Parthenon

[Jordan Fass]

A votive sculpture, found near the Varvakeion school reflects the type of the restored Athena Parthenos: Roman period, second century CE (National Archaeological Museum, Athens).

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Athena's head is inclined slightly forward. She stands with her left hand resting on an upright shield. Her left knee is slightly bent, her weight slightly shifted to her right leg. Her chiton is cinched at the waist by a pair of serpents, whose tails entwine at the back. Locks of hair trail onto the goddess's breastplate. The Nike on her outstretched right hand is winged; whether there was a support under it in Phidias' original has been much discussed; evidence in surviving versions is contradictory. The exact position of a spear, often omitted, is also not fully determined, whether held in the crook of Athena's right arm or supported by one of the snakes in the aegis, as N. Leipen restores it, following the "Aspasios" gem.

The sculpture was assembled on a wooden core, covered with shaped bronze plates covered in turn with removable gold plates, save for the ivory surfaces of the goddess's face and arms; the gold weighed 44 talents, the equivalent of about 2500 pounds: the Athena Parthenos embodied a sizeable part of the treasury of Athens.

The general type of the Athena Parthenos, though not its character and quality, can be assessed from its image on coins and its reproductions as miniature sculptures, as votive objects, and in representations on engraved gems.[

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Ancient copies

The Varvakeion votive figure is one of the two versions of Athena Parthenos considered most faithful to the original; the other is the uncompleted Lenormant Athena, also in the National Museum, Athens.
•   The Varvakeion Athena, a Roman copy in marble of the Athena Parthenos from the second century, is housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. One of the two versions of Athena Parthenos considered most faithful to the original.
•   Lenormant Athena, uncompleted, also in the National Museum, Athens. One of the two versions of Athena Parthenos considered most faithful to the original.
•   Another copy is housed in the Louvre.
•   Another copy is in the Museo Nazionale Romano in Rome
•   The statue's shield alone (British Museum

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The modern Athena Parthenos replica that stands in the replicated Parthenon in Centennial Park, Nashville

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Replica at Nashville

A modern replica by Alan LeQuire stands in the reproduction of the the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee. Alan LeQuire, a Nashville native, was awarded the commission to produce the Parthenon's cult statue. His work was modeled on descriptions given of the original. The modern version took eight years to complete, and was unveiled to the public on May 20, 1990.

The modern version of Athena Parthenos is significant because of its scale and its attention to recreating Phidias' work. The statue adds an additional dimension of realism to the replicated Parthenon, whose interior east room (the naos) was merely a large empty hall prior to the statue's unveiling. The reproduced Athena Parthenos gives visitors the impression that they truly are inside an ancient place of worship.

Athena Parthenos is made of a composite of gypsum cement and ground fiberglass, The head of Athena was assembled over an aluminum armature, and the lower part was made in steel. The four ten-inch H beams rest on a concrete structure that extends through the Parthenon floor and basement down to bedrock, to support the incredible weight of the statue. LeQuire made each of the 180 cast gypsum panels used to create the statue light enough to be lifted by one person and attached to the steel armature.

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Sculptor Alan LeQuire painting the detail of the Athena Parthenos replica during the gilding phase.

Gilding and paint

Painstaking research was performed by LeQuire and the Parthenon staff to ensure the accuracy of the statue's resemblance to the Phidias work. It stood in Nashville’s Parthenon as a plain, white statue for twelve years. In 2002, Parthenon volunteers gilded Athena under the supervision of master gilder Lou Reed. The gilding project took less than four months and makes the modern statue appear that much more like the Phidias' Athena Parthenos would have appeared during its time.

The gold plates on the Athena statue in ancient times weighed approximately 1,500 pounds and were one-eighth to one-sixteenth of an inch thick. The 23.75-karat gold leaf on Nashville's Athena Parthenos weighs a total of 8.5 pounds and is three times thinner than tissue paper. The modern extravagance of gilding such a large statue pales in comparison to the lavish spending of the Greeks. In fact, one theory of the original's demise is that Athena Parthenos was decimated and looted to remove the gilding.

In addition to gilding, the project included painting the details of the statue's face, wardrobe and shield. LeQuire himself applied the paint.

