As to the two most famous works of Phidias himself, the Athena Parthenos within the Parthenon at Athens and the Zeus at Olympia, we are better informed, so far as elaborate descriptions and the somewhat rhetorical appreciations of later writers are concerned; and we possess some extant copies which tell us something of their pose and attributes.

But any notion we may form as to their true artistic and religious character must be mainly dependent upon our imagination; and even for their relation to the religious ideals of the people we are dependent for the most part upon indirect evidence.

Though the art of sculpture was so closely bound up with the life of the people in Greece, we find very few references to its greatest works; it is evident that the Athenians, for example, took the greatest pride in the buildings that adorned their Acropolis and in the sculptures they contained; yet when Pericles, as reported by Thucydides, speaks of the statue of the Athena Parthenos, it is only to reckon the gold of her drapery as part of the possible resources of the state.

We know that in the eyes of Pericles and of his hearers the preciousness of the material was only an incident in the artistic character of the work; but what is felt most deeply is often the least spoken about.

Later descriptions, such as that of Pausanias, lay emphasis on the details and accessories of the statue, the ornamentation of helmet and shield and sandals; they lay themselves open to the stricture of Lucian on "such as can neither see nor praise the whole beauty of the Olympian Zeus, great and noble as it is, nor describe it to others that do not know it, but admire the accurate work and fine polish of his footstool and the good proportions of the basis, enumerating all such details with the utmost care." At the same time even such information as they give us is welcome, since it aids our imagination to reconstruct the appearance of the whole.