(LIGHTS DOWN AND FIRST SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT)

Good morning and welcome back from Fall Break. My talk today focuses on the building on the screen, the Parthenon built in Athens between 447 and 432. The late first century CE Greek historian Plutarch had no question about the Parthenon's importance for understanding 5th-century Athens. For him, the Parthenon stood in his time, a half millennium after it was built, and I quote: "as the sole witness that the tales of the ancient power and glory of Greece are no mere fables." Unquote. To understand what Plutarch meant by this statement we must understand the Parthenon in its context. That is, we must ask how this building relates to its physical surroundings in the city of Athens and on the Athenian Acropolis where the temple stood, and more generally how it relates to the intellectual surroundings of fifth-century Athens as a whole. To do so, we will focus on two particular aspects of the Parthenon: its status as an Athenian civic monument and the significance of its design and sculptural decoration.

As you know from reading Pollitt, the Parthenon has suffered greatly from the ravages of time, so that it is only a shell of its original self. The Parthenon survived into the Early modern era almost entirely in tact. It was preserved because the building remained in continual use; first converted into a church in the sixth century, and then into a mosque after the Islamic conquest by the Turks. Unfortunately, during the late seventeenth century the Parthenon was also used as a powder magazine. In 1687, in their battle to take Athens from the Turks, the Venetians shelled the Acropolis (SLIDE RIGHT). In spite of being rather terrible shots, theVentians after three days of shelling finally made a direct hit. As this print on the right, which was executed shortly after the attack, shows, the resulting explosion blew the roof off the Parthenon and knocked huge holes on all four sides. The building suffered further in the first decade of the nineteenth-century when the British envoy to Ottoman Court, Lord Elgin, removed a great deal of the sculpture and brought it to England. Air pollution especially during the last half-century has also contributed to the degradation of the building and forced the removal of much of the remaining sculpture. The condition we find the Parthenon in today is largely due to late nineteenth and twentieth century restoration, which appears to be largely accurate.

In my last lecture, when I spoke about Greek kouroi. I attempted to establish both what these figures represented and what they meant by making connections with what we know about the Archaic period. Hopefully, you came away convinced that I was at least on the right track. But hopefully you realized as well that these were speculations of the vaguest sort, mainly because we know so little about the works we examined. For each of these works, we could not answer with any precision even such basic questions as: who made this sculpture? when? for whom? why and how was it experienced? However, with the Parthenon we know the answers to all these questions and more, because we know more about the culture of the fifth century than we did about the Archaic era. For 5th-century Athens, we have a considerable number of literary and historical sources crucial to the study of art. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT)

I start our examination of the Parthenon, by looking at a map of Athens and a view of the Athenian Agora, the focus of the day to day life of the active male population of the city. Here in the agora the major business deals were made, here were the major markets, and surrounding it were the major civic buildings that were the signs of the Athenian democracy. In the slide on the right we look to the southeast where we see towering over us the Acropolis.

An acropolis, meaning literally high city, was a central feature of most ancient Greek cities. The Athenian Acropolis was the oldest section of Athens. With high shear rock walls on all sides it was an easily defendable location, and as such it had served as the site of a Mycenaean fortress. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Acropolis was so well protected that it appears to have sheltered the only Mycenaean city that survived the otherwise universal destruction which marked the end of the bronze age in Greece. (SLIDE RIGHT) In fact, we can see the remains of part of the Mycenaean fortifications in the wall visible at the bottom right of the right-hand slide. While perhaps a masonry detail of a wall such as this is not so exciting for you, it is to me as it is the very evidence which archaeologists and architectural historians such as myself study to understand the architecture of the past. We'll be looking at some other and hopefully more interesting walls a bit later.