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[Jordan Fass]

The first endeavour to build a sanctuary for Athena Parthenos on the site of the present Parthenon was begun shortly after the battle of Marathon (c. 490-88 BCE). This building replaced a hekatompedon (meaning "hundred-footer") and would have stood beside the archaic temple dedicated to Athena Polias. The “older Parthenon”, as it is frequently referred to, was still under construction when the Persians sacked the city in 480 BCE and razed the acropolis. The existence of the proto-Parthenon and its destruction was known from Herodotus and the drums of its columns were plainly visible built into the curtain wall north of the Erechtheum. Further material evidence of this structure was revealed with the excavations of Patagiotis Kavvadias of 1885-90. The findings of this dig allowed Wilhelm Dörpfeld, then director of the German Archaeological Institute, to assert that there existed a distinct substructure to the original Parthenon, called Parthenon I by Dörpfeld, not immediately below the present edifice as had been previously assumed. Dörpfeld’s observation was that the three steps of the first Parthenon consist of two steps of poros limestone, the same as the foundations, and a top step of Karrha limestone that was covered by the lowest step of the Periclean Parthenon. This platform was smaller and slightly to the north of the final Parthenon indicating that it was built for a wholly different building now wholly covered over. This picture was somewhat complicated by the publication of the final report on the 1885-90 excavations indicating that the substructure was contemporary with the Kimonian walls, and implying a later date for the first temple.

If the original Parthenon was indeed destroyed in 480, it invites the question why the site was left a ruin for 33 years. One argument involves the oath sworn by the Greek allies before the battle of Plataea in 479 BCE declaring that the sanctuaries destroyed by the Persians would not be rebuilt, an oath the Athenians were only absolved by with the Peace of Callias in 450. The mundane fact of the cost of reconstructing Athens after the Persian is at least as likely a cause. However the excavations of Bert Hodge Hill led him propose the existence of a second Parthenon begun in the period of Kimon after 468 BCE. Hill claimed that the Karrha limestone step Dörpfeld took to be the highest of Parthenon I was in fact the lowest of three steps of Parthenon II whose stylobate dimensions Hill calculated to be 23.51x66.888m.

One difficulty in dating the proto-Parthenon is that at the time of the 1885 excavation the archaeological method of seriation was not fully developed: the careless digging and refilling of the site lead to a loss of much valuable information. An attempt to make sense of the potsherds found on the acropolis came with the 2 volume study by Graef and Langlotz published 1925-33. This inspired American archaeologist William Bell Dinsmoor to attempt to supply limiting dates for the temple platform and the five walls hidden under the re-terracing of the acropolis. Dinsmoor concluded that the latest possible date for Parthenon I was no earlier 495 BCE, contradicting the early date given by Dörpfeld. Further Dinsmoor denied that there were two proto-Parthenons, and that the only pre-Periclean temple was what Dörpfeld referred to as Parthenon II yet build before the Persian invasion. Dinsmoor and Dörpfeld exchanged views in the American Journal of Archaeology in 1935

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Name

The origin of the Parthenon's name is unclear. According to Jeffrey M. Hurwit, the term "Parthenon" means "of the virgin" or "of the virgins", and seems to have originally referred only to a particular room of the Parthenon; it is debated which room this is, and how the room acquired its name. One theory holds that the "parthenon" was the room in which the peplos presented to Athena at the Panathenaic Festival was woven by the arrephoroi, a group of four young girls chosen to serve Athena each year. Christopher Pelling asserts that Athena Parthenos may have constituted a discrete cult of Athena, intimately connected with, but not identical to that of Athena Polias. According to this theory, the name of Parthenon means the "temple of the virgin goddess", and refers to the cult of Athena Parthenos that was associated with the temple. The epithet parthénos (Greek: παρθένος), whose the origin is also unclear, meant "virgin, unmarried woman", and was especially used for Artemis, the goddess of wild animals, the hunt, and vegetation, and for Athena, the goddess of war, handicraft, and practical reason. It has also been suggested that the name of the temple alludes to the virgins (parthenoi), whose supreme sacrifice guaranteed the safety of the city.

In any case, the first instance in which Parthenon definitely refers to the entire building is in the 4th century BC orator Demosthenes. In the 5th century building accounts, the structure is simply called ho neos ("the temple"). The architects Mnesikles and Kallikrates are said to have called the building Hekatompedos ("the hundred footer") in their lost treatise on Athenian architecture, and in the 4th century and later the building was referred to as the Hekatompedos or the Hekatompedon as well as the Parthenon; the 1st century AD writer Plutarch refers to the building as the Hekatompedon Parthenon.

