated with gifts from kings and rulers. the mostnotable of these gifts was a woollen curtain "adorned with Assyrian woven patterns andPheonician dye" which was dedicated by the Syrian king Antiochus IV.
Copies of the statue were made, including a large prototype at Cyrene (Libya). None of them, however, survived tothe present day. Early reconstructions such as the oneby von Erlach are now believed to be rather inaccurate. For us, we can only wonder aboutthe true appearance of the statue -- the greatest work in Greek sculpture.

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Thousands of years ago many people believed in a god named Zeus. Hewas considered to be the god of the sky and weather and his image appeared on most Greekcoins. The people of Greece worshipped this idol as their god. Zeus became one of theSeven Wonders of the World.
Phidias, a famous Greek sculptor and his laborers carved a giantstatue of Zeus in a special workshop behind the temple. It was made entirely of ivory andgold (Chryselephantine). When finished it sat in the temple on an elaborate throne alongwith sculptures and paintings of Greek myths and legends. Zeus was the most celebratedstatue of ancient times because of its greatness, charm and worth.

Zeus was the supreme god and ruler of Olympus. He was known by manytitles: Lord of the Sky, the Cloud- gatherer, the Rain-god and Zeus the Thunderer, all ofwhich show which force of nature was considered to be the most important in Ancient World- rain. In most other mythologies the "ruler-god" was usually associated withthe sun, but in Greece the climate is hot and dry making rain the scarce, life-givingforce.

Zeus was the sixth child born to Cronus and Rhea, Because Cronus,ruler of the Titans and the supreme god at the time, was afraid that one of his childrenwould overthrow him, just like he overthrew his father, Uranus, he swallowed his firstfive children - Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Demeter and Hestia. This, of course, infuriatedRhea and when Zeus was born she tricked Cronus into swallowing a rock wrapped in blankets.Zeus is more powerful than any other god or even all the other gods combined. But, unlikemany gods in other religions he was neither omnipotent nor omniscient. He could be, and infact was, opposed, deceived and tricked by gods and men alike. His power, although great,was not boundless, Zeus had no control over The Fates and Destiny. Like all Greekdivinities, Zeus was subject to pleasure, pain, grief, and anger, but he was mostsusceptible to the power of Eros - love, which often got the objects of his desire in alot of trouble with his wife, Hera.

Zeus was  mighty, glorious, awesome and wise, although he didshow a certain degree of surprising foolishness and naiveness when it came to hiding hislove affairs. Some historians attribute this less than noble behavior of the "noblestone of all" to the fact that Zeus was most likely a compilation of many "supremegods" from different areas. When his worship spread to an area which alreadyworshipped another god, some of that god抯 qualities as well as his wife or loverwere transferred to Zeus. Aside from the endless affairs Zeus was different from othergods in that he did not participate in the arguments and the resulting petty scheming thatmade up the daily activities of other gods. Being this wise ruler, he also demanded justand righteous action from men. Zeus was however vengeful, as can be seen in The creationof man by Prometheus, but only rightly so.

Zeus had two special attendants, Nike (Victoria), the goddess ofvictory, and his cup-bearer, Hebe, who was one of his numerous daughters. After Hebemarried Heracles, Ganymede replaced her as the cup-bearer for Zeus. In Roman Mythology,Zeus

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Zeus the master...

Zeus was called the master of the gods, and "father ofmen." The title may be more impressive than meritorious; it seemed applicable to theZeus of the philosophers who regarded him as a supreme god and sculptor of the universe.The notion was not primitive; Zeus was master of men as Agamemnon was the half-imposed,half-elected king of the Achaeans. Within this capacity he was the guarantor of contracts,oaths, the protector of guests that was involved in the human activity unfolding beneathhis vigilant gaze.

The mighty deity was thought to be god of the sky and master of thecelestial fire, a side of Zeus' personality that the Homeric verses amply portrayed. As"king" of heaven he exercised a sort of providence; but his will was held incheck by the immutable laws of fate, and his rule was often limited by these laws andrespected.
Although inhibited by this restriction, Zeus could govern and follow a policy;his decisions were rarely arbitrary or set forth with passion; they corresponded to hiddenintentions, the wisdom of which was ultimately revealed. He was the ultimate dispenser ofgood and evil to all mortals.

Zeus was the son of Cronus and his sister, Rhea. Also from thisrelationship had came Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. But a curse had been puton Cronus, who being of a dishonest and violent nature, when he refused to plicate Gaiaafter he had turned his father off of the thrown. Instead of setting free his brothers,condemned by Uranus never to see the light of day, Cronus kept them shut away in theirsubterranean prison, which enraged Gaia. Gaia vowed that he would know the very fate thathe had put upon his father by being dethroned by his own children. So in order to protecthimself from this curse he devoured his offspring as soon as Rhea bore them. The firstfive he swallowed, but when Zeus was born Rhea decided to save the child. With Gaia's helpshe found shelter in a Cretan cave where she delivered the infant. Then taking a stoneRhea wrapped it in swaddling clothes and took it back to Cronus, who, without question,seized it and swallowed it. Zeus had been saved, and with the same stroke Cronus sealedhis own fate.