By the end of the sixth century, the Acropolis was no longer a protected residential area. The relatively more peaceful times, and resulting expansion of the city, meant that Athens was no longer limited to this citadel and now stretched around its lower flanks. By this time, the Acropolis had become instead the site of the city's most important religious cults, and most importantly, the center of the city's titular deity, Athena. If the Agora was the center of public or civic and commercial focus of Athens, the Acropolis dedicated to Athena was the city's main religious one. Athena was celebrated there in numerous guises on the Acropolis. These included: first, Athena Polias, that is Athena in her aspect as the founder and protector of the city; secondly, Athena Promachos, literally Athena, fighting in front, that is Athena in her guise as warrior; thirdly, Athena Nike, that is Athena in her aspect of Victorious warrior; and fourthly, Athena Parthenos, that is Athena in her guise as a unwed virgin. We're not very well informed about the early architectural arrangements for all these types of Athenas. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT) We are certain that one temple was erected probably around 510 which was dedicated to Athena Polias. This temple is shown on the left side of the reconstruction model of the Acropolis shown in the slide on the right. A second temple to Athena, this one dedicated to Athena Parthenos, is shown under construction on the left side of the reconstruction. This temple was probably begun sometime in the late 480s. By the end of the fifth century, there were statues to Athena in each of the four guises mentioned above, and three buildings erected specifically to house three of these images.

The temple of around 510 did not last long into the fifth century, and the one begun in the 480s was never completed. Herodotus tells us that in 480, at the time of the second Persian invasion, the entire Acropolis was plundered and then burned by the invaders. Among the buildings lost were the Temple to Athena Polias and the temple to Athena Parthenos still under construction at the time of the sack.

Though most of the population of Athens, having fled, survived the invasion, the Persian sack left a deep impression on the Athenians making them realize that their city was susceptible to being captured. After the final Greek victory over the Persian land forces in 479, the Athenians erected stone walls around the perimeter of their city to protect themselves in case of future attack. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT)

Not surprisingly, because of its importance to the city, the Acropolis was among the earliest areas to be fortified. Both slides show the unusual nature of this fortification wall. Stones of all sorts were used, including a large number of architectural elements. On closer examination, we see in the slide on the left, that some blocks in the wall are the round drums that were stacked one on top of each other to form the columns that were key supporting elements of a Greek temple.

These fragments (SLIDE RIGHT) come from the temple on the Acropolis known as the Old Parthenon, the unfinished temple destroyed in the Persian sack of 480, shown on the right of the right slide in another view of the model depicting the Acropolis as it stood before the Persian invasion. Begun shortly after the battle of Marathon, its foundations lie beneath the present Parthenon. (SLIDE LEFT) The foundations of the other earlier temple that was also destroyed in 480 have been revealed by excavation. Burn marks on its foundations attest to the thoroughness of the Persian's destruction of the Acropolis. (POINT OUT) Yet, neither of these temples dedicated to the city's titular deity was immediately rebuilt after the victories of Salamis and Plataea.

Why weren't the destroyed temples rebuilt as memorials to the war and votive gifts to Athena for the subsequent Greek victories? Why weren't the drums and other remnants of the earlier temples incorporated into a new temple rather than into the city walls? Though we do not have many of the details, apparently these temples were not rebuilt because of an oath sworn by the Greek armies shortly before the battle of Plataea in 479. In the oath, the Greeks reportedly swore not only to fight to the death, but also, if they were victorious, not to rebuild any of the temples destroyed by the barbarians leaving temples in their destroyed state as memorials to the impiety of the Persians. Instead of rebuilding their destroyed temples, the Athenians transformed the ruined fragments of these temples from mere building blocks into memorials in themselves by displaying them in the most visible part of the city walls overlooking the Agora.

Had the oath of Plataea been followed to the letter, I would not have to be giving you this talk today. (SLIDES LEFT & RIGHT) The Parthenon begun in 447, in apparent violation of the oath, replaces a building that was destroyed by the Persians. How did the Athenians justify their action?

The most important change vis-à-vis the Oath of Plataea was the peace made with Persia by the Athenian general Kallias (Kall-i-aws) around the year 450. During the three decades between the Oath of Plataea of 479 and the commencement of the Parthenon's construction in 447, the oath was indeed followed, and no new temples were built anywhere in Attica. But after 450, as far as Athens was concerned, the so-called peace of Kallias absolved the Greeks of their oath.

