Geography

​It remains to speak of Olympia and of the transfer of everything to the Eleians. The temple is in Pisatis, distant less than three hundred stades from Elis; in front of it lies a grove of wild olive trees, in which is the stadium; and the Alpheios flows past, running from Arcadia into the Triphylian Sea between west and south. It acquired its renown from the beginning because of the oracle of Olympian Zeus; and when that failed, the glory of the temple remained none the less, and it received all the growth we know because both of the festive assembly and of the Olympic games, which were considered crowned and sacred, the greatest of all. And it was adorned by the multitude of offerings, which were dedicated from the whole of Greece; among which was also the golden beaten-work Zeus, an offering of Cypselus the tyrant of the Corinthians . The greatest of these was the wooden statue of Zeus, which Pheidias the son of Charmides, an Athenian, made of ivory, of such great size that, although the temple was very large, the artist seemed to have missed the symmetry, having made him sitting, but touching the roof almost with his crown, so that he created the impression that if he should stand upright, he would unroof the temple. And some recorded the measurements of the statue, and Callimachus declared them in a certain iambic poem. And Panainos the painter, being his nephew and fellow-contractor, cooperated much with Pheidias toward the adornment of the statue with colors, and especially of the drapery. And many wonderful paintings, works of his, are also shown about the temple. And they relate of Pheidias that, when Panainos asked him after what model he was going to make the image of Zeus, he replied that it was after that exhibited by Homer in these verses: “He spoke, and the son of Cronos nodded with his dark brows; and the ambrosial locks of the king waved from his immortal head, and he shook great Olympus.” But the Eleians are most worthy to have the credit for the magnificence and honor concerning the temple at Olympia. For in the times of the Trojan War and even before these, they were not fortunate, having been humbled by the Pylians and later by Heracles, when Augeas their king was overthrown. And this is a sign: for to Troy they indeed sent forty ships, but the Pylians and Nestor ninety. But later, after the return of the Heracleidae, the contrary happened. For the Aetolians, having returned together with the Heracleidae under Oxylus, and having settled with the Epeians because of an ancient kinship, increased