Narrative Resonance in the East Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia

Abstract

Justice is the central theme of the sculptural program of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and the so-called “Old Seer” is one key to the problem of justice represented in the east pediment. The subject of the pediment was the preparations for the fateful chariot race between Pelops and Oinomaos, but the Old Seer is an allusive figure who evokes the spectator's knowledge of another saga that, like the story of Pelops and the consequent tragedy of the House of Atreus, is replete with bribery, treachery, and blood-guilt: the myth of Amphiaraos. The Old Seer, in fact, has been lifted directly out of an iconographic tradition originally developed for the Amphiaraos myth and he is used in the east pediment to color darkly the myth presented there. Though it is generally thought that Classical sculptures directly and unambiguously address the spectator, it is suggested here that the idea that sculpture could be allusive or contain different levels of meaning was not foreign to the mentality of the fifth century b.c.

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Notes on contributors

Jeffrey M. Hurwit

Jeffrey Hurwit's publications include articles on Bronze Age Aegean and Archaic Greek art (American Journal of Archaeology and elsewhere), and The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C. (1985). Currently he is preparing a study of the Kritios Boy. [Department of Art History, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403]