At the time when a demand occurred for new statues of the gods, the rapid progress of the art of sculpture made it inevitable that these new statues should not be mere reproductions or reminiscences of the ones they replaced, but fresh and original conceptions, worthy of the increased skill of the artist and of the nobler ideals of the people.
And by one of those coincidences which we meet so often both in the history of art and in that of literature, just at the time when the material conditions, the spirit of the people, and the rapid advance of art gave the utmost scope for artistic creation, there arose the man of transcendent genius to give full expression to the religious and artistic aspirations of the time.

The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias.

It is true that there was an interval between the defeat of the Persians and the period of highest attainment in Greece; and during this interval many temples were built or rebuilt, and many statues were set up as objects of worship or as dedications to the gods.

Some of these may have anticipated to a certain extent the work of Phidias; several of them were of colossal size, like his chief masterpieces, and thus, even from the technical point of view, may have prepared the way before him; one, the Apollo by Calamis at Apollonia, was about forty-five feet high, and so actually rivalled the Zeus and Athena of Phidias in size.

But of these statues we know little or nothing.