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In ancient times the Greeks held one of their most important festivals, The
Olympic Games, in honour of the King of their gods, Zeus. Like our modern
Olympics, athletes travelled from distant lands, including Asia Minor, Syria,
Egypt and Sicily, to compete in the games. The Olympics were first started in
776 B.C. and held at a shrine to Zeus located on the western coast of Greece in
a region called Peloponnesus. The games, held every four years, helped to unify
the Greek city-states. Sacred truce was declared during the games and wars were
stopped. Safe passage was given to all travelling to the site, called Olympia,
for the season of the games.
The site consisted of a stadium (for the games) and a sacred grove, or Altis,
where temples were located. The
shrine to Zeus was simple in the early years, but as time went by and the games
increased in importance, it became obvious that a new, larger temple, one worthy
of the King of the gods, was needed. Between 470 and 460 B.C., construction on a
new temple was started.
The designer was Libon of Elis and his masterpiece, The Temple of Zeus, was
completed in 456 B.C.. This temple followed a design used on many large Grecian
temples. It was similar to the Parthenon in Athens and the Temple of Artemis in
Ephesus. The temple was built on a raised, rectangular platform. Thirteen large
columns supported the roof along the sides and six supported it on each end. A
gently-peaked roof topped the building. The triangles, or "pediments," created
by the sloped roof at the ends of the building were filled with sculpture. Under
the pediments, just above the columns, was more sculpture depicting the twelve
labours of Heracles, six on each end.
Though the temple was considered one of the best examples of the Doric design
because of its style and the quality of the workmanship, it was decided the
temple alone was too simple to be worthy of the King of the gods. To remedy
this, a statue was commissioned for the interior- a magnificent statue of Zeus
that would become one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The sculptor chosen for this great task was a man named Phidias. He had already
rendered a forty-foot high statue of the goddess Athena for the Parthenon in
Athens and had also done much of the sculpture on the exterior of that temple.
After his work in Athens was done, Phidias travelled to Olympia to start on what
was considered his best work, the statue of Zeus. On arriving he set up a
workshop to the west of the temple.
The first archaeological work on the Olympia site was done by a group of French
scientists in 1829. They were able to locate the outlines of the temple and
found fragments of the sculpture showing the labours of Heracles. These pieces
were shipped to Paris where they are still on display today at the Louvre. The
next expedition came from Germany in 1875 worked at Olympia for five summers.
Over that period they were able to map out most of the buildings there,
discovered more fragments of the temple's sculpture, and located the remains of
the pool in the floor that contained the oil for the statue.
In the 1950's an excavation uncovered the workshop of Phidias which was
discovered beneath an early Christian Church. Archaeologists found sculptor's
tools, a pit for casting bronze, clay moulds, modelling plaster and even a
portion of one of the elephant's tusks which had supplied the ivory for the
statue. Many of the clay moulds, which had been used to shape the gold plates,
bore serial numbers which must have been used to show the place of the plates in
the design.
Today the stadium at the site has been restored.
Little is left of the temple,
though, except a few columns, these are shown in the picture to the right taken
on my recent visit. Of the statue, which was perhaps the most
wonderful work at Olympia, all is now gone.
Dio Crysostomos, in a speech given at the temple in 97 AD., said: "If a man, with a heavy heart from grief and sorrow in life, will stand in front of the statue, he will forget all these". It was in 2001 AD that I stood on the spot in front of where the statue stood with heavy heart because my beloved Man City had just been relegated from the premiership - since then Kevin Keegan has arrived and I have indeed forgotten all that sorrow as we ride on a wave of success.......
Three down now with 4 to go
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