[65] THERE LAY HER FAVORITE AUTHORS NEATLY ARRANGED IN IVORY CASES. Valuable books were kept in closed boxes.
[66] THE HEAD OF JUPITER, COPIED FROM THE WORLD-FAMED WORK OF PHIDIAS. The most renowned and perhaps most magnificent creation of Greek plastic art, was the Pan-hellenic Zeus at Olympia, a work of Phidias. Everything the ancient authors tell us of this colossal statue sounds extremely enthusiastic. Thus an epigram runs:
"Great Zeus did descend to earth his image to reveal, Or, Phidias, to behold the god, Olympus thou did'st scale."
Dio Chrysostomus writes: "No one who has seen Phidias' Zeus, is capable of forming any other image of the god.... A man, whose soul is troubled, oppressed by the many cares and griefs life offers, so that he would no longer be refreshed by sweet slumber, must I think, while confronting this statue, forget everything that is gloomy and terrible. Thus, Phidias, hast thou designed and executed thy work. Such light and grace animate thy art." Phidias had created his statue of the god according to the image of the Homeric verse, where Zeus grants the entreaty of the imploring Thetis:
"He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows, Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod, The stamp of fate and sanction of the god: High heaven, with trembling the dread signal took And all Olympus to the centre shook." POPE.
Phidias' Zeus was represented seated on a throne; his left hand held the sceptre, his right bore a goddess of victory. Among all the statues of Zeus that have been preserved, the bust of Otricoli seems to approach most nearly to the ideal of Phidias. There is no absolutely accurate copy; but the descriptions given us by the ancient authors, as well as two coins from Elis, carefully described by Overbeck and Friedländer, afford a succession of by no means unimportant points.
The bust in Claudia's boudoir may be imagined a duplicate of Otricoli's Jupiter--only approximating somewhat more closely to the separate features of the original.
It was past midnight. The Christians of the Subura had once more assembled in the quarry between the Appian and the Labicanian Ways. Among them stood Quintus, who had joined the congregation to-day for the first time.