The reader may be surprised that I should venture to present Phidias as one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him, or can be known about him.  So far as the man is concerned, I might as well lecture on Melchizedek, or Pharaoh, or one of the dukes of Edom.  There are no materials to construct a personal history which would be interesting, such as abound in reference to Michael Angelo or Raphael.  Thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject.  The development of Art is an important part of the history of civilization.  The influence of Art on human culture and happiness is prodigious.  Ancient Grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race.  Any man who largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor.

Now, history says this much of Phidias:  that he lived in the time of Pericles,—­in the culminating period of Grecian glory,—­and ornamented the Parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which Parthenon was to Athens what Solomon’s Temple was to Jerusalem,—­a wonder, a pride, and a glory.  His great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of Minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which alone was worth forty-four talents,—­about fifty-thousand dollars,—­an immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its present value.  All antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue, and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the grandeur and majesty of its proportions.  Another of the famous works of Phidias was the bronze statue of Minerva, which was the glory of the Acropolis, This was sixty feet in height.  But even this yielded to the colossal statue of Zeus or Jupiter in his great temple at Olympia, representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones.  In this statue the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as Michael Angelo did in his statue of Moses.  So famous was this majestic statue, that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and repose among the ancients.  This statue, removed to Constantinople by Theodosius the Great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 A.D.

Phidias also executed various other works,—­all famous in his day,—­which have, however, perished; but many executed under his superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their grace and majesty of form.  The great master himself was probably vastly superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age, having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power, unless it be Michael Angelo.  His distinguished excellence was simplicity and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic poetry,—­sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, Though his