The sculptors were content for the most part to follow the imaginations of the earlier poets. They only sought to realize in the god-like forms their highest ideals of human beauty and dignity. They avoided the example of the Babylonians and Egyptians who had emphasized the unworldliness of their deities by investing them with strange shapes and symbols. The Greek imagination was content to add to the human form a more than human majesty. Gradually these statues became so much a part of their imagination that the Greeks found it impossible to picture the great gods apart from the artists’ portrayals. So widespread was the effect of sculpture on Greek and Roman religious thought that, at length, no other conception of the gods could be formed. In the wall paintings of Pompeii the deities are represented as of the colour and material of statues, the sculptural effect being imitated as closely as possible. Lucian, too, in one of his dialogues, pictures the assembly of the Olympian deities who are dismayed that men no longer rest upon the faiths of their forefathers. In the course of the dialogue, Zeus orders “that the gods should be seated in order of merit. The gold gods first, then the silver, then the ivory, bronze, and stone,” he commands, “and give preference to any work of Phidias, or Alcamenes, or Myron, or Euphranor, or other artist of distinction.” The most famous of the religious statues of ancient Greece were erected to Zeus and Hera. Other gods and goddesses were particularly identified with the various cities of Greece, such as Athena with Athens. But for the whole Greek world Zeus and Hera were the recognized rulers among the dwellers in Olympus. The chief temple of Zeus was at Olympia where, as we have seen, the Pan-Hellenic Games were held in his honour. That of Hera lay between Argos and Mycenæ. To these the Hellenic world came from time to time to honour the Father of the gods and his chosen consort. In the inner shrine of each stood a great “chryselephantine” statue—a term used to distinguish the wooden statues, with their veneer of ivory and gold, from the ordinary marbles and bronzes. No trace of either remains to-day. Wood is perishable, and the plunder of gold would doubtless have proved irresistible to the Turk, even had the Christian been scrupulous enough to resist the temptation. Had they been cut from the cold marble it might have been otherwise. They were, however, still in their places in the time of Hadrian, when Pausanias wrote the greatest of all guide-books. [Illustration: ZEUS Vatican, Rome] [Illustration: HERA Terme Museum, Rome]