Word: olympias
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Notwithstanding the bad weather, a good-sized audience assembled in the Fogg Museum last night to hear Dr. Dorpfeld's second lecture on recent excavations at Olympia. The substance of his address is as follows...
Students of ancient art and archaeologists had long desired the excavation of the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, with its buildings and countless works of art. Winckelmann planned, as early as the eighteenth century, an international excavation of this celebrated site, but it was reserved for the late Professor Ernst Curtius to carry out the plan. During the years 1875-1881 the entire sanctuary and the places immediately adjacent were laid bare, at the expense ($200,000) of the German government. For four years Professor Dorpfeld was charged with the conduct of the excavations as supervising architect...
...buildings at Olympia were destroyed partly by earthquakes, partly by incursions of the Byzantines. The ruins were then covered by the little river Cladeus with sand to an average depth of fifteen feet. The same river was utilized in excavating the ruins in removing the masses of earth that covered them...
Professor Dorpfeld gave a brief account of the situation of Olympia, and threw on a screen pictures and plans of the buildings within the sanctuary, describing the great columns and the pedimental sculptures of the temple of Zeus and the construction of the temple of Hera, the oldest temple in Greece. This temple was originally of wood, but was renewed little by little in marble. The careful study of its remains has finally solved the perplexing question of the origin of the Doric style of architecture. The pictures showed very clearly the varying sizes of the columns and that...
...Altis lay the Stadium and Hippodrome, where the Olympic games were celebrated; the Bouleuterium, the ground plan of which had the form of a ship and is still a riddle to the architects; and the palaestra and gymnasium where the athletes exercised. Countless works of art were discovered in Olympia, and beautiful pictures of many of these were thrown on the screen, the pedimental sculptures of the temple of Zeus, the beautiful statue of Victory by Paeonius, and that masterpiece of Greek sculpture, the Hermes of Praxiteles. Besides these the museum which the Greek government has erected at Olympia contains...