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Cook, Arthur B.
Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes — Cambridge, 1940

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14698#1064

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960 General Conclusions with regard to

that it made on men of various tempers and types—the soldier, the
man in the street, the scholarly thinker, the religious reformer, the
eclectic moralist.

L. Aimilius Paullus after his brilliant Macedonian campaign
travelled through Greece (167 B.C.), and having long been anxious
to see Olympia made his way thither, only to find his expectations
utterly eclipsed by the reality1. Livy2 puts it with dry, unconscious
humour:

' Passing through Megalopolis he went up to Olympia. Here he saw sundry
things worth seeing, and on beholding Zeus as it were face to face was moved
in his spirit. And so, just as if he had been about to offer victims on the Capitol,
he ordered a bigger sacrifice than usual to be made ready3.'

It took much to 'move' a Roman general of the old school4.

The popular verdict is voiced by Quintilian5:
'As an artist Pheidias is held to have been better at making gods than at making
men, but as a worker in ivory to have been quite without a rival—even had he
made nothing beyond the Athena at Athens or the Olympian Zeus in Elis. The
beauty of the latter is thought actually to have added something to the received
religion; so far did the majesty of the work go towards equality with the god-
head.'

Reflective minds would want to know the source of a beauty so
striking that it could be described as a real contribution to Greek
religion. Cicero6 speculates along Platonic lines :

' I maintain that nothing is ever so beautiful as not to be beaten in beauty by
that from which it is copied as a portrait is copied from a face, that original
which cannot be perceived by eye or ear or any other sense but grasped only by

1 Polyb. 30. 10.

2 Liv. 45. 28 unde per Megalopolim Olympian! escendit. ubi et alia quidem spectanda
visa, et Iovem velut praesentem intuens motus animo est. itaque haud secus quam si m
Capitolio immolaturus esset, sacrificium amplius solito apparari iussit.

3 Cp. Plout. v. Aem. Patdl. 28.

4 E. Klebs in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. i. 578 f.

5 Quint, inst. or. 12. 10. 9 Phidias tamen diis quam hominibus efficiendis meli°r
artifex creditur, in ebore vero longe citra aemulum vel si nihil nisi Minervam Athenis aut
Olympium in Elide Iovem fecisset, cuius pulchritudo adiecisse aliquid etiam receptae
religioni videtur; adeo maiestas opens deum aequavit.

Lucian in cynical mood bears witness to the same effect on the mind of the populace •
5' otiv oi Traptbvres e"s tov veCiv otire rbv e£ 'lvfiwv i\4<pavra eri olovrai bpav otire ~rb ^k
tt\% Qpg.Kr]S fieraWevBiy xpvclov, d\\' airbv rbv Kpbvov Kai ' P^as is tty yrjv virb &£^oV
p.eTipKi(rpL€i>oi> Kai tt]V HiGaiow £pT]fxlav eiritTKOTreij' KeKe\€v<rp.£vov, ayairCiVTa el bia 7reVre
o\wp irCiv dvffet. tls aury irapepyov '0\vp.Triwv.

0 Cic. orat. 8 f. The passage ends: nec vero ille artifex, cum faceret Iovis formal11
aut Minervae, contemplabatur aliquem e quo similitudinem duceret, sed ipsius in nient*
insidebat species pulchritudinis eximia quaedam, quam intuens in eaque defixus a
illius similitudinem artem et manum dirigebat. Sir J. E. Sandys ad loc. quotes Ploti"-
5. 8. I e>ei Kai 6 <E>ei5ias rbv Ala Trpbs ovbkv ai<xSy)rbv iroirjcras, dXXd \aj3uv ofos av yivoiro,
€i ijfJM> 6 Zeus 5i ofifiaTwv id£\oi tpttvrjvat. and an interesting parallel in a letter fro111
 
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