Equally important as the peace of Kallias was the change in the political structure of the Greek world which occurred during this period. (SLIDE LEFT) At the start of the period, a defensive alliance between Greek city states in the Aegean, known as the Delian League, had been been formed to face the continued Persian threat. I show you a map of the League in the slide on the Left. Initially, Athens served as the leading state of the league. However, Athenian control became tighter and tighter, until the league was nothing more than an administrative framework for the Athenian rule over the region. The shift from defensive alliance to Athenian hegemony was made entirely clear in 454 with the transferal of the league's treasury from the island of Delos to Athens. The dues each member paid was now available for use as however Athens saw fit. After the peace of Kallias in 450, with attention no longer aimed to beyond the borders of Greece, the Athenians could concentrate their attentions and the league funds on their fellow Delian league allies around the Aegean and building projects at home.

Athenians could justify the construction of the Parthenon, by pointing out first, that the Parthenon is not a rebuilding of a temple destroyed by the Persians, but rather the completion of a temple which had only been under construction at the time of the invasion; and secondly that the Parthenon does not replace the temple of Athena Polias, which was destroyed during the sack of 480 and which did in fact remain in ruins throughout the classical period as a sort of memorial to this event. As we shall see next week when we begin the "History of the Peloponnesian War" by the fifth-century Athenian historian Thucydides, this sort of mincing of words is exactly the sort of thinking that the Delian allies and other Greeks expected from the Athenians.

We know a great deal about how the funds from the Delian were used because, even more so than our present day democracy, the Athenian democracy required close accountability of all the public funds that were spent on any project. In fifth-century Athens, this accountability was open to all to verify because all these accounts were inscribed in stone and then posted in public places.

About one-sixtieth of the quadrennial collection from the Delian league was devoted to the cults of Athena, including the Parthenon construction project. Those accounts of the public funds used for the Parthenon were engraved on stone slabs and set up on the Acropolis. Much of these texts have come down to us, and the inscriptions are so detailed that we can establish a very precise construction history for the Parthenon. We know both that the first stone was quarried for the building in 447 and that the final payment for the last of the sculpture was made in 432. They inform us that the temple was designed by Iktinos and Kallicarates. From the inscriptions, we can follow the construction step by step and in much more detail than for any other building from antiquity.

Though the Parthenon accounts indicate that the building was constructed as a monument by and for the Athenian democracy under the financial watch of every citizen, it was also a personal monument of Pericles, the leader of Athens about whom you will be reading much more in Thucydides' "History." The apparent conflict or contradiction of a building which was both a monument to an entire city while at the same time a monument to a single individual should not surprise us. As we shall see, Thucydides describes Athens under Pericles as "in name a democracy, but in fact the government by the greatest citizen."

We obtain a particularly keen insight into the dual nature of the Parthenon as both a monument to the individual Pericles and a civic monument to Athens in the following debate recorded by the historian Plutarch who I quoted, at the outset of my talk. Though preserved only in this form dating five hundred years after Pericles died, the vividness of the arguments, and the details of the Parthenon program recorded here strongly suggest that the passage may well be authentic. Of the program, Plutarch, wrote and I quote:

But there was one measure above all which at once gave the greatest pleasure to the Athenians; adorned their city; and created amazement among the rest of mankind; and which is today the sole testimony that the tales of the ancient power and the glory of Greece are no mere fables. By this I mean Pericles' construction of temples and buildings: (PAUSE) and yet it was this, more than any action of his, which his enemies slandered and misrepresented. They cried out in the assembly that Athens had lost her good name and disgraced herself by transferring from Delos into her own keeping the funds that had been contributed by the rest of Greece. "The Greeks must be outraged," they cried. "They must consider this an act of Bare-faced tyranny, when they see that with their own contributions, extorted from them by force for the war against the Persians, we are gilding and beautifying our city, as if it were some vain woman decking herself out with costly stones and thousand talent temples."

Pericles' answer to the people was that the Athenians were not obliged to give the allies an account of how their money was spent, provided that they carried on the war and kept the Persians away. "All they supply is money," he told the Athenians, "and this belongs not to the people who give but to those who receive it, so long as they provide the services paid for." Unquote

Plutarch shows that with peace reigning, Pericles no longer believed that the Delian League money needed to be spent solely towards military ends. Instead of putting an end to the League's membership fees, Pericles felt justified in channeling funds towards building projects such as the Parthenon. Plutarch also shows us that Pericles' point of view did not go unchallenged even in Athens. Although there was some outcry against this misuse of funds, neither the opposed Athenian citizens nor any of the league members were in a position powerful enough to do anything about it.

