Athens

The city of Athens from ancient days had been dedicated to the goddess Athena. She was a goddess of war and peace, a patroness of the arts, and in Archaic Greek times was associated with growth and fertility. In Archaic representations, the serpent and tree are symbols associated with these qualities, and we see fragments of ancient statuary depicting Athena holding a serpent. The Acropolis (literally, "High City") was home to an Archaic Temple of Athena in the sixth century BC.

The Persians, after the battle of Thermopylae, sacked the Acropolis of Athens and destroyed the temple. Fifty years later, the greatest building program of the Classical Greek World was to begin. Under the statesman Pericles, a new, grander, more majestic and harmonious temple to Athena was built. It housed the colossal cult figure of the Athena Parthenos, designed and sculpted by Phideas. The Athena Parthenos, sculpted of ivory over a wood core, and embellished with bronze and gold was so large and lavish, its construction is said to have nearly bankrupted the coffers of the city. The dimensions of the Parthenon were adjusted to accommodate this wonder of the Classical world. As you approach the Acropolis, you approach what remains of the greatest structures of Classical Greece.

About the Olympics

What is "topography"?

Why study the topography and monuments of Athens?

• regional analysis and how a site fits into larger social, political, and economic systems;
• individual settlements, shrines, or cemeteries and the human communities who used them;
• specific types of buildings, such as houses or temples, and their function within the community;
• specific features (e.g., wells, hearths, graves) and artifacts (e.g., tools, jewelry, pottery, art) and issues of typology, technology, chronology, ideology, social stratification, trade, artistic achievement ... and much more!

What are the main sources of information for the topography and monuments of Athens?

The monuments of Athens are illustrated and discussed in numerous textbooks, guidebooks, "coffee table" books, and magazine articles. In addition, there is a small but growing number of Web-sites which focus on aspects of Greek art, archaeological sites, and museums. For a university student, however, who is beginning a serious study of ancient Athens (such as for a class paper or assignment), or for a teacher looking for reliable, scholary sources to help develop a lecture, here are some excellent English language resources with which to begin:

• J. Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (New York: Praeger 1971). ISBN 0500050120. (You will probably NOT find this book at your local bookstore, since it has long been out of print. Most university libraries, however, will have a copy. Although somewhat out of date, this book is still the source to consult for most monuments, and has numerous high quality photographs and plans along with concise dictionary-style entries and bibliographies. Note, however, that this book will NOT include new information about discoveries, interpretations, or publications after 1971.)

• R.E. Wycherley, The Stones of Athens (Princeton: Princeton UP 1978). ISBN 0-691-10059-4. (An authoritative and enjoyable survey of the main archaeological zones in Athens, with bibliography. Like Travlos' PDA, this work is somewhat out of date in some details and will NOT include new information about discoveries, interpretations, or publications after 1978.)

• G. Crane (ed.), Perseus 2.0 (Yale University Press 1996). Perseus is an interactive database of ancient Greek texts, translations, art, and archaeology developed by a large team of scholars and funded by the Annenberg/CPB Project and many other institutions and foundations, including the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Perseus 2.0 is currently available on CD-ROM.

• R. Economakis (ed.), Acropolis Restoration : The CCAM Interventions (London : Academy Editions: 1994). ISBN 1854903446. (A very nice collection of essays by many leading Greek archaeologists involved in the restoration of the Acropolis monuments. The essays discuss the technical details of the restorations, why such interventions are necessary, and present some of the new discoveries made in the process.)

In addition to the monuments themselves, we are fortunate to have a wide variety of ancient texts which help bring to life more fully the peoples and cultures we study. In the case of ancient Athens, we have the preserved writings of numerous Athenian poets, playwrights, politicians, philosophers and historians. Euripides, Thucydides, Plato, and others give us key insights into the form and development of their native city. Sometimes the clues they provide are merely allusions (such as the references to cults and shrines on the North Slope of the Acropolis mentioned by Euripides in the tragedy Ion -- but then, again, the Athenian audience would have understood exactly what he meant even if WE don't!). Sometimes the sites and monuments are mentioned as the setting for important philosophical dialogue (such as Plato's various accounts of Socrates in the Agora). Sometimes the written sources (or literary testimonia) focus on the intangible human elements which are often missing from the imperfect archaeological record (such as Thucydides' vivid account of the plague which struck the severely overcrowded city during the Peloponnesian War). Moreover, since the ancient Athenians tended to record important public decrees on stone slabs displayed for all to see, we also have some of the actual records of the working of the Athenian state, including, for example, the building accounts of the Parthenon. These inscribed sources (or epigraphical testimonia) not only provide us with very precise absolute dates for the construction of the building and its cult statue (447-432 BC), but they also allow us to begin a more informed exploration of such issues as technology (How did they actually build a temple?), economy (How much did it cost? How did they pay for it?), society (Who paid for it? Who worked on it? Did they have slaves?). That is, the combination of archaeological, architectural, & artistic remains, along with textual sources, allows classical archaeologists to understand the cultural context more completely and to develop more sophisticated interpretations of the past.

