Public commissions of this sort are common at all times, but commonest in the years immediately succeeding the Persian Wars, when the spoils of the Persians supplied ample resources, and in many cases the ancient temples and images had been destroyed; and at the same time the outburst of national enthusiasm over the great deliverance led to a desire to give due thank-offerings to the gods of the Hellenic race, a desire which coincided with the ability to fulfil it, owing to the rapid progress of artistic power.

Such public commissions, and the popular feeling which they expressed, offered an inspiration to the artist such as has rarely, if ever, found a parallel.

But any great victory or deliverance might be commemorated by the setting up of statues of the gods to whom it was attributed; and in this way the demands of official religion offered the sculptor the highest scope for the exercise of his art and his imagination.
(3) The influence of poetic mythology upon art can hardly be exaggerated.

The statement of Herodotus that Homer and Hesiod "made the Greek theogony, and assigned to the gods their epithets and distinguished their prerogatives and their functions, and indicated their form," would not, of course, be accepted in a literal sense by any modern mythologist.

But it is nevertheless true that the clear and vivid personality and individuality given to the gods by the epic poets affects all later poetry and all Greek art.