ere are various ornaments round Zeus, and gilt carving--the Sun seated
in his chariot, and Zeus and Hera; and near is Grace. Hermes is close to
her, and Vesta close to Hermes. And next to Vesta is Eros receiving
Aphrodite, who is just rising from the sea and being crowned by
Persuasion. And Apollo and Artemis, Athene and Hercules, are standing
by, and at the end of the platform Amphitrite and Poseidon, and Selene
apparently urging on her horse. And some say it is a mule and not a
horse that the goddess is riding upon; and there is a silly tale about
this mule.

I know that the size of the Olympian Zeus both in height and breadth has
been stated; but I can not bestow praise on the measurers, for their
recorded measurement comes far short of what any one would infer from
looking at the statue. They make the god also to have testified to the
art of Phidias. For they say that when the statue was finished, Phidias
prayed him to signify if the work was to his mind; and immediately Zeus,
struck with lightning that part of the pavement where in our day is a
brazen urn with a lid.

And all the pavement in front of the statue is not of white but of black
stone. And a border of Parian marble runs round this black stone, as a
preservative against spilled oil. For oil is good for the statue at
Olympia, as it prevents the ivory being harmed by the dampness of the
grove. But in the Acropolis at Athens, in regard to the statue of Athene
called the Maiden, it is not oil but water that is advantageously
employed to the ivory; for as the citadel is dry by reason of its great
height, the statue being made of ivory needs to be sprinkled with water
freely. And when I was at Epidaurus, and inquired why they use neither
water nor oil to the statue of AEsculapius, the sacristans of the temple
informed me that the statue of the god and its throne are over a well.

THERMOPYLAE[55]

BY RUFUS B. RICHARDSON

We took Thermopylae at our leisure, passing out from Lamia over the
Spercheios on the bridge of Alamana, at which Diakos, famous in ballad,
resisted with a small band a Turkish army, until he was at last captured
and taken to Lamia to be impaled....

It may be taken as a well-known fact that the Spercheios has since the
time of Herodotus made so large an alluvial deposit around its mouth
that, if he himself should return to earth, he would hardly recognize
the spot which he has described so minutely. The western horn, which in
his