One of the most important sources for the topography of Athens (in particular) and Greek archaeology (in general) is an eye-witness account written by the traveler Pausanias in the 2nd century A.D. Pausanias spent several years traveling throughout Greece and he recorded many fascinating details about the famous cities, temples, and monuments -- which were already considered ancient even in his own day! Athens was one of the first places he visited on his journey and his description of the city provides us with some invaluable clues about the location, form, decoration, function, and historical significance of many prominent monuments. (It provides us with some problems too, since the evidence from modern archaeological excavation does not always readily agree with what Pausanias records. Is it a matter of physical preservation? Or a problem with our methods of archaeological interpretation? Or could it be that sometimes Pausanias and/or his tour guides got a few of the "facts" mixed up -- a phenomenon all too familiar to any modern traveler who has tried to absorb all of the sights & sounds & history of one of the great cities of the world!).

The Achievement.

The supreme achievement of the Greeks was their claim that everything--from the human body to the entire cosmos--was governed by an order accessible to human reason. That claim has been the basis for western civilization ever since. The Temple of Athena Parthenos, the Parthenon,now a ruin lying atop the Acropolis of Athens, is the testament in stone to that claim.

The Parthenon was built to house a huge gold and ivory (chryselephantine) statue of the goddess Athena, patron of the polis of Athens. The polis--or city-state--was the Greeks' distinctive political formation--a walled town with surrounding villages and countryside, and ideally politically independent of its neighbors. The high place of a polis-- the acropolis- -was the site of shrines to locally important deities.

The Polis

Polis Values.

To its citizens, the polis provided a superior way of life to that of barbarians--that is, everyone who was not Greek, and who lived governed by kings. In an age of almost non-stop warfare, male citizens of a Greek polis between the ages of 18 and 60 were obliged to serve in its army. In return, they had some voice in the governance of their polis. Greeks liked to believe that by making men free and politically responsible, the polis civilized its individual citizens and enabled them to live a worthwhile life. The emergence of about 200 Greek poleis in the 700s B.C. spurred the development of Greek sculpture and architecture and led to speculation about the s tructure of the cosmos.

Unlike a monarchy, where the monarch ruled and the subjects obeyed, the polis allowed its citizens to debate political issues in public assemblies of citizens. But political debate could lead to violent political struggles within the polis. Greeks debated whether and how a group of human beings could rule themselves according to an order that would preserve freedom, yet prevent anarchy. The use of reason in political persuasion seems to have inspired a few Greeks to believe that human beings had the reasoning capacity to discern an abstract order in the structure of the entire cosmos. Thus the Greeks established the beginning of Western philosophy and science.

Already, Greek visual artists had perceived an abstract order in the relation of the parts of the human body to the whole .

Beginning in the 700s B.C. Greek painters and sculptors gradually fleshed out their human figures until by 450 B.C. they had achieved exquisitely proportioned forms . Greek temple builders came to model their structures on similarly conceived proportions, likewise gradually refining them. By then Greek art had entered the phase now called Classical. Its culmination was the Parthenon, created between 449 and 432 B.C.

The term Parthenon means apartment of the virgin. The goddess Athena was clever; resourceful; and, for a maiden, rather ferocious. Athena was the armed protector of all Greek poleis, not only Athens. She was the daughter of Zeus and Metis (meaning cunning). Discovering Metis's pregnancy, and fearful that their child might prove mightier than himself, Zeus swallowed Metis whole. A tremendous headache ensuing, Zeus got another god to split open his skull and out sprang Athena, full grown with spear in hand. In the Greek epic The Iliad, Athena's warlike qualities are apparent as she sternly thwarts Aphrodite, goddess of erotic desire, and Aphrodite's pawns, the ill-fated lovers Paris and Helen of Troy. Athena's devious cunning inspired Odysseus, hero of the epic The Odyssey, to build the Trojan Horse. In striking contrast, Athena was also the patron of peaceful handicrafts. To honor her patronage of weaving, every four years, at the climax of the Panathenaic Festival, Athenian women presented a special garment called a peplos to the ancient wooden cult statue of her at a temple on the Acropolis.

