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)

Zeus as god of the Dark Sky 965

No doubt there were critics of its scale and proportions.
Strabon1 says:

' It was wrought of ivory, and so huge was its size that, although the temple
is very large, the artist is thought to have missed the proper symmetry; for he
represented the god as seated but almost touching the roof with the crown of
his head, and thus produced the impression that, if he arose and stood upright,
he would unroof the temple.'

Others, as we might infer from Pausanias2, felt the force of the
objection, and Caecilius the rhetorician, a contemporary of Strabon,
even ventured—the blasphemer—to speak of ' the blundered
colossus3.' To which detractors Pheidias might well have retorted
that the temple-roof was expressly designed to suggest the starry
vault of heaven.

But the real reason for the comparative unpopularity of the
statue was not a mere matter of measurements. The gravamen was
this. Pheidias, seeking to express a beneficent supremacy, had
deliberately omitted the thunderbolt4, formerly the essential
characteristic of the sky-god. The populace could not, or would
not, understand the omission, and some writers who ought to have
known better actually describe the figure as if it were equipped
with the familiar attribute. Seneca5, for example, in defiance of
plain fact, can say:

' Pheidias never saw Zeus, yet made him as it were thundering"'—

xiv. 81—88 with figs. 91a, gi/>, 92 and pis. 1, 2, id. Phidias Frankfurt am Main 1924
P' 57 ff. figs. 38 and 39) have all found ardent advocates. Here it must suffice to say
that their claims are mutually destructive.

Strab. 353 (quoted by Eustath. in II. p. 145, 15 f.).
2 Supra p. 958.

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°v Kpet.TTtiii' 7) 6 YlokvuXefrov Aopu<p6pos, Trap&KeiTai irpbs iroWots e'nrelv, otl iiri p.£v t^xvV^
^av/xd^ercu rb aKptfie'o'TaToi', eiri 5£ t&v <[>vo-ikwv Zpyoiv to /£^ye#os, <p6<rei de \0yiK0v 6
av8pwiros. k&ttI p.tv a.vb~pi.avTU]v fyreLTai to SpLOLOV avOpojiry, tirl be rod \6yov to virepatpov,
ws 2<t>V, to. avOpuTriva. F. Granger in his recent translation (London 1935) p. 89 renders
we Colossus which failed in the casting' and p. 113 notes 'The Colossus of Nero was a
failure owing to the decline in the art of casting bronze, Plin. N.H., xxxiv, 46.' But
U• von. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff ' Der verfehlte Koloss' in the Strena Helbigiana
L'psiae 1900 pp. 334—336 argues convincingly from the context: 'Caecilius also hat
dern Doryphoros, dem Kanon, einen Koloss entgegengesetzt. Damit ist die auch sonst
tlose Beziehung auf den Koloss des Nero vorab beseitigt/; Aber-der Gedanken-
zusammenhang fordert auch, dass der verfehlte Koloss ein heriihmtes, von anderen als
rousterhaft anerkanntes Werk ist. Er muss sich zu Platon verhalten wie der Kanon
olyklets zu Lysias. Da kann man auch den Koloss des Chares nicht brauchen, der
j^clit der Vertreter eines erhabenen, aber incorrecten Stiles sein konnte. Wer es ist,
i, j. em Zeitgenosse des Caecilius, Strabon, der bei Gelegenheit der Hera sagt, dass
>e Werke des Polyklet an Kunst die schdnsten waren, wenn sie auch an Kostbarkeit
4Gr°sse denen des Pheidias nachstlinden" [Strab. 372].'
Supra ii. 760.