What Pausanias saw when he looked up at the pediments of the temple of Zeus in Olympia

Abstract

I have by now lost count of how many times in my life I have visited the Museum at Olympia. And I cannot keep track of knowing what different things I remembered to view, or forgot to view, each time I was there. But there is one thing I know for sure as I look back on it all: each and every time I have visited that museum, I have never missed the chance of viewing the surviving fragments of the spectacular sculptures that had once upon a time adorned the east and the west pediments of the temple. In the second century of our era, the traveler Pausanias had viewed those same sculptures—and he saw them in all their unfragmented glory as he looked up at them from down below at ground zero. There they were, looming over him from on high, framed within the east and the west pediments of the lofty temple. I highlight here one of the many details he saw as he looked up to view those marvels of classical sculpture. It is the head of a male figure sculpted into the center of the west pediment.