One of her symbols was the owl, which Athenians imprinted on their coins. Athena's reputation as the goddess of respectable wisdom was a later addition, strengthened by her role as patron of the Athens that brought classical Greek civilization to its height.

Greeks believed in many deities, practised animal sacrifice, and invoked the gods far more frequently than do most moderns--practices still typical of traditional cultures around the world. In intemperate weather or high seas, before battle or after morally doubtful behaviour, Greeks grew fearful of the gods. After successfully surviving any of these, they thankfully left gifts or paid for sacrifices at the appropriate temple or shrine. Greek men honored the patron gods of their poleis, their families, or their professions. Greek women invoked favorite gods and goddesses in rituals and celebrations at annual festivals.

The rich Greek pantheon contained some local deities and many borrowed from other cultures. While the emergence of rationalistic thinking among a small set of philosophers produced explanations of the cosmos that did not require deities, the majority of Greeks--farmers and craftsmen-- seem to have been quite traditional in fulfilling their religious obligations within the family and the polis. In his last recorded words the philosopher Socrates, who was executed for irreligion by the polis of Athens, reminded a friend to offer on Socrates' behalf a sacrifice to the god of health.

Greek deities were highly political: they favored those who gave them gifts. Wealthy Greeks spent money on festivals and sacrificed expensive animals to their honor in temple precincts. The Acropolis --the high place of Athens--had been the site of temples dedicated to Athena and other patron deities for centuries. The placing of a huge and expensive statue of Athena in the new Parthenon seems to have been more a political than a religious act. The women of Athens continued to take their annual peplos tribute to the old cult statue. The new Parthenon was a patriotic shrine that, by honoring Athena, glorified the proud polis of Athens itself.

Athens had reason to be proud. By 500 B.C. it had become the most populous and wealthy of the Greek poleis. To the east the vast Persian Empire had absorbed several Greek poleis located on the shores of Ionia (modern Turkey). Athens supported them when they revolted against Persian domination. In revenge, in 490 the Persian King Darius, invaded Greece and was defeated by a mainly Athenian army at Marathon. In 480 has son Xerxes tried again, with a vast army and fleet. The struggle was desperate. After a tiny band of heroes from the polis of Sparta died defending the narrow pass of Thermopylae, the Persians captured Athens and ravaged the sacred structures of the Acropolis. However, the Greeks defeated the invaders on sea and land in 479 and the Persian host retreated back into Asia .

The Athenian-led victory over the mighty Persian barbarians was one of the decisive events of Western Civilization. Without it, the practice of representative self-government might have disappeared. From their own perspective the Greeks viewed it as the victory of "free men," who ruled themselves, over the slaves of the Great King. To defend themselves against future Persian aggression, some poleis in the eastern Mediterranean formed a mutual-defense organization, the Delian League--though a translation of its Greek title, "the Athenians and their allies," reveals who predominated. League members contributed money to a treasury to provide a fleet to protect themselves. As the years passed with no new Persian invasion, Athens began to treat other league members as dependents. Athenians regarded league contributions as tribute to themselves. The league treasury was transferred to the Athenian Acropolis. Colonies of poorer, land-hungry Athenian citizens were planted on land belonging to allied poleis to watch over Athenian interests. Other poleis now envied and resented Athenian dominance, especially Sparta,the militaristic polis that had long before formed its own power block, the Peloponnesian League. Soon war broke out wit h Sparta and some of Athens' league allies revolted.

Athenian Democracy.

