Work began on the Parthenon, built on the Acropolis, in 447 BC to replace an existing temple which was destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC and cost 469 silver talents to build.
The work began under the orders of Pericles to show the wealth and exuberance of Athenian power. The name of the building most likely came from a cult statue of Athena Parthenos housed in the eastern room of the building. This magnificent structure was built of ivory and gold and was sculptured by the renowned sculptor Phidias.As with most buildings on the Acropolis it was dedicated to Athena to thank the Goddess for their success.
The Parthenon was finally finished in 432 BC and was to show the world the dominance and power of Athens. The vast majority of the money used in the construction came from the Delian League funds. The Delian League was a treaty between the Greek states in league against the Persian Empire. However two years before work started on the Parthenon, the Athenians had struck a peace treaty with the Persians ending the war, although the League continued to exist.It is believed that because of this the league stopped being a mutual defence against Persia but part of the Athenian Empire. This theory was reinforced when Athens moved the Leagues treasury from the Pan-Hellenic sanctuary at Delos to the Parthenon (Opisthodomos room).
Not only was the Parthenon a magnificent structure to look at, but it also showed Athenian dominance over the rest of the Greek peninsula and that Athens was its Greek imperial master. The five main instigators of the design and construction on the Parthenon were Pericles, Phidias, Kalamis, Ictinus and Calibrates.Pericles was the leading Athenian statesman at the time, Phidias and Kalamis were in charge of the design of the sculptures and decorations, and Ictinus and Calibrates were the main architects. The vast majority of the 469 silver talents spent on the Parthenon went on transporting the stone from Mount Pantelakos, which was about 16 kilometres from Athens, to the Acropolis.
It is thought there are around 13400 stones in the building. The Parthenon is a clear example of Doric design with Ionic architectural features.The architects used a clever visual effect in their design of the building. The curvature of the Stylobate, the taper of the Naos walls (housing the cult statue) and the Entasis of the columns allow the visual effect to make the temple appear more symmetrical than it actually is.
This design was so renowned it has been copied centuries later, even the Romans incorporated it into the design of their buildings, and a good example of this can be seen at the Roman library at Ephesus. Measured at the top step, the dimensions of the base of the Parthenon are 69. meters by 30. 9 meters (228. 0 x 101.
4 ft). The Cella was 29. 8 meters long by 19. 2 meters wide (97.
8 x 63. 0 ft), with internal Doric colonnades in two tiers, structurally necessary to support the roof. On the exterior, the Doric columns measure 1. 9 meters (6. 2 ft) in diameter and are 10.
4 meters (34. 1 ft) high. The corner columns are slightly larger in diameter. The Stylobate has an upward curvature towards its centre of 60 millimetres (2. 36 in) on the east and west ends, and of 110 millimetres (4.
33 in) on the sides.Inside the Cella it was made up of both old and new elements. There was a double pi-shaped colonnade which held the statue Athena Parthenos. The statue showed Athena dressed in full armour holding Nike (Goddess of Victory) to the Athenians in her right hand. In the west room (Opisthodomos) were 4 Ionic columns.
The two sloped wooden roofs had marble tiles with false lion shaped spouts in the corners and false palmette shaped antefixes running along the edge. The room also held large marble statues placed on corner pediments, which were adorned with depictions of Athena's life.The East Pediment showed Athena's birth from Zeus' head whilst the Olympian Gods watched. The West pediment portrayed the dispute between Athena and Poseidon over control of Athens in front of Heroes, the Gods and the mythical Kings of Attica. The Outer Colonnade was made up of 92 metopes alternating with Triglyphs that were placed above the epistyle underneath the architrave, all of which held reliefs, (Trojan War on the northern side, Centauromachy on the southern side, Amazonomachy on the western side and Gigantomachy on the eastern side).