Another part of his speech clearly demonstrates that the Parthenon project was no act of civic virtue on Pericles' part. Rather it was a political move calculated to win him support throughout the city. Using Delian league money for the glory of the city was undoubtedly very popular, especially as it provided jobs for many citizens who would probably otherwise have been unemployed. According to Plutarch, Pericles said, and again I quote:

In this way all kinds of enterprise and demands will be created which will provide inspiration for every art, find employment for every hand, and transform the whole people into wage-earners, so that the city will decorate and maintain herself at the same time from her own resources. Unquote

So in part Pericles used the Parthenon as a giant public works project. Yet despite his claims as to benefiting the public, the issue of the impropriety of spending the Delian League funds on Athenian public monuments remained a continual point of debate in the city's assembly. Plutarch informs us that at one point when Pericles was accused of "playing fast and loose with public monies," he threatened to bear the cost of the building programs himself and inscribed his own name on them. In response his critics caved in. The thought that he alone would earn the glory of these projects was too much. Despite criticism of Pericles' policy, the public building program was to the glory of all Athenians, and the assembly was not willing to allow Pericles all the credit for their construction even if he were willing to pay for them out of his own pocket. The debates concerning the Parthenon's funding recorded in Plutarch demonstrate that as they were under construction these public monuments were a central concern of all the Athenians. In a word, the Parthenon was both a civic monument to all of Athens and a testimony to Pericles himself. (SLIDES LEFT & RIGHT)

Having examined the political conditions under which the Parthenon was built, I would now like to examine the building itself. Architecturally, Greek temples appear to be deceptively simple affairs. In its restored state, the Parthenon, like most Greek temples, would consist of a three step platform which carries a colonnade around its entire periphery. The columns enclose an oblong interior chamber known as the naos. In more complex temples, the naos is divided into two rooms. We can see the arrangement of spaces in the plan shown on the right. On the east or front is a main room called the cella, shown on the left of the slide. At the west is a smaller chamber, shown on the right of the slide, called the opisthodomus, meaning, literally, back room.

The cella is the most important part of a Greek temple, as it contains the cult statue of the temple's patron deity. (SLIDE RIGHT) In fact, we can view the temple as really a decorated shed designed to shelter this cult statue, such as suggested in the cross section of the Parthenon shown on the right. The interior was never intended to hold large numbers of people. The main religious rites, sacrifices, never took place on the inside but rather outside the temple, at altars usually located in front of the east or entrance facade. (SLIDE BACK RIGHT)

I said that Greek temples were deceptively simple in design. Simple because the structural problems are not overly complex and because to the uninitiated all Greek temples seem to look alike. This apparent similarity between Greek temples is the result of a design process that focuses on determining the size and proportions of the columns which then are used in turn to determine every other aspect of the building's design. The width of the average column base is in fact used to determine most of the other major dimensions of the structure and most importantly the interaxial spacing between the columns (that is, the distance from column center to column center) as well as the height of the colonnade and the height of the entire facade. Differences between temples may indeed seem extremely slight to us, but to the Greeks, they appear to have been incredibly important and reflect a great deal of experimentation. This approach to architecture may seem somewhat odd to you, but if you think of architectural design primarily as a complex problem of geometry, perhaps Greek temples will make more sense to you.

The Parthenon is a summation of earlier Greek temple design. As Pollitt points out, the Parthenon is wrought through with an X to 2X plus 1 system of proportions. These proportions are most readily evident in the plan of the temple which uses eight columns across its facade and seventeen along its flanks. (SLIDES LEFT ONE & RIGHT TWO) More subtly, the Parthenon uses a four to nine ratio throughout much of its design. For example, the width of the platform relative to its length, the height of the columnar order up to the horizontal cornice relative to the temple's width, the diameter of the columns relative to the interaxial distance between the columns, and the width of the cella to its length are only some parts of the building which yield this 4 to 9 ratio.

