OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 145 



VII. 



THE DIMENSIONS AND PROPORTIONS OF THE 

 TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA. 



By Charles Eliot Norton, 



Professor of the History of Art in Harvard College. 

 Presented Oct. 10, 187T. 



The information given by ancient writers concerning the erection and 

 plan of this famous Temple would seem curiously scanty, but for the 

 fact that there is not one of the most noted buildings of the Greeks, 

 concerning the architecture of which a detailed account has reached us 

 from antiquity. In this instance (as in so many others of the same 

 kind) Pausanias is the chief authority. He tells us that Libon, of Elis, 

 was the architect of the Temple ; that it was built from the spoils which 

 the Eleians won from the conquest of Pisa and her neighbors.* This 

 conquest took place in the year 572 B.C. ; and it has been inferred, 

 from the words of Pausanias, that tlie Temple was begun not long after 

 this time. But, if this were the fact, the progress of the work must 

 have been exceedingly slow ; for it did not receive the image of the 

 God within its shrine until after the completion of the Parthenon, when 

 Phidias went to Elis for the purpose of making the colossal statue of 

 Zeus ; and the figures of the groups in the pediments were not set in 

 their places till about the same time, that is, not far from 435 B.c.f 



Pausanias, however, does not say any thing of the date of the erec- 

 tion of the Temple ; and no inference can be drawn from the mention 

 of Libon as its architect, for nothing is known of him beyond this 

 statement.l 



The evidence of its date which the plan of the Temple itself affords 

 would lead to the conclusion that it could hardly have been begun 



* Pausanias, v. x. 3. 



t Miiller, "De Pliidiae Vita et Operibus," § 12. 



X Bruiin, " Geschichte der Griecliischen Kunstler," ii. 369 : " Wir vermogen 

 also nur zu sagen dass er [der Tempel] in der 86. Olynipiade vollendet war." 



VOL. xiir. (n. s. v.) 10 



