It was not until the Persian wars awakened among the Greeks the slumbering consciousness of national power, and Athens became the central point of Grecian civilization, that sculpture, like architecture and painting, reached its culminating point of excellence under Phidias and his contemporaries. Great artists had previously made themselves famous, like Miron, Polycletus, and Ageladas; but the great riches which flowed into Athens at this time gave a peculiar stimulus to art, especially under the encouragement of such a ruler as Pericles, whose age was the golden era of Grecian history.
Pheidias, or Phidias, was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic poetry,--the representative of the sublime and grand. He was born four hundred and eighty-four years before Christ, and was the pupil of Ageladas. He stands at the head of the ancient sculptors, not from what _we_ know of him, for his masterpieces have perished, but from the estimation in which he was held by the greatest critics of antiquity. It was to him that Pericles intrusted the adornment of the Parthenon, and the numerous and beautiful sculptures of the frieze and the pediment were the work of artists whom he directed. His great work in that wonderful edifice was the statue of the goddess Minerva herself, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, standing victorious, with a spear in her left hand and an image of victory in her right, with helmet on her head, and her shield resting by her side. The cost of this statue may be estimated when we consider 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.