More importantly, the Parthenon combines elements of two different styles of temple design. (SLIDE LEFT) The bulk of the Parthenon is designed using stout columns rising directly from the platform without base to simple cushion-like capitals. These are features of what is called the Doric order or style or mode of temple design which was predominant on mainland Greece and the Western colonies. In addition to using these Doric elements which generate a rather stout overall appearance, the Parthenon also incorporated elements of the more elegant Ionic order or style or mode which was predominant in temple design in the Greek areas of Asia Minor, the realm of the subject states of the Delian League. The schematic diagram in the slide on the left highlights some of the differences between these two systems of temple design.

We can get some idea of the interplay between these two modes of design when we look at the naos of the Parthenon which incorporates features of both the Doric and Ionic modes. (SLIDES LEFT AND SLIDE RIGHT) The cella at the east is divided into three aisles by a pair of colonnades. The inner series of columns was structurally necessary to support the wooden beams which in turn carried the roof. Each colonnade consisted of two stories of columns one stacked upon the other. This double-decker format was required here, because in Greek architecture, the height of a column was determined by its width. (SLIDE RIGHT) Had the columns risen the full height as a single story, they would have to have been intolerably thick by Doric standards. You can get an idea of how this system of proportions works by examining the slide on the right. Here the Doric orders used in different temples are drawn at the same scale and you can see how as a column shaft grows taller it grows proportionally wider as well. (SLIDE LEFT) I show here a slide on the left which contrasts at the same scale the Parthenon with a slightly later Ionic temple. Note the difference in the columns with the bases and the more complex capitals, as well as the continuous frieze. (SLIDE LEFT BACK) Thus to create a lighter appearance the architects of the cella of the Parthenon stacked two properly proportioned orders of columns one on top of the other. (PAUSE, SLIDES BACK LEFT AND RIGHT)

On the left side of the plan on the right, you can see in the west room or opisthodomus that a different strategy was apparently used. In this smaller room, the architects used four columns instead of a continuous colonnade. What is more, the columns in this back room rose from the bases and used the more elaborate capitals of the ionic order. Designed in the Ionic style, the system of proportions in the opisthodomus permitted the architects to use one single story to rise the full height of the interior.

There are other aspects of the Parthenon that link this basically Doric temple to Ionic design. In comparison to most mainland temples, it is rather large. (SLIDE LEFT FORWARD THREE) It uses the eight rather than the traditional Doric number of six columns across its facade. It has a deep porch on its front and back consisting of a double row of columns rather than the traditional single row of Doric design. These features make the Parthenon quite different than the slightly earlier Doric temple of Zeus at Olympia whose plan I show you here on the left, and somewhat similar to an Ionic building (SLIDE LEFT) such as the sixth-century temple dedicated to Artemis at Ephesus in Asia Minor, whose plan I now show on the left. (POINT OUT) (SLIDES LEFT ONE AND RIGHT TWO)

When we compare the facade elevations of these temples, we see how the Parthenon seems to have "ionicized" the traditional Doric design. The eight column facade of the Parthenon when compared to the six column facade of the earlier temple at Olympia seems not only broader but also somehow lighter in design, because the columns use slightly more elongated proportions and are spaced more widely apart. (SLIDE LEFT) The Doric design of the Parthenon has been slightly modified along ionic lines making it seem more like the ionic temple of Artemis at Ephesus, now shown on the left, rather than like the temple to Zeus at Olympia which we had seen previously on the screen. The double row of columns and the deeper porch of the Parthenon also give it a slightly Ionic flavor more like the temple at Ephesus than the one at Olympia.

As well, like Ephesus, the Parthenon is constructed entirely out of marble rather than the traditional limestone. Finally, the sculptural program of the Parthenon incorporates some peculiar features of Ionic temple design, such as the frieze running around the naos, into what is a basically Doric or mainland framework. You might discuss in conference why such features from the area of the majority of cities of the Delian League would be incorporated into the most important building of the Periclean era, you might compare your ideas to the ones Pollitt puts forward on page 79 of his book.

For the rest of my talk, I will focus on the Parthenon's sculpture. The sculpture of the Parthenon is where we best can see the Athenians view of themselves. As pointed out, the entire building was basically designed as the shelter for the cult statue of Athena. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT) Carved by Phidias, the overseer of the entire Parthenon project, the statue was made of a wooden core covered with panels of ivory and gold. We know what it looked like from later descriptions from Antiquity and small scale copies, made essentially as souvenirs for visitors to the site.

