C5

Architecture and Architectural Sculpture

The decades following the removal of the Persian threat are universally considered the high point of Greek civilization. This is the era of the dramatists Sophocles and Euripides, as well as Aeschylus; the historian Herodotus; the statesman Pericles; the philosopher Socrates; and many of the most famous Greek architects, sculptors, and painters.

TEMPLE OF ZEUS, OLYMPIA The first great monument of Classical art and architecture is the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, site of the Olympic Games. The temple was begun about 470 BCE and was probably completed by 457 BCE. The architect was Libon of Elis. Today the structure is in ruins, its picturesque tumbled column drums an eloquent reminder of the effect of the passage of time on even the grandest monuments humans have built. A good idea of its original appearance can be gleaned, however, from a slightly later Doric temple modeled closely on the Olympian shrine of Zeus—the second Temple of Hera (FIG. 5-30) at Paestum. The plans and elevations of both temples follow the pattern of the Temple of Aphaia (FIGS. 5-26 and 5-27) at Aegina: an even number of columns (six) on the short ends, two columns in antis, and two rows of columns in two stories inside the cella. But the Temple of Zeus was more lavishly decorated than even the Aphaia temple. Statues filled both pediments, and the six metopes over the doorway in the pronaos and the matching six of the opisthodomos were adorned with reliefs.

5-30 Temple of Hera II, Paestum, Italy, ca. 460 BCE.

The second Hera temple at Paestum was modeled on Libon’s Temple of Zeus at Olympia. The Paestum temple reflects the Olympia design, but the later building lacks the pedimental sculpture of its model.

The subject of the Temple of Zeus’s east pediment (FIG. 5-31) had deep local significance: the chariot race between Pelops (from whom the Peloponnesos takes its name) and King Oinomaos. The story is a sinis-

ter one. Oinomaos had one daughter, Hippodameia, and it was foretold that he would die if she married. Consequently, Oinomaos challenged any suitor who wished to make Hippodameia his bride to a chariot race from Olympia to Corinth. If the suitor won, he also won the hand of the king’s daughter. But if he lost, he was killed. The outcome of each race was predetermined, because Oinomaos possessed the divine horses of his father Ares. To ensure his victory when all others had failed, Pelops resorted to bribing the king’s groom, Myrtilos, to rig the royal chariot so that it would collapse during the race. Oinomaos was killed and Pelops won his bride, but he drowned Myrtilos rather than pay his debt to him. Before he died, Myrtilos brought a curse on Pelops and his descendants. This curse led to the murder of Pelops’s son Atreus and to events that figure prominently in some of the greatest Greek tragedies of the Classical era, Aeschylus’s three plays known collectively as the Oresteia: the sacrifice by Atreus’s son Agamemnon of his daughter Iphigeneia; the slaying of Agamemnon by Aegisthus, lover of Agamemnon’s wife Clytaemnestra; and the murder of Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra by Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra.

Indeed, the pedimental statues (FIG. 5-31), which faced toward the starting point of all Olympic chariot races, are posed as actors on a stage—Zeus in the center, Oinomaos and his wife on one side, Pelops and Hippodameia on the other, and their respective chariots to each side. All are quiet. The horrible events known to every

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5-32 Seer, from the east pediment of the Temple of Zeus, Olympia,

Greece, ca. 470–456 BCE. Marble, full figure 4 6 high; detail 3 2– high.

1

2

Archaeological Museum, Olympia.

The balding seer in the Olympia east pediment is a rare depiction of old age in Classical sculpture. He has a shocked expression because he foresees the tragic outcome of the chariot race.

spectator have yet to occur. Only one man reacts—a seer who knows the future (FIG. 5-32). He is a remarkable figure. Unlike the gods, heroes, and noble youths and maidens who are the almost exclusive subjects of Archaic and Classical Greek statuary, this seer is a rare depiction of old age. He has a balding, wrinkled head and sagging musculature—and a shocked expression on his face. This is a true show of emotion, unlike the stereotypical Archaic smile, without precedent in earlier Greek sculpture and not a regular feature of Greek art until the Hellenistic age.

