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[2] The statue of Zeus is the work of Ageladas1 and was made originally for the Messenian settlers in Naupactus. The priest is chosen annually and keeps the image in his house.2 They keep an annual festival, the Ithomaea, and originally a musical contest was held. This can be gathered from the epic lines of Eumelus and other sources. Eumelus, in his processional hymn to Delos, says:“For dear to the God of Ithome was the Muse, whose <lute> is pure and free her sandals.
Eumelus, unknown location.I think that he wrote the lines because he knew that they held a musical contest.

1 See also Paus. 6.8.6; Paus. 6.10.6; Paus. 6.14.11, where the athletes commemorated were victorious between the years 520 and 508 B.C. An inscription from Olympia (c. 500 B.C.; Inschr. v. Olymp., 631) mentions the slave or son of Hagelaidas the Argive. The Scholiast on Aristoph. Frogs 504, who calls Ageladas the master of Pheidias, states, however, that he was the artist who made the Heracles set up in Melite to commemorate the deliverance from the “great plague” (430-427 B.C. Cf. Pliny NH 34.49).

2 Cf. Paus. 7.24.4

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