Page "Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens" Paragraph 8

The work was abandoned when the tyranny was overthrown and Hippias was expelled in 510 BC.

Only the platform and some elements of the columns had been completed by this point, and the temple remained in this state for 336 years.

The temple was left unfinished during the years of Athenian democracy, apparently because the Greeks thought it hubristic to build on such a scale.

In the treatise Politics, Aristotle cited the temple as an example of how tyrannies engaged the populace in great works for the state and left them no time, energy or means to rebel.