The Statue of Zeus at Olympia - One of the Seven Wonders of the World

The statue of Zeus at Olympia, it is a behemoth of a statue, despite not being, you know, a humongous thing.

And I think I would not be wrong in saying that it's probably one of, if not the pinnacle of classical Greek statuary.

So to understand the statue, we first have to understand the area it was located in.

The statue of Zeus was located in the sanctuary of Olympia.

Olympia was not a city.

It was controlled by the city or the polis of Elis, which was in the Peloponnesus, which is kind of like that big blob of land kind of on the southern part of Greece.

Elis was never a huge player in the machinations of the politics of the Greek world, but it wasn't just a footnote either.

However, its main thing was that Olympia was a universal site for the entirety of the Greek world.

And don't forget, the Greek world was not just Greece.

There were Greek colonies in Crimea, in the Black Sea, all around the Black Sea, North Africa, Spain, southern France.

Sicily.

Sicily, southern Italy, all over the Greek world.

And this was, if not the most important site, the second most important site.

The other one you could argue would be Oracle of Delphi.

But this was a huge site.

It was also enormous.

There were tons and tons of temples.

We've excavated and started reconstructing a lot of them.

There were statues to tons of different gods.

And a decent comparison would be Vatican City in terms of like the center of Greek religion.

The Greeks did not have a centralized religion in terms of like a pope for the gods or anything, but it was important, it was holy, and everyone respected it.

It was also where the original Olympic Games were held.

And according to legend, these went all the way back to 776 B.C., And they became a prominent fixture in the entire Greek world.

Like I said, from Spain to the Black Sea, athletes would come, they would compete.

There weren't nearly as many events as today, but there was running and jumping.