Perhaps Polyclitus, like Plato and others, was influenced by the Pythagorean doctrine
that number is the ultimate reality. Though the actual basis of the theory has never
been satisfactorily explained, and though it seems clear from his modifying use of
‘almost’ that Polyclitus believed that perfection could not wholly be engendered by
the determination of optimum ratios, the Canon bears witness to the Greek belief in
due measure in all things, to the Greek principle that art is subject to the rule of reason
and to the Greek quest for the ideal form manifested in the art of the fifth century
before it became the preoccupation of philosophy in the fourth.
Later Greek commentators regarded Pheidias, whom they called the maker of
gods, as their greatest sculptor. Regrettably, none of his many works survived. His
most famous were the great cult statues, decorated in ivory and gold, of Athena made
for the Parthenon and of Zeus made for the temple at Olympia (built earlier in the
460s). The Olympian Zeus, which was enormous (perhaps forty feet high), was one
of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Pheidias is reported to have said that he
formed the conception for this most celebrated image from the majestic description
of the nod of Zeus in Homer expressing his absolute will: ‘Zeus spoke and nodded
his dark brow, and the ambrosial locks waved from the king’s immortal head, and
made great Olympus shake’ (Iliad,1, 528–530). From ancient accounts, his Zeus is
indeed represented in the Homeric attitude enthroned in majesty with a slight
inclination of the head and arch of the eyebrows and with the hair gently rolling
forward. All accounts agree on the grandeur and beauty of this image, which, though
awesome, expressed and inspired a benign and detached serenity and did not,
like some Byzantine representations of the Christian god, evoke fear. The Roman
Quintilian writes: ‘[its] beauty is such that it is said to have added something even to
the awe with which the god was already regarded: so perfectly did the majesty of the
work give the impression of godhead’ (Education of the Orator, 12, 10, 9).Cicero
reports that Pheidias did not fashion his Zeus after any single man but said that there
had been in his mind some perfect picture of beauty, which he had contemplated,
with which he entirely filled himself and which had directed his hand. This image, he
says, is nothing other than the Platonic idea of which Plato says that ‘it has no birth
but is ever existing and rests in the human reason and understanding’ (Orator, 2, 9).
The idealism of Classical sculpture can be further illustrated in the Roman copy
(fig. 58) of an Athenian original of about 440 by Cresilas, ‘the Olympian Pericles, a
figure worthy of its title’, according to Pliny who adds, ‘indeed it is a marvellous thing
about the art of sculpture that it has made noble figures more noble’ (Natural History,
34,74). Pericles was nicknamed the Olympian perhaps because of his aloofness, his
thundering oratory or his high and mighty ways. According to Plutarch, the Athenian
comic poets also called him schinokephalos, squillhead, because of the shape of his
head (Life of Pericles, 3). The helmet therefore has a dual function: to express the
dignity of his position as general (political and military leadership usually went
248 THE GREEKS