  We present the first results from our population synthesis models of
elliptical galaxies. In this paper, we concentrate upon the optical region of
the spectrum (3000-7000 A). We model elliptical galaxies as coeval,
single-metallicity stellar populations. Integrated spectra are constructed from
synthetic spectra of the stars which lie along 6, 10 and 16 Gyr isochrones
having [Fe/H]=+0.39, 0.00 and -0.47. Our oldest, solar-metallicity spectrum is
found to be an excellent match to a spectrum of the E1/S0 galaxy NGC 4472. The
broad-band colors measured from our models infer that the reddest E/S0 galaxies
have [Fe/H]~+0.25, with bluer galaxies probably having lower metallicities
rather than younger ages. In addition, the Lick indices derived from our
synthetic spectra are compared to Worthey's (1994) models and the observed
indices in elliptical galaxies.