The metopes of the Zeus temple are also thematically connected with the site, for they depict the 12 labors of Herakles (see “Herakles, Greatest of Greek Heroes,” right), the legendary founder of the Olympic Games. In the metope illustrated here (FIG. 5-33), Herakles holds up the sky (with the aid of the goddess Athena—and a cushion) in place of Atlas, who had undertaken the dangerous journey to fetch the golden apples of the Hesperides for the hero. The load soon will be transferred back to Atlas (at the right, still holding the apples), but now each of the very high relief figures in the metope stands quietly with the same serene dignity as the statues in the Olympia pediment. In both attitude and dress (simple Doric peplos for the women), all the Olympia figures display a severity that contrasts sharply with the smiling and elaborately clad figures of the Late Archaic period. Many art historians call this Early Classical phase of Greek art the Severe Style.

106 Chapter 5 A N C I E N T G R E E C E

R E L I G I O N A N D M Y T H O L O G Y

Herakles, Greatest

of Greek Heroes

Greek heroes were a class of mortals of intermediate status between ordinary humans and the immortal gods. Most often the children of gods, some were great warriors, such as those

who fought at Troy and were celebrated in Homer’s epic poems. Others pursued one fabulous adventure after another, ridding the world of monsters and generally benefiting humankind. Many heroes were worshiped after their deaths, and the greatest of them were honored with shrines, especially in the cities with which they were most closely associated.

The greatest Greek hero was Herakles (the Roman Hercules), born in Thebes and the son of Zeus and Alkmene, a mortal woman. Zeus’s jealous wife Hera hated Herakles and sent two serpents to attack him in his cradle, but the infant strangled them. Later, Hera caused the hero to go mad and to kill his wife and children. As punishment he was condemned to perform 12 great labors. In the first, he defeated the legendary lion of Nemea and ever after wore its pelt. The lion’s skin and his weapon, a club, are Herakles’ distinctive attributes (FIG. 5-66). His last task was to obtain the golden apples Gaia gave to Hera at her marriage (FIG. 5-33). They grew from a tree in the garden of the Hesperides at the western edge of the ocean, where a dragon guarded them. After completion of the 12 seemingly impossible tasks, Herakles was awarded immortality. Athena, who had watched over him carefully throughout his life and assisted him in performing the labors, introduced him into the realm of the gods on Mount Olympus. According to legend, it was Herakles who established the Olympic Games.

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5-33 Athena, Herakles, and Atlas with the apples of the Hesperides, metope from the Temple of Zeus, Olympia, Greece, ca. 470–456 BCE. Marble, 5 3 high. Archaeological Museum, Olympia.

Herakles founded the Olympic Games, and his 12 labors were the subjects of the 12 Doric metopes of the Zeus temple. This one shows the hero holding up the world (with Athena’s aid) for Atlas.

Statuary

Early Classical sculptors were also the first to break away from the rigid and unnatural Egyptian-inspired pose of the Archaic kouroi. This change is evident in the postures of the Olympia figures, but it occurred even earlier in independent statuary.

KRITIOS BOY Although it is well under life-size, the marble statue known as the Kritios Boy (FIG. 5-34)—so titled because it was once thought the sculptor Kritios carved it—is one of the most important works of Greek sculpture. Never before had a sculptor been concerned with portraying how a human being (as opposed to a stone image) actually stands. Real people do not stand in the stifflegged pose of the kouroi and korai or their Egyptian predecessors. Humans shift their weight and the position of the main body parts around the vertical but flexible axis of the spine. When humans move, the body’s elastic musculoskeletal structure dictates a harmonious, smooth motion of all its elements. The sculptor of the Kritios

5-34 Kritios Boy, from the Acropolis, Athens, Greece, ca. 480 BCE. Marble, 3 10 high.

