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THE PARTHENON 447-438  B.C.

After the Greek victory at Marathon in 490 b.c., the Athenians decided to build a temple to Athena Parthenos on the Acropolis-thank offering and memorial to the 192 men who died in the battle.

The Parthenon was in its early stages when the Persians returned to sack and burn the Acropolis in 480. After the Athenians had defeated the Persians in 479, they took an oath not to rebuild the temples, but to leave the ruined Acropolis as a reminder of the Persians'sacrilege.

Greek city states formed the Delian League for mutual protection, comprising Athens and the Ionian cities. The treasury was kept on the island of Delos and used for mutual defense. By 454 when the treasury was transferred to Athens, the Delian League had become in effect an Athenian empire. Athens finally made peace with Persia in 449.

In 448 the Athenian assembly, under the influence of Pericles, voted to rebuild the temples of the Acropolis, using public funds which had been increased with the treasury of the Delian League. The architects were Iktinos and Callicrates. Phidias, a friend of Pericles, was in overall charge of the project and made the cult statue of the Athena . A committee of five overseers kept records of the money voted for the temple and the statue and how it was spent. The annual accounts were carved on stone slabs, fragments of which survive.

The new Parthenon was built on the foundations prepared for the earlier temple, which were enlarged. The Parthenon was built entirely of marble from quarries on Mount Pentelicon, about 10 miles from Athens. Roof tiles were made of Parian marble. The Parthenon incorporated subtle deviations from regularity unprecedented among Greek temples.

The Parthenon was lavishly decorated with sculpture.

Ninety-two metopes, 447 - 442 b.c., depict mythical battles: Lapiths and Centaurs, Greeks and Amazons, Gods and Giants, the Trojan War. Some metopes were removed to the British Museum, others remained in place on the Acropolis. They have now been placed in the Acropolis Museum.

The frieze, 442-438 b.c. depicts a procession 525 feet long. Its subject matter has traditionally been interpreted as the Panathenaic Procession, but it differs from that procession as described in written sources. Some have suggested that it is the 192 men who died at Marathon in the last festival before the battle who appear on the frieze. Recently Joan Connelly has proposed that it depicts Erechtheus, a heroic king of early Athens and his queen Praxithea, preparing to sacrifice their daughters in order to save the city.

The Pediments 438-432 b.c. The west pediment depicts the contest of Athena and Poseidon for the loyalty of Athens. The east pediment depicts the birth of Athena from the forehead of Zeus.

The Parthenon remained intact into Roman times and was described by Pausanius in the second century a.d. The cult statue of Athena was removed by the end of the 5th century a.d. By the 7th century a.d. the Parthenon was converted into a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In the process some changes were made to the architecture-the entrance was moved to the west and an apse was built on the east. When the Turks conquered Greece in the 15th century, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque. The building and its sculptures were badly damaged by a Venetian shell during a battle between the Venetians and the Turks in 1687. The Venetians attempted to take the horses from the west pediment, but they fell and were destroyed. In 1801 Lord Elgin, who was British ambassador to Turkey, removed many of the sculptures from the Parthenon and brought them to England. There is some question as to whether he actually had permission to remove the sculptures or just to study and make copies of them. They eventually passed into the collection of the British Museum. During the 1970s the original sculpture remaining on the Parthenon was taken into the Acropolis Museum (and replaced by copies). For the last decade an ambitious project to preserve and protect the monuments of the Acropolis has been underway. The Greeks have always resented the loss of the marbles and have in recent years renewed their efforts to have them returned. They have allowed space for them in the new Acropolis Museum, which is nearly finished.

For the Greek perspective on the controversy, see the following website.
http://www.greece.org/parthenon/marbles/
 
 

General Works

B. Ashmole, Architect and Sculptor in Classical Greece, New York, 1972.
Bruno, V., ed. The Parthenon , New York, 1974.
Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens, Dartmouth, 1992.
Tournikiotis, Panayotis,The Parthenon and Its Impact in Modern Times, Athens, 1994.
Woodford, S. The Parthenon, Cambridge, 1981.
Worshipping Athena, Madison, 1996.
 

Sculpture

J. Boardman, The Parthenon and its Sculptures, Austin, 1985.
Olga Palagia, The Pediments of the Parthenon, Leiden, 1993.

The Frieze

Joan B. Connelly, "Parthenon and Parthenoi: A Mythological Interpretation of the Parthenon Frieze," American Journal of Archaeology, 100 (1996) 53-80.
Ian Jenkins, The Parthenon Frieze, London 1994.
M. Robertson and A. Franz, The Parthenon Frieze , Oxford 1975.

The Controversy over the Elgin Marbles

C. Hitchens, The Elgin Marbles, Should They Be Returned?, London 1987.
W. St. Clair, Lord Elgin and His Marbles, Oxford, 1967.

The Restoration

Economakis, ed. Acropolis Restoration, London, 1994.