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A drawing of the Statue of Athena by Phidias in the Parthenon.

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Treasury or temple?

Architecturally, the Parthenon is clearly a temple, formerly containing the famous cult image of Athena by Phidias and the treasury of votive offerings. Since actual Greek sacrifices always took place at an altar invariably under an open sky, as was in keeping with their religious practices, the Parthenon does not suit some definitions of "temple," as no evidence of an altar has been discovered. Thus, some scholars have argued that the Parthenon was only ever used as a treasury. While this opinion was first formed late in the 19th century, it has gained strength in recent years. The majority of scholarly opinion still sees the building in the terms Walter Burkert described for the Greek sanctuary, consisting of temenos, altar and temple with cult image

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The Parthenon's position on the Acropolis allows it to dominate the city skyline of Athens.

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Christian church

The Parthenon survived as a temple to Athena for close to a thousand years. It was certainly still intact in the 4th century AD, by which time it was already as old as Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is now, and far older than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. But by that time Athens had been reduced to a provincial city of the Roman Empire, albeit one with a glorious past. Sometime in the 5th century AD, the great cult image of Athena was looted by one of the Emperors, and taken to Constantinople, where it was later destroyed, possibly during the sack of the city during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 AD.

Shortly after this, the Parthenon was converted to a Christian church. In Byzantine times it became the Church of the Parthenos Maria (Virgin Mary), or the Church of the Theotokos (Mother of God). At the time of the Latin Empire it became for about 250 years a Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady. The conversion of the temple to a church involved removing the internal columns and some of the walls of the cella, and the creation of an apse at the eastern end. This inevitably led to the removal and dispersal of some of the sculptures. Those depicting gods were either possibly re-interpreted according to a Christian theme, or removed and destroyed.

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The southern side of the Parthenon, which sustained considerable damage in the 1687 explosion.

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During Ottoman rule

In 1456, Athens fell to the Ottomans, and the Parthenon was converted again, into a mosque. Contrary to subsequent misconception, the Ottomans were generally respectful of ancient monuments in their territories, and did not wilfully destroy the antiquities of Athens, though they had no actual programme to protect them. However in times of war they were willing to demolish them to provide materials for walls and fortifications. A minaret was added to the Parthenon and its base and stairway are still functional, leading up as high as the architrave and hence invisible from the outside; but otherwise the building was not damaged further. European visitors in the 17th century, as well as some representations of the Acropolis hill testified that the building was largely intact.

In 1687, the Parthenon suffered its greatest blow when the Venetians under Francesco Morosini attacked Athens, and the Ottomans fortified the Acropolis and used the building as a gunpowder magazine. On September 26, a Venetian mortar, fired from the Hill of Philopappus, exploded the magazine and the building was partly destroyed. Francesco Morosini then proceeded to attempt to loot sculptures from the now ruin. The internal structures were demolished, whatever was left of the roof collapsed, and some of the pillars, particularly on the southern side, were decapitated. The sculptures suffered heavily. Many fell to the ground and souvenirs were later made from their pieces. Consequently some sections of the sculptural decoration are known only from the drawings made by Flemish artist Jacques Carrey in 1674. After this, much of the building fell into disuse and a smaller mosque was erected.

The eighteenth century was a period of Ottoman stagnation, as a result many more Europeans found access to Athens, and the picturesque ruins of the Parthenon were much drawn and painted, spurring a rise in philhellenism and helping to arouse sympathy in Britain and France for Greek independence. Amongst those early travellers and archaeologists were James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, who were commissioned by the Society of the Diletanti to survey the ruins of classical Athens. What they produced was the first measured drawings of the Parthenon published in 1787 in the second volume of Antiquities of Athens Measured and Delineated. In 1801, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, the Earl of Elgin, obtained a firman (permit) from the Sultan to make casts and drawings of the antiquities on the Acropolis, to demolish recent buildings if this was necessary to view the antiquities, and to remove sculptures from them. He took this as permission to collect all the sculptures he could find. He employed local people to detach them from the building itself, a few others he collected from the ground, and some smaller pieces he bought from local people. The detachment of the sculptures caused further irreparable damage to what was left of the building as some of the frieze blocks were sawn in half to lessen their weight for shipment to England.