Phidias

Hello! My name is Phidias, and I was a sculptor who lived a very long time ago in ancient Greece. A sculptor is an artist who makes statues out of stone, metal, or other materials. I was born in the beautiful city of Athens around the year 480 BCE. Even when I was just a young boy, I loved to create things with my hands. I would spend hours shaping clay and carving wood, dreaming of one day making amazing art for everyone in my city to see. I knew that making statues was what I was meant to do.

As I grew up, I became good friends with a very important man named Pericles. He was the leader of Athens, and he had big ideas for making our city the most beautiful in the world. Around the year 447 BCE, Pericles gave me a very special job. He asked me to be in charge of all the art for a magnificent new temple. This temple was going to be built on a high hill in the center of the city, called the Acropolis. It was the famous Parthenon, a temple built to honor our city’s protector, the goddess Athena. I was so excited to be a part of such a wonderful project.

My job was to create sculptures that would make the Parthenon shine. Inside the temple, I created my most famous work for Athens: a giant statue of the goddess Athena. We called her Athena Parthenos. She was as tall as a four-story building and was made from shiny gold and smooth, white ivory. Her shield and helmet gleamed in the light. After I finished my work in Athens, I traveled to another city called Olympia. There, around 435 BCE, I created another huge statue. This one was of the king of the gods, Zeus. It was so grand and spectacular that it later became known as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

I lived a full life creating art that helped people feel proud of their cities and their gods. Although my giant statues of Athena and Zeus were made of precious materials and are no longer around today, my work is still remembered. Some of the stone sculptures I designed for the outside of the Parthenon have survived all these years, and you can even see them in museums today. I hope my art showed people how beautiful and lifelike statues could be, and I am proud that my work has inspired other artists for thousands of years.