Political developments inside Athens were decisive to Athens' growing domination of her neighbors. Most poleis were either ruled by a single "tyrant," or by a council dominated by aristocratic families. For several decades Athens had been one of the fe w democratic Greek poleis. Victory against the Persians in 479 and establishment of the Delian League the next year led to further democratization of Athenian political institutions

. Apart from slaves and metics, Athenians were divided into four social classes based on the amount of property they possessed. Though Athens possessed democratic features, prior to the Persian Wars the upper class of wealthy aristocratic families had hel d political power by establishing dining clubs-- really political organizations--with restricted memberships. Seizing upon the emotions generated by the Athenian people's victory against the Persians, several politicians--most notably Pericles --bypassed aristocratic organizations and secured a power base among voters of the less wealthy classes by drastically democratizing the Athenian military, government administration, and legal system. They further appealed to the poorer, land-hungry classes by usi ng Athenian dominance of the Delian League to force the creation of colonies for these Athenians on blocks of allied-owned territory.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, democracy, or rule by the many, differed from the rule of one, tyranny, and the rule of the few, aristocracy, in three important ways:

• 1. Most public positions were filled by lot, and thus were open to any citizen regardless of wealth or political influence. In Athens, the major exceptions were the ten military generals, who were elected.
• 2. Public officials were answerable to the people for all actions undertaken while in office. At the end of their terms, other officials reviewed their actions and audited their accounts.
• 3. All major decisions were made by an assembly open to all citizens. In Athens, this met at dawn from ten to forty times a year. Daily government business was handled by a council of 500, chosen by lot monthly--and on which a citizen could serve only twice in his lifetime.

However, few inhabitants of Athens were citizens. Only free male adult Athenian property-owners could be citizens, who in turn were required to serve in the polis army between the ages of 18 and 60. Women and slaves were excluded, as were all non-Athe nian residents. The last class, called metics, was especially numerous because Athens' economic prosperity attracted immigrants. This meant that relatively few inhabitants of Athens could vote at the assembly meetings. One modern estimate of Athens' p opulation on 431 B.C. places the total at about 290,000 and the number of adult male citizens--those who could speak and vote at assembly sessions--at 40,000. Actual attendance may have been much lower: some decisions required a quorum of only 6,000.

In practice, Greek political life was chaotic and often dangerous. Wars among the 200 Greek poleis were virtually non-stop. Disgruntled political factions often plotted coups, sometimes with the aid of enemy poleis. Generals who lost battles could ce execution. Political figures could be ostracized--forced into exile by a vote of the assembly. Sometimes they then aided enemies of their own poleis. The democratized court system made Athens the first litigious society and public figures often face d lawsuits filed by their political enemies. There were no lawyers, so citizens had to defend themselves before juries of several hundred men with no judges. As a result of one such suit the philosopher Socrates was execut ed in 399 B.C.

The early democratic leaders of Athens were themselves men of the aristocratic class, who had the wealth and public-speaking skills required to sway the mass. The most famous of such power-brokers was Pericles, one of the elected generals, who came to d ominate Athenian politics between 461-429 B.C. Popular for governmental innovations favoring the less well off, Pericles was repeatedly elected as one of the generals. His effective oratorical powers persuaded the Athenian assembly to ostracize his lead ing political enemy and usually to follow his own diplomatic and military policies. As the Greek historian Thucydides wrote:

Pericles, because of his position, his intelligence, and his known integrity, could respect the liberty of the people and at the same time hold them in check. It was he who led them, rather than they who led him, and, since he never sought power from any wrong motive, he was under no necessity of flattering them: in fact he was so highly respected that he was able to speak angrily to them and to contradict them....So, in what was nominally a democracy, power was really in the hands of the first citizen.

In private life Pericles surrounded himself with cultured individuals: his female companion, Aspasia; the philosophers Protagoras and Anaxagoras, and the master sculptor Pheidias--all of them metics attracted by Athens' thriving culture. The philosoph er Anaxagoras, especially, seems to have espoused rationalistic religious beliefs that bordered on atheism--he, like Socrates three decades later, was indicted on the charge of impiety towards the gods and forced to leave Athens. Aspasia was likewise ch arged. Pheidias was indicted for stealing some of the gold and ivory used in his statue of Athena. All of these charges were probably veiled attacks on Pericles and his power. In Athens religion and art boiled in the political cauldron.

