only to reckon the gold of her drapery as part of the possible
resources of the state. We know that in the eyes of Pericles and of his
hearers the preciousness of the material was only an incident in the
artistic character of the work; but what is felt most deeply is often
the least spoken about. Later descriptions, such as that of Pausanias,
lay emphasis on the details and accessories of the statue, the
ornamentation of helmet and shield and sandals; they lay themselves open
to the stricture of Lucian on "such as can neither see nor praise the
whole beauty of the Olympian Zeus, great and noble as it is, nor
describe it to others that do not know it, but admire the accurate work
and fine polish of his footstool and the good proportions of the basis,
enumerating all such details with the utmost care." At the same time
even such information as they give us is welcome, since it aids our
imagination to reconstruct the appearance of the whole. These great
chryselephantine statues were placed within the cella of a temple,
lighted only through the door and by some infiltration through the
marble roof, and their effect was calculated for these conditions. The
rich tone and subtle reflections of the ivory and the gold, mingled with
coloured inlays of enamel or precious stones, and tempered and
harmonised by a "dim religious light," must have been most impressive;
and the grandeur of the figures was enhanced by their colossal size. But
in all this we are still dealing only with conditions and accessories,
not with the art itself and the religious ideals which it expressed.
These are perhaps easier for us to appreciate in the case of the Zeus
than of the Athena, though we are better provided with copies of the
latter. We are accustomed in our own religious art to the attempt to
express divinity in the form of a mature man of unspeakable majesty and
benignity. To the Greeks, indeed, the human figure of Zeus was not
merely an incarnation, but the actual form of the god himself; the god
was not thought of as having taken upon himself the sorrows and the
weaknesses of our mortal nature, but as sharing only its ideal
perfection. Yet that the effect was not altogether dissimilar is shown
by such a passage as that we find in Dion Chrysostom: "A man whose soul
is utterly immersed in toil, who has suffered many disasters and
sorrows, and cannot even enjoy sweet sleep, even such an one, I think,
if he stood face to face with this statue, wou