Great as was the fame of Phidias in after ages, we are left in
almost complete ignorance as to the circumstances of his life. If
he was really the author of certain works ascribed to him, he must
have been born about 500 B.C. This would make him as old, perhaps,
as Myron. Another view would put his birth between 490 and 485,
still another, as late as 480. The one undisputed date in his life
is the year 438, when the gold and ivory statue of Athena in the
Parthenon was completed. Touching the time and circumstances of
his death we have two inconsistent traditions. According to the
one, he was brought to trial in Athens immediately after the
completion of the Athena on the charge of misappropriating some of
the ivory with which he had been intrusted but made his escape to
Elis, where, after executing the gold and ivory Zeus for the
temple of that god at Olympia he was put to death for some
unspecified reason by the Eleans in 432-1. According to the other
tradition he was accused in Athens, apparently not before 432, of
stealing some of the gold destined for the Athena and, when this
charge broke down, of having sacrilegiously introduced his own and
Pericles's portraits into the relief on Athena's shield, being
cast into prison he died there of disease, or, as some said, of
poison.
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