The young Zeus grew from infancy in the cave being nursed by thenymphs of Amalthea, and protected by the Curetes, which mean "Young men," whowere warriors with spears and shields that performed a war dance around the grotto. Thiswas to drown out the infant's wailing so Cronus would not discover that he had beentricked and devour his son. In this instance, it appears, as frequently happened, the mythgrew from a rite: a ritual war dance was practiced in Crete, also in other Hellenizedcountries, by people imitating the supposed actions of the spirits of the storm in themountains and sky; such dancing probably gave rise to Rhea's ruse.
While being protected Zeus matured receiving all of his divinepowers. When the time came for Gaia's prophecy to be fulfilled Zeus consort was Metis, adaughter of Oceanus, whose name means "Prudence" or more often"Perfidy." She gave him a drug that would make his father vomit up the fivechildren that he had previously devoured and still carried in his body. They all emerged,and with these allies Zeus attacked Cronus and his comrades, the Titans. The war in whichthey battled each other lasted ten years. Finally, Gaia's oracle promised Zeus victory ifhe would accept help from the monster that Cronus had imprisoned in Tartarus. Zeus agreed,thus permitting Gaia's wish that Cronus disregarded. Zeus delivered the monsters and wasvictorious. Accounting for this victory were the weapons that the monsters gave to theyoung gods that in the future would bear their emblems, which included the thunderboltsthat the Cyclopes forged for Zeus. Cronus and the Titans were then confined in the depthsof the underworld and took the place of the monsters who became their guards.

Hesiod's Theogony, written shortly after 700 BC, relates the mostaccepted tradition regarding the birth and childhood of Zeus. But there were others:Arcadia in particular prided itself on having been the cradle of this god. It became easyto deduce the past-Hellenic Zeus was formed by absorbing many local "greatgods." For example, in Crete itself Zeus probably replaced a vegetation god, sincethe Cretans exhibited a "tomb of Zeus," and few but vegetation deities werebelieved to be subject to periodic deaths and rebirths.
Zeus, the supreme sky-god of the Greeks and a composite figure, wasbelieved to be involved in the daily affairs of people, but was never thought of as acreator deity. As Hesiod notes, the origins of things were related in other mythsconcerning Ouranos, the sky, and Gaia, the earth. The Dorian invasion of Greece around1200 BC resulted in the superimposition of the Indo-European sky father cult on anindigenous Minoan-Mycenaean tradition in which the earth goddess was predominant, just asin India the Aryans submerged the Hindus valley culture. Even though traces of pre-Greektradition are seen in Hera being the wife of Zeus, it was he as Nephelogeretes, "thecloud gatherer," who reigned over all things. He was given other names as well thatdepicted his different aspects and functions; they included Ombrios, "rain god";Kataibates, "the descender"; Keraunos, "lightening"; Gamelios,"god of marriage"; Teleios, "giver of completeness"; Pater,"father"; and Soter, "savior." Hades, the god of the dead, andPoseidon, the god of the sea, were distinguished from Zeus because their powers were seenas extensions of his in their special realms. They were granted separate mythical forms,yet the writ of the Olympian Zeus, "the wolfish," Lykaios, ran everywhere, andhe alone judged the winners and losers.


In a similar tradition established by his father, Cronus, Zeus soontook a divine wife. Hesoid says his first wife was Metis, and from this union Athena wasborn. His second wife was Themis, the incarnation of law or equality. The first offspringwas Horae (the Hours or the Seasons). The Horae were three in number: Eunonia, Dice andEirene (Order, Justica and Peace), but the Athenians knew them as Thallo, Auxa and Garpo.Their names evoked the principle stages of vegetation: the plant's spouting, growth, andfructification. However, the agricultural aspects of the cults gradually took on socialconcepts, and the spirits who principally presided over the land were transformed intosocial concepts pertaining to city life. Then came three daughters known as the Fates orMorae: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos who determined the destiny of every human being. Thisdestiny was symbolized by a thread, which the first Fate drew up from her distaff, thesecond Fate wound, and the third Fate cut at the end of the lifespan that it representedwas over.

Zeus' third wife, Eurynome, bore him three more daughters, theGraces (Charites): Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia. Similar to the Horae the Graces werevegetation spirits and spread the joys of nature in the hearts of men. They lived onOlympus, together with the Muses, with whom they loved to sing and dance. Like the Musesthey were companions of Athena and presided over her feminine tasks.

After this Zeus was companion with his daughter Demeter from whichunion Persephone was born. Then he attached to Mnemosyne who bore him nine daughters, theMuses. Leto was his next wife who bore Zeus Artemis and Apollo. Next the god Hermes wasborn to Maia, daughter of Atlas. Last in line of Zeus' divine wives was Hera, his sister,who bore him a son Ares, the god of war, and two daughters: Hebe, who personifiedyouthfulness, and whose task for a long time was to serve nectar at celestial banquetsuntil she became the wife of Hercules; and Eileithyia, the female spirit presiding overchildbirth.

Even after marrying Zeus was not a faithful husband, for he lovedmany mortals. These included Alcmene, who bore him Hercules, and a daughter Semele withwhom Zeus fathered Dionysus. Furious by his abandonment, Hera bore the god Hephaestus byherself without the help of Zeus.

[ Last edited by  falcon_9009 at 4-9-2007 09:54 PM ]

krepek_pisang

bro..listkan greek nye god n goddess... heheh yg aku tau ckit2 je....