The statue of Athena Parthenos was over twelve meters tall. As we see in this reconstruction drawing, she stood at the back of the larger of the two interior rooms of the naos, framed by the two tiers of Doric orders behind her. She stood fully armed: wearing a helmet, holding a spear with her shield in her left hand, and carrying a personification of victory in her right. Her shield, sandals and base were all decorated with mythological scenes. Athena is portrayed here as the virgin warrior, who sprang full-grown from the head of Zeus. She stands ever-ready as the city's protectress. Our own taste in sculpture makes it difficult to appreciate this work by Phidias. Nonetheless, we should give Phidias the benefit of the doubt as in antiquity the cult statue of the Parthenon was exceptionally highly esteemed.

Set inside the cella, this work by Phidias would probably only have been seen by the general public on major feast days. However, Phidias' cult statue was not the only sculpture of the Parthenon. In fact, it is probably best to understand the Parthenon not as a building or a purely architectural monument but rather as an architectural support for sculpture. The sculpture of the Parthenon itself was not at eye level but located high up on the temple at three specific locations. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT) On the outside of the temple, just under the roof line are a series of almost one meter-square stone blocks, known as metopes, each carved with a figurative scene in relief. The metopes alternate with trigylphs, the blocks with vertical striations, around the entire periphery of the temple.

The second area receiving sculpture, also on the exterior, are the triangular areas below the peak of the roof on the short east and west sides of the temple just above the alternating metopes and triglyphs. Known as pediments, they once had a floor, deep enough to support free standing sculptures in the round. Almost none of the pedimental sculpture is still in place. (SLIDE RIGHT)

The third and last sculptural decoration on the Parthenon is a meter high frieze carved in relief located just below the ceiling on the exterior of all four walls of the naos. In the slide on the right, we have a view looking through the columns of the Parthenon up towards the frieze. The metopes and pediments are at the top of the slide and the frieze is in the middle.

Like the temple itself, the sculptures survived pretty much in tact into the Early modern period. Most survived the explosion of 1687. The greatest damage to the sculpture came early in the nineteenth century when Elgin removed the bulk of the surviving sculpture from the building; though it is much debated today, Elgin apparently took the works without the permission of the Turks who then ruled Athens. Thus, many of the metopes, almost all of the surviving figures from the pediments, and virtually the entire frieze are now in the British Museum in London. (SLIDE RIGHT) Currently the Greek government is trying to regain possession. In any event, the sculptures I will be showing you today are no longer in Athens but in London, as we can see in this slide on the right.

Both pediments were extremely damaged in the explosion: only a few figures remain. Fortunately we can reconstruct them from ancient descriptions and drawings made shortly before the explosion. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT) I show you now two such reconstructions. The scene on the west pediment depicted the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the control over Athens and Attica. Both deities claimed dominion over the city, and to prove their claim, each performed a miracle. Poseidon produced a salt spring on the otherwise arid Acropolis. Not to be outdone, Athena made an olive tree spring from the bare rock of the Acropolis. The Athenians, though undoubtedly impressed by Poseidon's act, chose Athena. After all, the olive tree had more promise, not only to help feed the Athenians, but also great commercial potential. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT)

The pediment of the east facade also featured Athena. Although the east side is not directly opposite the main gate onto the Acropolis, it was the most important side of the temple. Here was the doorway into the cella where the cult statue stood. Outside in the pediments above the level of the door was the scene of Athena's miraculous birth shown in the reconstruction on the left. Just to the left of center, Hephaistos has just struck Zeus in the forehead with his hammer and watches in amazement as Athena springs out of the head of Zeus, fully grown and fully armed, not unlike she is depicted in Phidias' cult statue in the cella below.

Cult statue, and both pediments are devoted to depicting Athena. They not only glorify Athena but also emphasize the Athenians special relation to her. Considering that the Parthenon is dedicated to Athena we might not find this surprising. Yet there is no earlier example of a Greek temple on which both pediments are devoted to the titular deity. You might look at the two earlier temples discussed by Pollitt: the temple of Athena at Aegina and the temple of Zeus at Olympia. You'll find that in both cases, neither of each temple's two pediments portrayed scenes in which the patron deity played the key role. Though in hindsight almost ridiculously simple, we see here at the Parthenon a new approach to the subject matter for a temple's sculpture, an approach which links all the sculpture to the temple's patron.