The Frieze (dated 442-438 BC), which ran along the top of the Opisthodomos, Pronaos and the Cella was of the Ionic order and showed the greatest Athenian festival 'Panathinaia'. The festival held a procession from the Dipylon Gate in the Koromikos to the Acropolis. The procession was held yearly and had a special procession every fourth year. Athenians and foreigners came together at the festival, with all paying tribute and offering sacrifices to Athena. The Parthenon had been kept in relatively good condition right up until the 19th century.
During this time it had seen a number of changes.For nearly a thousand years the Parthenon was still used as a temple to Athena until as late as the 4th Century AD. By this time Athens had been turned into a province of the Roman Empire and had lost most of its former glory. Unfortunately sometime in the 5th Century the Parthenon was raided by a Roman Emperor and the statue of the cult image of Athena was stolen and taken to Constantinople where it was later destroyed during the crusades (around 1204 AD).
After the looting by the Roman Emperors the building itself was still intact and was turned into a church in the 5th Century AD by the Christians.The Byzantine Christians converted the Parthenon in honour of Parthena Maria (Virgin Mary), or the Church of the Theotokos (Mother of God), which it remained for around 250 years. Turning the temple into a church meant that the building was still kept in good condition apart from a bit a restructuring internally; for example a few of the columns were removed as well as some of the marble statues. It also meant that statues and other motifs depicting more than one god were either removed or destroyed.The Ottomans converted the Parthenon from a church to a mosque (ca.
1460s). Again the Parthenon was well maintained and looked after until the late 17th Century. In 1687 the Venetians, under Francesco Morosini, attacked the Ottomans in Athens. The Acropolis had been fortified by the Ottomans (as well as the Athenians over a century before). The building was also used as a gunpowder store and when the Parthenon took a direct hit from a mortar fired by the Venetians from the Hill of Philopappus, the gunpowder exploded and destroyed a large part of the building.Morosini and his men soon plundered the building, looting what they could find and destroying the rest, leaving the partial ruins that can be seen today.
As most of the sculptures and depictions were either looted or destroyed we only know what they looked like from drawings by Jacques Carrey, a Flemish artist in 1674. What was left was further damaged in 1801 when many of the depictions and remaining antiques were forcibly removed by the British Ambassador at Constantinople, the Earl of Elgin, under orders to make casts and drawings by the Sultan.It was only in 1975 that a concertive effort was made by the Greek government, with help from Europe, to try and restore the damage caused by the explosion as well as the modern day damage caused by pollution. Unfortunately the Parthenon will never be restored to its former glory; however, in time we will hopefully be able to have a better idea of what it once looked like. When work began on the Parthenon in 447 BC, the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power.Work on the temple continued until 432; the Parthenon, then, represents the tangible and visible efflorescence of Athenian imperial power, unencumbered by the depradations of the Peloponnesian War.
Likewise, it symbolizes the power and influence of the Athenian politician, Perikles, who championed its construction. Some historians believe that Athens concluded a peace treaty with Persia in 449, two years before work began on the Parthenon. The significance of this would be that the Delian League/Athenian Empire continued to exist, even after the reason for its existence (a mutual defense league against the Persians) had ceased to be valid.In other words it was now openly acknowledged that Athens was not just the head of the Greek defense league but actually an imperial master over other Greek states. The decision by the Athenians in 454 BC to move the League treasury from the Panhellenic sanctuary at Delos to the Athenian acropolis points in the same direction.
Because the Parthenon was built with League funds, the building may be read as an expression of the confidence of the Athenians in this newly naked imperialism.But the piety of this undertaking should not be underestimated; the Persians had sacked the temples on the Athenian acropolis in 480, and rebuilding them fulfilled, in Bury's words, the Athenians' "debt of gratitude to heaven for the defeat of the Mede. " The Parthenon is a Doric peripteral temple, which means that it consists of a rectangular floor plan with a series of low steps on every side, and a colonnade (8 x 17) of Doric columns extending around the periphery of the entire structure. Each entrance has an additional six columns in front of it.
The larger of the two interior rooms, the naos, housed the cult statue.The smaller room (the opisthodomos) was used as a treasury. Here is a plan of the temple: It was built to replace two earlier temples of Athena on the Acropolis. One of these, of which almost no trace remains today, stood south of the Parthenon (between the Parthenon and the Erechtheum). The other, which was still being built at the time of the Persian sack in 480, was on the same spot as the Parthenon.