Pericles' Political and Cultural Program. Pericles is not recorded as speaking about the gods or the value of traditional beliefs--familiar topics in Athenian oratory of the day. Pericles liked, instead, to praise the glory of Athens. His fam ous Funeral Oration, in its surviving form actually written by the historian Thucydides, promotes Athens as the political and cultural school from which all Greeks learned. His foreign policy was likewise Panhellenic (meaning all-Greek), which really meant Athenian domination of other Greeks. He audaciously proposed that a panhellenic congress meet at Athens to fulfill a sacred obligation to rebuild the temples destroyed decades earlier by the Persians. The congr ess never met: few Greeks wanted to pay to rebuild structures that lay in or near Athenian territory. But Pericles persisted until the polis of Athens itself agreed to rebuild the Athenian Acropolis and place on it a new temple to Athena, the Parthenon. Thus the Parthenon is a monument to the patriotic and rationalistic vision of one of history's most remarkable political bosses--Pericles.

Traditionally Athenian aristocrats, including Pericles himself, had displayed their power, as well as paid their taxes, by financing civic arts festivals, such as those that produced the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Part of the democratization p rocess had made the erection of public buildings the responsibility of the Athenian assembly.Pericles seems to have proposed that the vast cost of his Acropolis rebuilding program be paid for with money collected by the Delian League for defense against f resh Persian aggression--whether it actually was or was not is unknown. However the vast civic improvement scheme may have been paid for, Pericles persuaded the polis of Athens to undertake it.

The Athenian Acropolis.

The high place of Athens, and easily fortifiable, the Acropolis had been the site of several generations of temples and palaces for 1,000 years. A remodeling was already underway in 480 B.C. when the Persian invaders conquered the evacuated city of Athe ns and ravaged the Acropolis temples. The walls were repaired, but the temples had been left in ruins. The centerpiece of Pericles' plan, the Parthenon, was constructed first, on the south side of the Acropolis. Next came a massive gateway to the temp le complex, the Propylaea, which crowned the steep path ascending the Acropolis on the west side. At the southwest corner a small temple to Athena Nike (victorious) was built. The Erechtheion was placed to the North of the ruined old te mple to Athena to hold the cult images of the gods and goddesses of the polis. Completion of the entire project took over fifty years.

The positioning of the Erechtheion in relation to the Parthenon is the first known instance in history of two separate buildings being consciously placed in relation to each other. This fact is perhaps the most objective measure of the cultural achievem ent of classical Greece.

The Panathenaic Festival.

Athens held the Greater Panathenaia, a festival that included athletic and musical contests, in August every fourth year on Athena's birthday. The festival was a major event in the civic and religious life of Athens. It was one of the rare occasions whe n Athenian men were allowed to carry weapons in the streets, perhaps an indication of how old the festival was. The climax was a large procession accompanying the gift of a new garment, a peplos, woven by select Athenian maidens, carried on a wheeled sh ip through Athens up to the Acropolis. An animal sacrifice was held on the altar to the east of the Parthenon's entrance and the old cult statue of Athena, in the Erechtheion, received her new peplos. Historians believe that the Parthenon was the site w here victors in the athletic and musical competitions were presented their prizes --exquisitely painted vases filled with valuable tax-exempt olive oil.

Panathenaic Amphora

The Development of Greek Temple Architecture

The Parthenon was the climax of over four centuries of Greek temple architecture. A temple was the house of a god or goddess, that is its cult statue. The earliest temples survive only in clay models which convey the intimate house-like nature of the building. Actual temples were constructed of wood and mud-brick with thatched roofs. There was a single room, a naos, and a small front porch, a pronaos, supported by wooden columns. As with all Greek art of the period, decoration was in the severe Geometric style.

Increasing wealth in the 700s B.C. enabled builders to elaborate the simple design by surrounding the naos with a peristyle , a colonnade running entire around the naos and supporting its roof.

The naos was lengthened, no doubt to make the approach to the statue more awe-inspiring. In the course of two centuries Greek builders came to adopt the convention of making the proportion between the length and width of the naos slightly greater than two to one. The front porch, or pronaos, was placed inside the peristyle and a back room, the opisthodomos, was tucked behind the naos to hold offerings brought to the deity.

Greater wealth also allowed a change to more expensive building materials. Wood was replaced by marble, which was costly to quarry and transport. A stone temple could also support a roof of clay-tiles, which offered superior protection against rain. The stone base of the temple, the crepidoma, consisted of three or four platforms the edges of which formed a series of steps continuously ascending on all sides of the building to the top one, called the stylobate, which formed the floor of the temple.

Greek builders developed intriguing methods of holding the stones together without mortar. The edges of the blocks were precisely refined. Holes with staple-like iron clamps, embedded in the blocks by molten lead, secured a block to its neighbors.

