Elis. Tranquil power and victorious repose
appear even in the standing Jupiters, in which last the god appears as
more youthful and active.

The conception of Jupiter by Phidias was a great advance on that of Homer.
He, to be sure, professed to take his idea from the famous passage of the
Iliad where Jove shakes his ambrosial curls and bends his awful brows;
and, nodding, shakes heaven and earth. That might be his text, but the
sermon which he preached was far higher than it. This was the great statue
of Jupiter, his masterpiece, made of ivory and gold for the temple at
Olympia, where the games were celebrated by the united Hellenic race.
These famous games, which occurred every fifth year, lasting five days,
calling together all Greece, were to this race what the Passover was to
the Jewish nation, sacred, venerable, blending divine worship and human
joy. These games were a chronology, a constitution, and a church to the
Pan-Hellenic race. All epochs were reckoned from them; as events occurring
in such or such an Olympiad. The first Olympiad was seven hundred and
seventy-six years before Christ; and a large part of our present knowledge
of ancient chronology depends on these festivals. They bound Greece
together as by a constitution; no persons unless of genuine Hellenic blood
being allowed to contend at them, and a truce being proclaimed for all
Greece while they lasted.

Here at Olympia, while the games continued, all Greece came together; the
poets and historians declaimed their compositions to the grand audience;
opinions were interchanged, knowledge communicated, and the national
life received both stimulus and unity.

And here, over all, presided the great Jupiter of Phidias, within a Doric
temple, sixty-eight feet high, ninety-five wide, and two hundred and
thirty long, covered with sculptures of Pentelic marble. The god was
seated on his throne, made of gold, ebony, and ivory, studded with
precious stones. He was so colossal that, though seated, his head nearly
reached the roof, and it seemed as if he would bear it away if he rose.
There sat the monarch, his head, neck, breast, and arms in massive
proportions; the lower part of the body veiled in a flowing mantle;
bearing in his right hand a statue of Victory, in his left a sceptre with
his eagle on the top; the Hours, the Seasons, and the Graces around him;
his feet on the mysterious Sphinx; and on his face that marvellous
expression of blended majesty and s