Acropolis Museum, Athens.

This is the first statue to show how a person naturally stands. The sculptor depicted the shifting of weight from one leg to the other (contrapposto). The head turns slightly, and the Archaic smile is gone.

Boy was among the first to grasp this fact and to represent it in statuary. The youth has a slight dip to the right hip, indicating the shifting of weight onto his left leg. His right leg is bent, at ease. The head also turns slightly to the right and tilts, breaking the unwritten rule of frontality dictating the form of virtually all earlier statues. This weight shift, which art historians describe as contrapposto (counterbalance), separates Classical from Archaic Greek statuary.

RIACE WARRIOR The innovations of the Kritios Boy were carried even further in the bronze statue (FIG. 5-35) of a warrior found in the sea near Riace at the “toe” of the Italian “boot.” It is one of a pair of statues divers accidentally discovered in the cargo of a ship that sank in antiquity on its way from Greece probably to Rome, where Greek sculpture was much admired. Known as the Riace Bronzes, they had to undergo several years of cleaning and restoration after nearly two millennia of submersion in salt water, but they are nearly intact. The statue shown here lacks only its shield, spear, and helmet. It is a masterpiece of hollow-casting (see “Hollow-Casting Life-Size Bronze

5-35 Warrior, from the sea off Riace, Italy, ca.

460–450 BCE. Bronze, 6 6 high.

Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Reggio Calabria.

The bronze Riace warrior statue has inlaid eyes, silver teeth and eyelashes, and copper lips and nipples (FIG. I-17). The contrapposto is more pronounced than in the Kritios Boy (FIG. 5-34).

Statues,” page 108), and FIG. 5-36), with inlaid eyes, silver teeth and eyelashes, and copper lips and nipples (FIG. I-17). The weight shift is more pronounced than in the Kritios Boy. The warrior’s head turns more forcefully to the right, his shoulders tilt, his hips swing more markedly, and his arms have been freed from the body. Natural motion in space has replaced Archaic frontality and rigidity.

CHARIOTEER OF DELPHI The high technical quality of the Riace warrior is equaled in another bronze statue set up a decade or two earlier to commemorate the victory of the tyrant Polyzalos of Gela (Sicily) in a chariot race at Delphi. The statue (FIG. 5-37) is almost all that remains of a large group composed of Polyzalos’s driver, the chariot, the team of horses, and a young groom. The charioteer stands in an almost Archaic pose, but the turn of the head and feet in opposite directions as well as a slight twist at the waist are in keeping with the Severe Style. The moment chosen for depiction is not during the frenetic race but after, when the driver quietly and modestly holds his horses still in the winner’s circle. He grasps the reins in his outstretched right hand (the lower left arm, cast separately, is missing), and he wears the standard charioteer’s garment,

girdled high and held in at the shoulders and the back to keep it from flapping. The folds emphasize both the verticality and calm of the figure and recall the flutes of a Greek column. A band inlaid with silver, tied around the head, confines the hair. Delicate bronze lashes shade the eyes made of glass paste.

ARTEMISION ZEUS The male human form in motion is, in contrast, the subject of another Early Classical bronze statue (FIG. 5-38), which, like the Riace warrior, divers found in an ancient shipwreck, this time off the coast of Greece itself at Cape Artemision. The bearded god once hurled a weapon held in his right hand, probably a thunderbolt, in which case he is Zeus. A less likely suggestion is that this is Poseidon with his trident. The pose could be employed equally well for a javelin thrower. Both arms are boldly extended, and the right heel is raised off the ground, underscoring the lightness and stability of hollow-cast monumental statues.

