Among the ancient world’s most famous bronzes there were images of gods, like the colossal Athena Promachos who guarded the Athenian Acropolis (the glint of her spear could be seen from Cape Sounion, more than fifty kilometers distant), an early work of the great Pheidias, designer and master sculptor of the Parthenon, and the still-larger statue of Apollo known as the Colossus of Rhodes. But bronze, with its warm sheen and its flexibility, lent itself above all to the portrayal of human beings.

Source: The Grandest Art of the Ancients by Ingrid D. Rowland | The New York Review of Books