r that the gold alone used upon it was
valued at forty-four talents, equal to five hundred thousand dollars of
our money,--an immense sum in that age. Some critics suppose that this
statue was overloaded with ornament, but all antiquity was unanimous in
its admiration. The exactness and finish of detail were as remarkable as
the grandeur of the proportions. Another of the famous works of Phidias
was a colossal bronze statue of Athene Promachos, sixty feet in height,
on the Acropolis between the Propylaea and the Parthenon. But both of
these yielded to the colossal statue of Zeus in his great temple at
Olympia, represented in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a
pedestal of twenty feet. The god was seated on a throne. Ebony, gold,
ivory, and precious stones formed, with a multitude of sculptured and
painted figures, the wonderful composition of this throne. In this his
greatest work the artist sought to embody the idea of majesty and
repose,--of a supreme deity no longer engaged in war with Titans and
Giants, but enthroned as a conqueror, ruling with a nod the subject
world, and giving his blessing to those victories which gave glory to
the Greeks. So famous was this statue, which was regarded as the
masterpiece of Grecian art, that it was considered a calamity to die
without having seen it; and this served for a model for all subsequent
representations of majesty and power in repose among the ancients. It
was removed to Constantinople by Theodosius I., and was destroyed by
fire in the year 475 A.D. Phidias executed various other famous works,
which have perished; but even those that were executed under his
superintendence which have come down to our times,--like the statues
which ornamented the pediment of the Parthenon,--are among the finest
specimens of art that exist, and exhibit the most graceful and
appropriate forms which could have been selected, uniting grandeur with
simplicity, and beauty with accuracy of anatomical structure. His
distinguishing excellence was ideal beauty, and that of the
sublimest order.

Of all the wonders and mysteries of ancient art the colossal statues of
ivory and gold were perhaps the most remarkable, and the difficulty of
executing them has been set forth by the ablest of modern critics, like
Winckelmann, Heyne, and De Quincey. "The grandeur of their dimensions,
the perfection of their workmanship, the richness of their materials,
their majesty, beauty, and ideal truth, the splendo