MYRON, DISKOBOLOS A bronze statue similar to the Artemision Zeus was the renowned Diskobolos (Discus Thrower) by the Early Classical master MYRON. The original is lost. Only marble copies (FIG. 5-39) survive, made in Roman times, when demand so

5-38 Zeus (or Poseidon?), from the sea off Cape Artemision, Greece, ca. 460–450 Bronze, 6 10 high. National Archaeological Museum,

Athens.

In this Early Classical statue of Zeus hurling a thunderbolt, both arms are boldly extended and the right heel is raised off the ground, underscoring the lightness and stability of hollow-cast bronze statues.

5-39 MYRON, Diskobolos (Discus Thrower). Roman marble copy of a bronze original of ca. 450 BCE, 5 1 high. Museo Nazionale Romano–

Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.

This marble copy of Myron’s lost bronze statue captures how the sculptor froze the action of discus throwing and arranged the nude athlete’s body and limbs so that they formed two intersecting arcs.

W R I T T E N S O U R C E S

Polykleitos’s Prescription

for the Perfect Statue

One of the most influential philosophers of the ancient world was Pythagoras of Samos, who lived during the latter part of the sixth century BCE. A famous geometric theorem still bears his

name. Pythagoras also is said to have discovered that harmonic chords in music are produced on the strings of a lyre at regular intervals that may be expressed as ratios of whole numbers—2:1, 3:2, 4:3. He and his followers, the Pythagoreans, believed more generally that underlying harmonic proportions could be found in all of nature, determining the form of the cosmos as well as of things on earth, and that beauty resided in harmonious numerical ratios.

By this reasoning, a perfect statue would be one constructed according to an all-encompassing mathematical formula. In the midfifth century BCE, the sculptor Polykleitos of Argos set out to make just such a statue (FIG. 5-40). He recorded the principles he followed and the proportions he used in a treatise titled the Canon (that is, the standard of perfection). His treatise is unfortunately lost, but Galen, a physician who lived during the second century CE, summarized the sculptor’s philosophy as follows:

[Beauty arises from] the commensurability [symmetria] of the parts, such as that of finger to finger, and of all the fingers to the palm

and the wrist, and of these to the forearm, and of the forearm to the upper arm, and, in fact, of everything to everything else, just as it is written in the Canon of Polykleitos. . . . Polykleitos supported his treatise [by making] a statue according to the tenets of his treatise, and called the statue, like the work, the Canon.*

This is why Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century CE, maintained that Polykleitos “alone of men is deemed to have rendered art itself [that is, the theoretical basis of art] in a work of art.” †

Polykleitos’s belief that a successful statue resulted from the precise application of abstract principles is reflected in an anecdote (probably a later invention) told by the Roman historian Aelian:

5-40 POLYKLEITOS,

Doryphoros (Spear Bearer). Roman marble copy from Pompeii, Italy, after a bronze original of ca. 450– 440 BCE, 6 11 high.

Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.

Polykleitos sought to portray the perfect man and to impose order on human movement. He achieved his goals by employing harmonic proportions and a system of cross balance for all parts of the body.

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Polykleitos made two statues at the same time, one which would be pleasing to the crowd and the other according to the principles of his art. In accordance with the opinion of each person who came into his workshop, he altered something and changed its form, sub-

mitting to the advice of each. Then he put both statues on display. The one was marvelled at by everyone, and the other was laughed at. Thereupon Polykleitos said, “But the one that you find fault with, you made yourselves; while the one that you marvel at, I made.” ‡

far exceeded the supply of Greek statues that a veritable industry was born to meet the call for Greek statuary to display in public places and private villas alike. The copies usually were made in less costly marble. The change in medium resulted in a different surface appearance. In most cases, the copyist also had to add an intrusive tree trunk to support the great weight of the stone statue and struts between arms and body to strengthen weak points. The copies rarely approach the quality of the originals, and the Roman sculptors sometimes took liberties with their models to conform to their own tastes and needs. Occasionally, for example, a mirror image of the

original was created for a specific setting. Nevertheless, the copies are indispensable today. Without them it would be impossible to reconstruct the history of Greek sculpture after the Archaic period.

