This is obvious in the case of the Homeric poems, for the art of the time was of a purely decorative character, and was quite incapable of representing in any adequate way the vivid and lively imagination of the poets; and, for that matter, for many centuries after the date of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey, Hellenic art made no attempt to cope with any so ambitious problems.

Even when the art of sculpture had attained to a considerable degree of mastery over material and expression, we find its aims and conceptions lagging far behind those of the poet.

This will become clearer when, in the next chapter, we consider the conditions of artistic expression in Greece; but it must be noted here, in order to prevent possible misconception.

As soon, however, as art became capable of aiming at something beyond perfection of a bodily form--a change which, in spite of Pausanias' admiration of something divine about the works of Daedalus, can hardly be dated earlier than the fifth century B.C .-- the Homeric conceptions of the gods came to have their full effect.

Zeus, the king and father of gods and men; Athena, the friendly protectress of heroes, irresistible in war, giver of all intellectual and artistic power; Apollo, the archer and musician, the purifier and soothsayer--these and others find their first visible embodiment in the statues whereby the sculptors of the fifth century gave expression to the Homeric conceptions.
The tales, too, that were told about the gods, some of them trivial enough, but others full of religious and ethical significance, had for some time before this been common subjects upon reliefs and vase-paintings, and on these also the influence of the poets was very great.