Crowning the summit of the Acropolis, occupying almost half its area, and dominating the city, stands the celebrated temple of Athena, the Parthenon, the finest and most impressive monument ever conceived and raised by mortal man. This immortal temple, incarnating in its columns and pediments all that is noble, glorious and beautiful, marks the apogee of ancient art. It is neither the work of a single man or of a particular period, but the supreme expression of a race and its entire civilization, a masterpiece that will for ever shine through the ages as the most splendid memorial to Hellenic genius.
Examination of the foundations shows that earlier architects had already planned this work on the south slope of the Acropolis as long ago as the sixth century BC. A huge terrace was raised to bring the slope up to the requisite level and a polygonal retaining wall erected at a distance of about 19 m. from it, and by 506 BC the stereobate for a peripteral temple had been built.
Later on, this terrace was enlarged and a new retaining wall set up. This was the site of the Older Parthenon, probably begun under Cleisthenes. Work on the temple was in progress when the Persians invaded Athens and put fire to the stocks and scaffolding. Remains of the foundations, which project about 5 m. to the east and 2 m. to the south, are still visible. Drums from the columns built into the Themistoclean wall are also to be seen.
The building of the Parthenon was finally begun at the command of Pericles in 447 BC and completed in 438 BC, at the time of the Great Panathenaea. Pericles entrusted the building of this stately edifice to Pheidias, in collaboration with the eminent architects Ictinus and Callicrates; Ictinus to be responsible for the architectural design and Callicrates for that of construction. The finest painters and sculptors, among who were his pupils Agoracritus and Alcamenes assisted Pheidias in the decoration of the great temple.
The Parthenon is a Doric peripteral octastyle temple, 19.80 m. in height, built entirely of Pentelic marble. The stylobate is 69.50 m. in length and 30.50 m. in breadth, i.e. 225×100 in Attic feet. Under the stylobate is the crepidoma, or base proper, formed of three steps, resting on a massive substructure, 76 m. long by 32 m. wide, built on the highest part of the natural rock-platform of the Acropolis. To correct the optical illusion of sagging along their length, the three steps while apparently flat are, in fact, slightly higher towards the center. As they were too steep to ascend in comfort, intermediate steps were provided at the east and west ends. The curvature of the stylobate towards its center is 6 cm. on the east and west facades and 11 cm. along the sides. To appreciate the subtlety of this architectural refinement one should place a small object at one end of the steps and, going to the opposite end, bring one’s eye to the level of the object; one will find that the object is now invisible. Apart from aesthetic reasons the horizontal curvature of the steps served the practical purpose of draining away rainwater from the temple.
The Parthenon is peripteral, its walls being surrounded by a colonnade of forty-six Doric columns, 1.90 m. in diameter at the base and 10.40 m. in height, eight at the front and rear porticoes and seventeen along the sides (counting those at the corners twice). The columns taper to a diameter of 1.50 m. at the top and show a slight entasis which gives them an appearance of flexible strength. The twenty flutings diminishing in width as they approach the capital, impart a mellow effect of light and shade.
Four annulets under the echinus mark the transition from the shaft to the capital, which consists of two parts: the echinus, or cushion at the summit of the column, and the abacus, which is a square slab forming the upper part of the capital and supporting the entablature. Fulfilling a similar function to that of the annulets in their relation to the capital, the echinus marks the transition from the perpendicular lines of the column to the horizontal lines of the entablature.
To understand fully the divine harmony that constitutes the splendor of the Parthenon the details of its architecture should be closely studied. This can easily be done by examining the drums and capitals of the great temple. One can thus perceive the loving skill that could achieve such perfection. In antiquity the humblest mason was the close collaborator of the architect, taking infinite pride in his work, to which he dedicated his life; thus a Greek temple was not the work of the architect alone, but the joint creation of all those who had worked with him. The architect might indeed be compared to the conductor of an orchestra in which the least important player contributes to the perfection of the whole.
The columns are comparatively close together and have a distance of 2.40 m. between them. To counteract the optical illusion of their falling outwards under the weight of the roof and entablature the columns lean imperceptibly inwards. For the same reason, and so that when seen from certain angles against the background of the sky they should not appear weaker or thinner than those along the sides and porticoes, the angle columns have a greater inclination inwards and a larger diameter, bringing them slightly closer to their neighbors from which they are separated by spaces of 2.20 m. The inward inclination of the columns is also repeated in the lines of the entablature; thus all the vertical lines of the Parthenon would meet at some imaginary and distant point above the roof. All these architectural subtleties give the temple the form of a truncated pyramid, with an aspect of maximum strength and stability and unite in creating the plasticity characteristic of the Greek temple.