Myron’s Diskobolos is a vigorous action statue, like the Artemision Zeus, but it is composed in an almost Archaic manner, with profile limbs and a nearly frontal chest, suggesting the tension of a coiled spring. Like the arm of a pendulum clock, the right arm of the Diskobolos has reached the apex of its arc but has not yet begun to swing down again. Myron froze the action and arranged the body and limbs to form two intersecting arcs (one from the discus to the

left hand, one from the head to the right knee), creating the impression of a tightly stretched bow a moment before the string is released. This tension is not, however, mirrored in the athlete’s face, which remains expressionless. Once again, as in the warrior statue (FIG. 5-29) from the Aegina temple’s east pediment, the head is turned away from the spectator. In contrast to Archaic athlete statues, the Classical Diskobolos does not perform for the spectator but concentrates on the task at hand.

POLYKLEITOS, DORYPHOROS One of the most frequently copied Greek statues was the Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) by the sculptor POLYKLEITOS, whose work epitomizes the intellectual rigor of Classical art. The best marble replica (FIG. 5-40) stood in a palaestra at Pompeii, where it served as a model for Roman athletes. The Doryphoros was the embodiment of Polykleitos’s vision of the ideal statue of a nude male athlete or warrior. In fact, the sculptor made it as a demonstration piece to accompany a treatise on the subject. Spear Bearer is a modern descriptive title for the statue. The name Polykleitos assigned to it was Canon (see “Polykleitos’s Prescription for the Perfect Statue,” page 110).

The Doryphoros is the culmination of the evolution in Greek statuary from the Archaic kouros to the Kritios Boy to the Riace warrior. The contrapposto is more pronounced than ever before in a standing statue, but Polykleitos was not content with simply rendering a figure that stood naturally. His aim was to impose order on human movement, to make it “beautiful,” to “perfect” it. He achieved this through a system of cross balance. What appears at first to be a casually natural pose is, in fact, the result of an extremely complex and subtle organization of the figure’s various parts. Note, for instance, how the statue’s straight-hanging arm echoes the rigid supporting leg, providing the figure’s right side with the columnar stability needed to anchor the left side’s dynamically flexed limbs. If read anatomically, however, the tensed and relaxed limbs may be seen to oppose each other diagonally—the right arm and the left leg are relaxed, and the tensed supporting leg opposes the flexed arm, which held a spear. In like manner, the head turns to the right while the hips twist slightly to the left. And although the Doryphoros seems to take a step forward, the figure does not move. This dynamic asymmetrical balance, this motion while at rest, and the resulting harmony of opposites are the essence of the Polykleitan style.

The Athenian Acropolis

While Polykleitos was formulating his Canon in Argos, the Athenians, under the leadership of Pericles, were at work on one of the most ambitious building projects ever undertaken, the reconstruction of the Acropolis after the Persian sack of 480 BCE. Athens, despite the damage it suffered at the hands of the army of Xerxes, emerged from the war with enormous power and prestige. The Athenian commander Themistocles had decisively defeated the Persian navy off the island of Salamis, southwest of Athens, and forced it to retreat to Asia.

In 478 BCE, in the aftermath of the Persians’ expulsion from the Aegean, the Greeks formed an alliance for mutual protection against any renewed threat from the east. The new confederacy came to be known as the Delian League, because its headquarters were on the sacred island of Delos, midway between the Greek mainland and the coast of Asia Minor. Although at the outset each league member had an equal vote, Athens was “first among equals,” providing the allied fleet commander and determining which cities were to furnish ships and which were instead to pay an annual tribute to the treasury at Delos. Continued fighting against the Persians kept the alliance intact, but Athens gradually assumed a dominant role. In 454 BCE the Delian treasury was transferred to Athens, ostensibly for security rea-

sons. Pericles, who was only in his teens when the Persians laid waste to the Acropolis, was by midcentury the recognized leader of the Athenians, and he succeeded in converting the alliance into an Athenian empire. Tribute continued to be paid, but the surplus reserves were not expended for the common good of the allied Greek states. Instead, Pericles expropriated the money to pay the enormous cost of executing his grand plan to embellish the Acropolis of Athens.

