From the earliest times men have sought to explain in one way and another the common facts of daily life. Sunrise and sunset, seedtime and harvest, life, death, and the hereafter are some of the mysteries which have always puzzled the human mind. The primitive races, knowing nothing of science, looked upon the forces of nature as gigantic personalities, or gods, who controlled human destiny.

The most refined and imaginative of the ancient nations were the Greeks. They invented innumerable tales or myths, in which all the changes of nature and all the affairs of life were attributed to the workings of the gods. When the sun rose, they said that Apollo had begun to drive his chariot across the sky. When the wind blew, Zeus was sending his messenger from the sky to the earth. When a man did a courageous deed, it was because Athena had whispered to him what to do.

In this way the beliefs gradually took form which made the Greek religion. Great temples were built for the worship of the gods, and statues were set up in their honor. The finest works of Greek art were connected with religious worship.

The gods were conceived as having the same form as human beings, but of colossal size. They lived in an ideal country called Olympus,

Here each god had a separate dwelling, and in the midst was the palace of their supreme ruler, Zeus, known to the Romans as Jupiter or Jove.

Zeus was the sky god, "the father of gods and men," and the ruler of heaven and earth. He was the "cloud compeller" at whose will the clouds gathered or scattered across the sky, the "ruler of the storms," the "thunderer," by whom were hurled the ruddy lightnings. How far he surpassed all other gods in power is explained in the Iliad in an address made by Zeus himself to the gods:—

In the imagination of the Greeks Zeus was endowed with all the noblest elements in human character. He ruled the affairs of men with fatherly benevolence. He rewarded goodness, punished the wicked, and was withal the fountain-head of justice. By a nod of his head he made known his will, and there was no appeal from his decrees.

Naturally, the Greeks pictured this god as a being of majestic stature and grand, benignant countenance, and sculptors did their best to make statues worthy of this conception. By common consent a certain type of countenance was accepted as the most fitting expression of this ideal. At last a great artist named Phidias produced a statue which perfectly carried out all the ideas at which other sculptors had aimed. It was of colossal size, made of gold and ivory, and was set up in a temple of Olympia. From this time forth every sculptor who had to represent Zeus had only to repeat the design of Phidias.

Now we know that the farther an imitator gets from the original standard, the weaker is his copy. The first successors of Phidias made direct studies from his statue, but those coming after worked from copies. Still later artists took for their models copies of these copies, until at last much of the original grandeur of Phidias's conception was lost.

The bust of Zeus reproduced in our illustration is thought to be a far-away copy of the head of Phidias's statue. From the marble of which it is made we know that it was executed in Italy, probably by some Greek sculptor who had come thither after his own nation had been conquered by Rome. The marvel is that he preserved so well the noble dignity of the ideal Zeus. This is the father of gods and men in his most benign aspect. The massive head is crowned like that of a lion with long, overhanging locks with which the flowing beard is mingled. These are the

of which Homer writes in the Iliad. The symmetrical arrangement of hair and beard carry out the character of perfect evenness belonging to the supreme ruler.

The forehead has the full bar of flesh which denotes virility. The brows are straight, the nose finely modeled, the lips rather full, the expression benignant. Altogether the impression is of a being of mental and moral equipoise, full of energy and noble dignity.