Another remarkable peculiarity of this incomparable edifice is that none of its forty-six columns has exactly the same dimensions. At first this would appear to be due to the impossibility of turning out by hand any two columns exactly alike, but on further study it becomes evident that this seeming discrepancy is deliberate and forms the very basis of the harmony prevailing in the Parthenon. Basing their studies upon the innumerable minute variations existing in nature among specimens of the same species, Greek artists were the first to perceive, for example, that the beauty of a mass of foliage lies in the fact that no two leaves of a tree are identical in every detail.
The entablature of the Parthenon consists of the usual divisions of architrave, frieze and cornice. Three blocks of marble placed one behind the other make up the 1.80 m. depth of the massive architrave, which rests upon the capitals of the peristyle. The square plug-holes which held the floral designs in bronze that ornamented the outer face of the architrave, as well as the imprints left there by the gilded bronze shields (fourteen on the east and eight on the west) offered by Alexander the Great after his victory at Granicus in 334 BC are still to be seen.
Capping the architrave is a flat projecting band called the taenia, which supports the triglyphs. These slabs, each measuring 1.70 m. in height by 0.84 m. in breadth, constitute the most characteristic feature of a Doric entablature. Painted scrollwork decorated the taenia, under which, at intervals corresponding to the triglyphs, are strips known as regulae. Hanging from each regula are six small conical drops, called guttae, which were also painted. The triglyphs are aligned one over each column and one over each intercolumnation and alternate with the rectangular slabs of marble known as metopes. Over the triglyphs and metopes runs the astragal, a small semicircular moulding which was borrowed from the Ionic order and owes its name to its resemblance to a string of beads. The cornice is the crowning part of the entablature. Its underside has an inclination approximating to the slope of the roof and has flat projecting blocks not unlike the ends of sloping rafters. These are the mutules, ornamented by eighteen guttae, in three rows of six.
The entablature is surmounted at the fronts by pediments, whose outlines follow the inclination of the timberroofing which, covered with marble tiles, sheltered the temple. The two sloping cornices of the pediment make a rich triangular frame for the group of statues, which were the temple’s most splendid decoration. The pediments, which have an inclination of 13.5 degrees, terminated at the roof at each end of the temple and had statues of Winged Victories at the apex, while the lower angles were embellished, probably by gilded bronze Sphinx statues. At each of the four corners of the cornices was sculptured an ornamental lion’s head.
Bright colors and gilding were also used in the decoration of the temple, bringing the details of the architecture into relief and emphasizing the beauty of the fine marble employed in its construction. From the traces of blue pigment found on the mutules and in the channels of the triglyphs, the red in the metopes and the gold of the guttae and ceiling rosettes, we can form an idea of how color was employed in the decoration of the Parthenon. The mouldings of the frieze were painted alternately red and blue; below the frieze ran a meander painted in somber colors and gilded, and rail de coeur with red fillets on a blue ground.
Within the peristyle is the naos, or temple proper, 59.10 m. in length by 21.20 m. in breadth, standing on a platform of two steps raised above the stylobate. Both the pronaos at the east end of the temple and the opisthodomos at the west are fronted by a row of six Doric columns. Opposite the outermost columns at each end are antae formed by the prolongation of the sidewalk of the naos.
From the pronaos a huge bronze door gave access to the cella, known as the Neon Hecatompedon after an earlier temple which had stood upon the same site and was so called because it measured 100 Attic feet. Her stood the celebrated cult-statue of Athena which will be described later. The cella was divided longitudinally into three parts by two rows of nine slender Doric columns. Each of these was surmounted by a still more slender column, which supported the beams of the roof. Though many archaeologists believe that there was a second storey, this has yet to be proved.
The Parthenon proper, from which the temple takes its name, was separated from the cella by a transverse partition wall and was entered from the west by a massive door corresponding to that between the pronaos and the cella. Although of the same width as the latter chamber, it is only 13,40 m. in length. Traces of the square bases of four slender Ionic columns, which supported the roof, are still visible.
The Parthenon proper is the subject of much controversy. It was long believed to have been the Maiden’s (i.e. Athena’s) Chamber but this is now disputed; many archaeologists argue that the name indicates that it was the chamber of the maidens (i.e. the virgin priestesses serving the cult of Athena). Others, (and this is more probable), believe that the precious gold and silver vessels and other sacred objects used in her worship were stored there.
Between the east end (the pronaos) of the Parthenon and the Belvedere (from which a wide prospect of the modern city and its environs may be enjoyed) a few bases, drums and broken stumps are all that remain of the ring of nine Ionic columns that supported the circular Temple of Rome and Augustus, whose circumference is outlined by two large segments of the architrave which have been recovered and set up round the ruins. The complete inscription recorded the dedication of the temple by the Athenians in AD 27.
Leaving the Belvedere and moving westward in the direction of the Erechtheion we pass through an area dedicated to the cult of Zeus Polieus. Here is to be seen a square base for a votive monument or altar; then a line of cuttings mark the foundations of the rock-hewn platform for the great sacrificial altar on which the Hecatacomb was offered at the festival of the Panathenaea. Farther on towards the Erechtheion are the remains of the temenos of the god.
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