The Parthenon was also innovative in the amount of sculpture decorating it. Perhaps this is best seen in the example of the metopes. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT) No earlier temple had every one of its metopes carved with figural scenes. For example, the temple of Zeus at Olympia, which I mentioned previously, had only twelve carved metopes: the Parthenon ninety-two. Moreover, as with the rest of the Parthenon, the material out of which the metopes are carved is marble. At Olympia, the more easily carved, less durable and less expensive material of limestone was used.

Weathering and the explosion of 1687 have made those metopes on the east, west and north sides virtually indecipherable. But, again, as with the pedimental sculpture, descriptions help establish what was once depicted there. The metopes of each side of the Parthenon were a cycle devoted to a single subject. And all four sides were linked to each other by a common theme.

The thirty-four metopes of the long north side portrayed the Trojan war and the subsequent sack. The twelve metopes on the west depicted the Greeks fighting the Amazons, a fierce group of women warriors from Asia Minor who the Greeks defeated at the time of the Trojan War. On the opposite short side at the east, the twelve metopes there depicted the battle between the Olympian gods and the giants, a story recounted by Hesiod.

Only the metopes of the south flank are well enough preserved to examine in any detail. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT) They depicted a fourth set of battle scenes, the fight between the Lapiths, a human Greek people of the heroic age, and the centaurs, half-human, half-horse creatures of mythology. Like the battles between the Giants and the gods and the Greeks and the Amazons, this subject was depicted on the shield of the Athena Parthenos cult statue standing in the cella.

Unlike the pediments dominated by Athena, the patron of the temple, Athena is barely represented here in the metopes. In descending physically from the pediments, we seem to have taken a step down in subject matter. No longer are we focused upon the divine acts surrounding Athena. Rather, we find scenes of struggle, some divine, as the one between the Gods and the giants, some human, though from the quasi-divine heroic age: such as Lapiths versus centaurs, Greeks versus Amazons and the Trojan War. (SLIDE LEFT)

In all four cases, Greeks or Greek gods battle against what the Athenians considered to be less than human: women, pre-Olympian gods, and barbarians. Given that the Parthenon not only completed an earlier temple which had been destroyed by barbarian Persians in the sack of 480 (shown at the back of the slide on the left), but also stood immediately adjacent to another burned by the Persians, but left in ruins (shown in the foreground of this slide), the allusion made by the subjects of the metopes should be clear that is the Greek victory over the Persians.

The connection between these subjects and the more historical one was made explicitly in another, slightly earlier building. (SLIDE LEFT) The painted stoa, one of the civic structures, in the Athenian agora. (POINT OUT) The painted stoa was decorated with several of the themes depicted on the metopes of the Parthenon, including the Trojan war and the battle between the Greeks and Amazons. These cycles were complemented with a third, depicting neither the battle between the Gods and giants nor the fight between the Lapiths and the Centaurs, but instead, the Greeks defeating the Persians at Marathon. In the Painted Stoa, a direct association was made between mythical battles between Greeks and Barbarians and the recent historic battle between real Greeks and real barbarians. The parallel scenes on the Parthenon must have conveyed similar associations. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT)

Finally, we turn to the most innovative part of the Parthenon's sculptural decoration, the frieze on the exterior wall of the naos. This frieze in this location is without any precedent. No earlier Greek temple in mainland Greece had any frieze of relief sculpture, let alone one in this location running more than 160 meters around the entire naos. Friezes were a common element of Ionic temples in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor. The temples there built in the Ionic mode, substituted the frieze for the alternating sequence of metopes and triglyphs. As mentioned above, the inclusion of the frieze on the Parthenon is one of a number of aspects of the temple which show an attempt to fuse this mainland Doric temple design with the Ionic design of Asia Minor.