Temple of Hephaestus, Athens

Columns were constructed out of cylindrical stone drums, attached to each other by plugs of cypress wood. The earliest stone columns were cigar-shaped, each with an ungainly bulge in the middle; through time these became narrower and more graceful. At the top of the column was its capital, which had two portions: the upper was called the abacus and the lower the echinus. Temple architecture of the Greek mainland was in the Doric style, with a square abacus and rounded echinus.

Between the tops of the columns and the roof was a stretch of wall called the entablature. In Doric wooden temples the upper portion of the entablature featured metopes, wood-carvings of mythological scenes placed between the ends of the beams that sup ported the roof. Both were painted in bright colors. With the changeover to stone , the beam ends, called triglyphs were replaced with stone versions, as were the metopes, and the painting continued--though few traces of color remain.

Greek art was profoundly conservative. The new stone temples of Greece were exquisitely refined copies of earlier wooden ones. Greek artists made the changes they did in order to perfect traditional artistic forms. Innovations, which inevitably occu red as changes were made, may well have been unintentional.

An alternate to the Doric architectural style called the Ionic grew up in the Greek poleis situated in Ionia (modern Turkey), featuring more elaborate column and capital forms and a continuous frieze, sculpted in relief entirely around the upper portion of the entablature.

Organization of the Project.

Following the Athenian democratic practice, a public board supervised the project and public auditors were ready to scrutinize the accounts. The Parthenon was first to be built. Pericles' friend, the master-sculptor Pheidias, was put in overall artist ic control. He carved the imposing statue of Athena, but his contribution to the rest of the building is not known. The temple to house it was created by two builders, Ictinus and Callicrates, but their exact roles are unclear. Craftsmen came from Athe ns and abroad, some presumably slaves. Records of their wages have survived, but do not enable historians to compute the value of their earnings.

The Design.

To reflect Pericles' Panhellenic claims for Athens, the Parthenon was uniquely designed as a Doric temple with several Ionic features. There were eight Doric columns across each end, instead of the usual six. Counting the corner columns both times, each side of the Parthenon had twice-plus-one the number of columns at each end. The dimensions of the stylobate, 230 x 102 feet, followed the same proportion. Instead of clay, the roof tiles were marble. The porch of the naos had six Doric columns. The na os itself was extremely high, to hold Pheidias' huge statue of Athena. The inside walls were surrounded by a two-story Doric colonnade, creating an interior aisle that ran around the statue. Complementing the Doric naos was the opisthodomos, which had f our Ionic columns rising around its center. There may have been no windows in either the naos or the opisthodomos; if not, light was provided by the high entrance doorways of each when opened and probably also by lamps that burned olive oil.

Marble was the one Parthenon expense known to have been spared. The best Greek marble was Parian, from the island of Paros. Nearer Athens, however, was Mount Pentelikon, the source of a coarser marble called Pentelic, which was used throughout the Part henon.

The Optical Refinements.

As they grew more sophisticated, Greek builders began introducing optical refinements--variations from geometrically true forms that created visual illusions that enhanced the gracefulness of these large structures. Optical refinements reached their ext reme in the Parthenon, where not one "straight" line was exactly straight. To the eye, a vertical column appears to be narrower in the middle than at either the top or the bottom. To counteract this, the each exterior Parthenon column has a very slight bulge in the middle. Also the upper diameter of each is slightly narrower than its base diameter, a practice called entasis. Additionally, these columns slant inward, so that they would meet, were they extended one mile into the sky. The four outside c orner columns slant inward diagonally. The three levels of the crepidoma are slightly domed in the center because to the eye purely horizontal lines would have appeared to dip in the middle.

The Parthenon featured four types of sculpture: the statue of Athena housed in the naos, the Ionic frieze along the outside of the naos wall, the Doric metopes on the entablature above the colonnade along the outer sides of the whole structure, and the sculptures of the pediments under each end of the roof. All the sculptures, except the gold-and-ivory statue of Athena, were painted bright colors. Pheidias was the supervisor of sculpture, but scholars are uncertain about the degree of his involvement in all but the statue of Athena.

The Pedimental Sculptures.

The pediment was created when Greek temple-builders placed a sloped roof over the entablature. This left a triangular space at each end of the building that begged for decoration. Early attempts to fill pediments with sculpture were not always successfu l. By the time of the Persian Wars, however, sculptors had learned to tell stories using freestanding,three-dimensional figures which sometimes dramatically extended above and outside the triangular frame of the pediment. Only magnificent fragments survive of the pedimental figures of the Parthenon. In A.D. 1674 a French artist made sketches that convey greater meaning than the scarred remains currently in the British Museum in London.

