The figure of Zeus in the form of a human being also played a great role in Greek art. The Greek sculptor Lysippos was widely known and admired for his monumental statues of Zeus.
Perhaps this is why he was asked to create a full-size portrait of Alexander the Great now known as the Scraper, a Roman copy after the original bronze statue made around 330 B.C.E. According to legend, Lysippos allegedly met with Zeus on Mount Olympus, where Zeus posed for him while holding a golden scepter, a sign of power and authority.
In addition, a reasonably reliable image of Alexander the Great can be found on a coin issued by Lysimachos, the king of Thrace, sometime in the 4th or 3rd centuries B.C.E. The portrait on this coin shows "Alexander in profile wearing the curled ram's horn headdress that identifies him as the Greek-Egyptian god of Zeus-Amun" (Ferguson, 278). Certainly, when one looks upon the face of Alexander the Great as presented in the Scraper statue and on the coin of King Lysimachos, it could be said that one is gazing at the face of Zeus himself.
Although Zeus was greatly honored for his love and admiration for the ancient Greeks as their "father," he was in some ways a very deceitful and lusty god. As Ronald Leadbetter points out, Zeus was a master of disguises which he used to his advantage when he mated with unsuspecting human females. For...
Also, Zeus "abducted the Phoenician princess Europa disguised as a bull (and) carried her on his back to the island of Crete where she bore him three sons -- Minos, Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon" ("Zeus," Internet). Thus, it appears that while Zeus commanded that mortal man must obey him without question, he himself felt it was acceptable to breech his own laws. After all, Zeus was the "King of the Gods" and the ultimate symbol of the Greek Pantheon, a religious system still studied by scholars today and even worshipped by certain modern groups who consider themselves as "Children of Zeus" (Gimbutas, 312).
Bibliography
Ferguson, John. Among the Gods: An Exploration of Ancient Greek Religion. London: Constable Press, 1989.
Gimbutas, Marija. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 6500-3500 B.C. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Hurwitt, Jeffrey M. The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C. Ithaca, NY: Random House, 1985.
Leadbetter, Ronald. "Zeus." Encyclopedia Mythica. Internet. 2005. Retrieved at http://www.pantheon.org/articles/z/zeus.html.
