On the other hand, there is no evidence that in Greece--at least, in the best period of Greek art--any statesman held the views as to the official religion frankly expressed in Rome, that it was expedient for this religion to be accepted by the common people, but that educated men could only reconcile their consciences to taking part in it by a philosophical interpretation.
There is something unreal and artificial about any such compromise.

If Pericles was intimate with Anaxagoras, who was prosecuted for atheism, he was also the friend of Phidias, who expressly said that his Zeus was the Zeus of Homer, no mere abstract ideal of divinity.

If this was the case with Pericles, who held himself aloof from the common people, it must have been much more so with other statesmen, who mingled with them more freely, or even, like Nicias, shared their superstitions.

Under such conditions the influence of art upon the representations of the gods could not well go in advance of popular conceptions, though it might accompany and direct them.

The making of new statues of the gods, to be set up as the centres of worship in their temples, in some cases received the formal sanction of the Delphic oracle, the highest official and religious authority.