We know the names of the architects (Iktinos and Kallikrates) and also of the sculptor (Pheidias) who made the massive chryselephantine cult statue of the goddess.The three main types of columns used in Greek temples and other public buildings are Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The truest and most basic difference among the orders has to do with proportions (Doric columns, for example, being thicker and shorter, Ionic columns taller and slimmer). As a shortcut, the orders may be distinguished most easily by their capitals (the tops of the columns).
As you can see from the following examples, the Doric capital has the simplest design; the Ionic has the curlicues called volutes, and the Corinthian has the acanthus leaves:Doric Capital Ionic Capital Corinthian Capital Doric is not only a type of column, but an "order"; this means that temples of the Doric order not only have this type of column, but also have a certain structure at the upper levels. The different types of orders (column plus entablature) are illustrated by these diagrams, from Perseus: Doric order, and Ionic order. The Doric order is characterized by the series of triglyphs and metopes on the entablature. Each metope was occupied by a panel of relief sculpture.
The Parthenon combines elements of the Doric and Ionic orders.Basically a Doric peripteral temple, it features a continuous sculpted frieze borrowed from the Ionic order, as well as four Ionic columns supporting the roof of the opisthodomos. The metopes of the Parthenon all represented various instances of the struggle between the forces of order and justice, on the one hand, and criminal chaos on the other. On the west side, the mythical battle against the Amazons (Amazonomachy); on the south, the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs (Centauromachy); on the east, the battle between the gods and the giants (Gigantomachy); on the north, the Greeks versus the Trojans.Of the panels the best preserved are those showing the Centauromachy. Here are South Metope 31 and 30 (compare the discussion in Pollitt, Art ; Experience, 82-83): For a complete catalogue, with images and descriptions of all the Parthenon metopes, see Perseus' Parthenon Metope Page (photos will be available only if you are on a Reed computer or a computer on another campus which has enhanced access to the Perseus photos by license agreement), and theAustralian National University collection (photos, but no text).
These relief sculptures, larger than those of the metopes, occupied the triangular space above the triglyphs and metopes.Those at the west end of the temple depicted the contest between Poseidon and Athena for the right to be the patron deity of Athens (Athena's gift of the olive tree was preferred over Poseidon's spring). The eastern pedimental group showed the birth of Athena from Zeus' head. The pedimental sculpture suffered badly when the Parthenon was hit by a Venetian shell in 1687 and the powder magazine inside exploded. This reclining god (probably Dionysus) from the east pediment gives some sense of the quality of the sculpture:For a complete catalogue, with images and descriptions of all the Parthenon pedimental sculpture, see Perseus' Parthenon East Pediment Page and West Pediment Page (photos will be available only if you are on a Reed computer or a computer on another campus which has enhanced access to the Perseus photos by license agreement). The Parthenon frieze runs around the upper edge of the temple wall.
Its relatively small size (3 feet 5 inches tall) and placement (inside from the triglyphs and metopes) made it fairly hard to see from the ground.Unlike the metopes, the frieze has a single subject on all four sides. On three sides (north, west, and south) it depicts a procession of horsemen, musicians, sacrificial animals, and other figures with various ritual functions. On the east side there is a scene centered on a child handing a folded cloth to an older man. On one side of them seated gods and goddess are in attendance; on the other, two girls are carrying something.
Although the state of preservation is poor, the interpretation of the subject has hotly debated.Most scholars agree that it represents the Panathenaic procession, but some think it is a mythical, "original" procession, while others believe that it is the procession which took place in the same period as the temple was built, and that this illustrates the (over-)confident spirit of the Athenians, who dared to put themselves where ordinarily only gods and heroes might be found. Recently the debate has taken a new turn with the publication of a radical original theory by Joan B. Connelly. Here is a detailed summary of Connelly's ideas and some questions about them.