No less innovative than the very existence of such a frieze on a Doric temple is the subject matter of the frieze. The frieze depicts neither gods nor ancient heroes, but the Athenians themselves. According to the traditional interpretation, it portrays the most important festival of the Athenian year, the Pananthenaia. (SLIDE LEFT)

Dedicated to the city's major patron Athena, the Panathenaia which took place in mid-summer was marked by a series of contests and a procession culminating on the Acropolis with a sacrifice of one hundred head of cattle. Every fourth year, the celebration was particularly important because the procession brought a new robe called a peplos, not to Phidias' cult statue in the Parthenon but to the older wooden image dedicated to Athena Polias. The frieze on the Parthenon portrays, from start to finish, the greater Panathenaic procession bringing the peplos to the older image on the Acropolis. The frieze depicts men on horseback, as shown here on the left, other men leading the sacrificial animals shown on the right, as well as women carrying other offerings. (SLIDE LEFT) At the east we see the peplos being folded for its final presentation to Athena.

The interpretation of the frieze I have been following here is the traditional one. Very recently, an American scholar Joan Connelly has suggested that the frieze does not represent the Panathenaia, but rather the sacrifice of the daughters of Erechtheus, a king from Athens's earliest history. This story, one of the founding myths of Athens, relates that Erechtheus, a son of earth raised by Athena, was forced to sacrifice one of his three daughters to save the city from military defeat. Both daughter and mother allow for the act to take place. Though Erechtheus himself dies in the ensuing battle, Athens does emerge victorious and his wife is made the first priestess of Athena in return for her consent. The event was remembered annually with an animal, rather than human sacrifice. If Connelly is correct, the theme of the frieze would be the origins of the establishment of the cult of Athena. Like the interpretation I discussed earlier, Connelly's has the people of Athens depicted on the frieze, though in this case in a historic rather than contemporary moment.

Whichever interpretation of the frieze we accept, the Parthenon testifies to the civic pride and piety of Athens during the third quarter of the 5th century.

The Parthenon frieze depicts the Athenians in the act of performing one of the city's most sacred religious rites. No Greek temple ever before had employed sculpture depicting mere mortals, and I think it is an important comment on the Athenians conception of themselves that they thought it appropriate to depict themselves on their temple to Athena.

However, before we condemn the frieze as an outright act of hybris, we need to understand that it ties rather neatly with the rest of the temple's decorative program. The cult statue in the cella and the scenes from the life of Athena pay homage to the city's patron deity and in so doing praise the Athenians themselves indirectly. Inversely, the metopes depicting scenes of conflict between the civilized and the barbaric serve as visual metaphors for Athens's glorious victory over the Persians and praise the Athenians and pay homage to Athena indirectly. The frieze shows the Athenians paying homage to Athena which of course again praises the Athenians indirectly. Throughout the entire monument and not just in the frieze, we find this reverberation back and forth between homage to the god and praise for the donors. (SLIDE LEFT)

Because of the narrowness of the aisle between cella wall and exterior colonnade, the line of sight for seeing the frieze was impossibly steep. As well, the frieze was set up high against the ceiling and shielded in perpetual gloom. Thus, in its original setting, the frieze must have been almost impossible to see. We should not forget that frieze and temple were not solely intended for a human audience. Frieze and temple were, after all, votive gifts to Athena; making, therefore, Athena the ultimate consumer. Perhaps she would have been content with a frieze presenting her subjects paying homage to her perpetually. (SLIDE LEFT) Pericles, the foremost Athenian of this era, had no doubt about Athens's place in the world. Pericles is quoted by Thucydides as stating: "Mighty indeed are the marks and monuments of our empire which we have left," for Pericles these helped make Athens "an education to Greece."

I will leave to you to decide after having read Thucydides as to whether these two quotes from Pericles ring true. You might ask now, however, if Thucydides himself does not serve as a better guide for evaluating 5th-century Athens and its monuments, where in Book One, when considering the hypothetical desertion of fifth century Athens, he writes and I quote one last time: "that if only the temples and the foundations remained ... one would conjecture that [Athens] had been twice as powerful as in fact it is." Unquote. In closing, I ask that you note that both Plutarch and Thucydides believe that architecture conveys both the power and the glory of its makers. Are these two ancients writers correct? How does civic architecture such as the Parthenon create an image of its patrons? Does the Parthenon serve as an outstanding and enduring achievement as suggested by Plutarch or is it only propaganda as Thucydides seems to suggest in the last passage I cited? I leave, however, this question for you to consider on your own. Thank you, and have a good morning.

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Last Modified: 22 Oct. '95