Of the colossal Zeus at Olympia, the most august creation of Greek
artistic imagination, we can form only an indistinct idea. The god
was seated upon a throne, holding a figure of Victory upon one
hand and a scepter in the other. The figure is represented on
three Elean coins of the time of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) but on too
small a scale to help us much. Another coin of the same period
gives a fine head of Zeus in profile (Fig. 117),[Footnote: A more
truthful representation of this coin may be found in Gardner's
"Types of Greek Coins," PI XV 19] which is plausibly supposed to
preserve some likeness to the head of Phidias's statue.

In regard to the Athena of the Parthenon we are considerably
better off, for we possess a number of marble statues which, with
the aid of Pausanias's description and by comparison with one
another, can be proved to be copies of that work. But a warning is
necessary here. The Athena, like the Zeus, was of colossal size.
Its height, with the pedestal, was about thirty-eight feet. Now it
is not likely that a really exact copy on a small scale could
possibly have been made from such a statue, nor, if one had been
made, would it have given the effect of the original. With this
warning laid well to heart the reader may venture to examine that
one among our copies which makes the greatest attempt at
exactitude (Fig. 118). It is a statuette, not quite 3 1/2 feet
high with the basis, found in Athens in 1880. The goddess stands
with her left leg bent a little and pushed to one side. She is
dressed in a heavy Doric chiton, open at the side. The girdle,
whose ends take the form of snakes' heads, is worn outside the
doubled-over portion of the garment. Above it the folds are
carefully adjusted, drawn in symmetrically from both sides toward