Those of the East Pediment, over the front entrance of the Parthenon are better preserved. They portray the birth of Athena, with other deities on either side. Those of the West Pediment show the battle between Athena and Poseidon, god of the sea, for the territory in which Athens lay.

The Metopes. Originally there were 92 metopes, 32 on each side and 14 on each end, following the twice-plus-one proportion. Only 57 of these survive, 41 in place and 16 in museums. Their condition makes precise identification of all the v arious mythological scenes they portray impossible. However, one set clearly portrays a battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs, which symbolized the struggle between the Greeks and barbarians. Other metopes show gods battling giants; others, Greeks fig hting Amazons. The artistic quality of the metopes is less than that of the other Parthenon sculptures, leading scholars to hypothesize that the metopes were created first, before the Parthenon artistic team had time to coordinate their output completely.

The Ionic Frieze. The Ionic frieze around the outer perimeter of the naos walls and porch was about 325 feet long and three-feet three inches in height. To aid viewers standing below, the relief of its upper portions was carved up to two-inches deeper than that of its lower. Nearly eighty-five percent of it survives. A civic religious procession commences in two directions starting at the southwest corner of the naos. One heads East along the South side; the other takes a longer route alo ng the West and then the North sides. Both converge at the center of the East side, over the entrance leading to the statue of Athena.

At the rear of both processions are horsemen, preceded by chariots, each holding a driver and a soldier; then, on foot, more male figures. Scholars argue whether the frieze represents the institution of the Greater Panathenaia, or its celebration ever y fourth year, or the crowning of Athenian heroes following the Greek defeat of the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, or the rededication of the Acropolis following its razing by the Persians.

Looking Toward the Future

When in 1982 Melina Mercouri, announced that Greece was to seek the return to Athens of the sculptures which Lord Elgin had torn from the Parthenon at the beginning of the l9th century, a small group of British friends of Greece founded the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles. From the beginning, we were convinced of two things.

The first was that the way to success was not to try to set up a mass organization, but rather to establish the widest contact with politicians, journalists, academics, writers, lawyers and others who could influence public opinion, and above all, the opinion of Parliament; for only Parliament could return the Marbles to Greece.

The second was that our most urgent task was to dispel the cloud of confusion, irrelevance and falsehood which had grown up around the Marbles in the course of two centuries. We have by now, I trust, refuted such hoary lies as that, that Lord Elgin bought the Marbles, or that he had authority from the Ottoman Government to tear down from the Parthenon what the hand of Pheidias had placed there, under the eye of Pericles, and by the order of the Athenian people. We have demonstrated the falsity of such arguments as that if the Marbles are returned, all the great museums of the world will be emptied of their treasures, or that the Marbles are more accessible in London than in Athens - accessible to whom? - or that the Greek nation is incapable of taking care of its artistic heritage. We have drawn attention to the efforts of our predecessors who sought to have the Marbles returned, such as Thomas Hardy, Frederic Harrison, Harold Nicolson, and those Parliamentarians who in 1941 urged that they should be restored to Greece after the war as a token of our gratitude for Greece's contribution to the common struggle against Nazi, aggression.

With Melina's inspired and untiring leadership and encouragement, we have over the years succeeded in bringing the issue to public notice through a multitude of channels: from a debate in the Oxford Union, to an editorial in The Times, from public Lectures, to radio and TV interviews and programmes. The British public and its parliamentary representatives are better informed today on the historical, Legal, moral and aesthetic grounds for the restoration of the Marbles than they have ever been before.

We concentrate now on proclaiming and explaining why we believe that the time has come for the Marbles to be returned. The argument is a simple one. First of all, the Parthenon is a great work of art, indeed, one of the greatest in the world, and it is absurd that its constituent parts should be kept 1,500 miles apart. Secondly, it is not only a symbol for the Greek people of its historical continuity, but it has also become a symbol for the whole world of civilization and culture. That is why UNESCO chose as its logo the facade of the Parthenon, albeit with too few columns. Thirdly, the decision has now been taken by the Greek government to build a new museum at the foot of Acropolis, to hold all the incomparable material found on that venerable site - sculptures, inscriptions, architectural fragments, portable antiquities, etc. In the New Museum of the Acropolis, which will have all that modern technology can provide for their conservation, display and study, there will be a great hall prepared to house the Parthenon sculptures, with a glass roof through which the visitor can look up to the temple on the rock directly above him. In co-operation with our many friends in the UK, Greece and elsewhere throughout the world, we will continue our campaign, with a new sense of urgency, for the realization of this aim.

+ Prof. Robert Browning Emeritus Professor of Classics of the University of London

The Elgin Marbles

Between 1801 and 1803 Lord Elgin, British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, dismantled some of the Parthenon sculptures and shipped them to England. Greece was then under Turkish rule, and Lord Elgin’s actions were meant to protect and preserve the fragments of the Parthenon which had suffered from neglect, accident and decay. The Ottomans did not revere the structures on the Acropolis. Muslim tradition forbids the creation of graven images, so the Turks did not value the sculptures of the Parthenon, either. In 1687, the Turks had used the cella, or inner chamber of the Parthenon as a kind of munitions storehouse. In a skirmish with the Turks, a direct hit from a Venetian warship hit the center of the Parthenon, igniting the munitions in the cella, blowing it to bits. The center was blown right out of the Parthenon!

~Benita Goldman

National Archaeological Museum

Athens Archaeological Museum Photo Gallery

The Neoclassical building of the 19th century houses the country’s best collection of art and archeological artifacts of Ancient Greece, from prehistoric tools to works of classical beauty and great aesthetic significance.

Lyre Player from Keros 2000 BCE(c) Cycladic Aegean Springtime Fresco from Akrotiri 1500 BCE(c) Minoan Thera Flotilla Fresco from Akrotiri 1500 BCE(c) Minoan Thera Mycenae and Greece Dagger Blades from the Royal Tombs 1600 BCE (c) Mycenaean Mask of Agamemnon 1500 BCE (c) Mycenaean Vapphio Cups 1500 BCE (c) Mycenaean Warrior Vase 8th C. BCE Geometric Dipylon Vase 600 BCE (c) Archaic Kouros from Sounion 600 BCE (c) Archaic Kouros from Anavysos 540 BCE (c) Archaic Zeus or Poseidon 460-450 BCE Early Classical Grave Stele of Hegeso 410 BCE (c) Classical Dionysian Procession (School of Scopas) 4th C. BCE Late Classical Antikythera Youth 4th C. BCE Late Classical Jockey 2nd. C. BCE Hellenistic Portrait Head from Delos 80 BCE (c) Hellenistic Amphora of Nessos 600 BCE (c) Black figure Lethykos from Eretria 410 BCE (c) White Ground Zeus or Poseidon 460-450 BCE Early Classical

Acropolis Museum Photo Gallery

Propylaea 437-432 BC Mnesicles Classical Temple of Athena Nike 427-424 BC Callicrates Classical Erectheum 421-405 BC Mnesicles(?) Classical The Parthenon 448-432 BC Ictinus & Callicrates Classical On the sides of the hill of the Acropolis are two theatres. Theatre of Dionysos 4th Century BC Classical Odeum of Herodus Atticus now largely restored, is used for musical and theatrical events today. Hill and Monument of Philopappus Classical This is dedicated to a benefactor of Athens. The niches held classical statuary, of which only fragments remain. Monument of Lysicrates Classical Lysicrates was a wealthy Athenian who produced a stage production and won a drama prize...a gold-plated victory tripod. This monument was built to display this prize. "Choreogoi" is the name given to these victors. The monument, in circular form with columns, topped by an elaborate acanthus leaf recalls a small tholos temple.

Calf Bearer 570 BC(c) Archaic Greece Peplos Kore 530 BC(c) Archaic Greece Kore of Euthydikos 490 BC(c) Archaic Greece Almond-eyed Kore 500 BC(c) Archaic Greece Kritios Boy 480 BC(c) Severe Greece Blonde Youth 480 BC(c) Severe Greece Caryatids 410 BC(c) Classical Greece Birth of Athena (Parthenon) 440 BC(c) Classical Greece Poseidon & Apollo 440 BC(c) Classical Greece

Byzantine Athens

Kapnikarea 11th-13th C. CE Byzantine

Daphni Monastery 7-9th C. CE Byzantine

Daphni Church 11th C. CE Byzantine

Olympia Image Gallery