The reaction of the allies—in reality the subjects of Athens— was predictable. Plutarch, who wrote a biography of Pericles in the early second century CE, indicated the wrath the Greek victims of Athenian tyranny felt by recording the protest voiced against Pericles’ decision even in the Athenian assembly. Greece, Pericles’ enemies said, had been dealt “a terrible, wanton insult” when Athens used the funds contributed out of necessity for a common war effort to “gild and embellish itself with images and extravagant temples, like some pretentious woman decked out with precious stones.”1 The source of funds for the Acropolis building program is important to keep in mind when examining those great and universally admired buildings erected in accordance with Pericles’ vision of his polis reborn from the ashes of the Persian sack. They are not the glorious fruits of Athenian democracy but are instead the by-products of tyranny and the abuse of power. Too often art and architectural historians do not ask how a monument was financed. The answer can be very revealing—and very embarrassing.

PORTRAIT OF PERICLES A number of Roman copies are preserved of a famous portrait statue of Pericles by KRESILAS, who was born on Crete but who worked in Athens. The bronze portrait was set up on the Acropolis, probably immediately after the leader’s death in 429 BCE, and depicted Pericles in heroic nudity. The statue must have resembled the Riace warrior (FIG. 5-35). The copies, in marble, reproduce the head only, sometimes in the form of a herm (a bust on a square pillar, FIG. 5-41), a popular format in Roman times

5-41 KRESILAS,

Pericles. Roman marble herm copy of a bronze original of ca. 429 BCE. Full herm 6 high;

detail 4 1 high.

6–2

Musei Vaticani, Rome.

In his portrait of Pericles, Kresilas was said to have made a noble man appear even nobler. Classical Greek portraits were not likenesses but idealized images in which humans appeared godlike.

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for abbreviated copies of famous statues. The herm is inscribed “Pericles, son of Xanthippos, the Athenian,” leaving no doubt as to the identification. Pericles wears the helmet of a strategos (general), the position he was elected to 15 times. The Athenian leader was said to have had an abnormally elongated skull, and Kresilas recorded this feature (while also concealing it) by providing a glimpse through the helmet’s eye slots of the hair at the top of the head. This, together with the unblemished features of Pericles’ Classically aloof face and, no doubt, his body’s perfect physique, led Pliny to assert that Kresilas had the ability to make noble men appear even more noble in their portraits. This praise was apt because the Pericles herm is not a portrait at all in the modern sense of a record of actual features. Pliny referred to Kresilas’s “portrait” as “the Olympian Pericles,” for in this image Pericles appeared almost godlike.2

PERICLEAN ACROPOLIS The centerpiece of the Periclean building program on the Acropolis (FIG. 5-42) was the Parthenon (FIG. 5-43, no. 1), or the Temple of Athena Parthenos, erected in the remarkably short period between 447 and 438 BCE. (Work on the great temple’s ambitious sculptural ornamentation continued until 432 BCE.) As soon as the Parthenon was completed, construction commenced on a grand new gateway to the Acropolis from the west (the only accessible side of the natural plateau), the Propylaia (FIG. 5-43, no. 2). Begun in 437 BCE, it was left unfinished in 431 at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Two later temples, the Erechtheion (FIG. 5-43, no. 4) and the Temple of Athena Nike (FIG. 5-43, no. 5), built after Pericles died, were probably also part of the original design. The greatest Athenian architects and sculptors of the Classical period focused their attention on the construction and decoration of these four buildings.

That these fifth-century BCE buildings exist at all today is something of a miracle. In the Middle Ages, the Parthenon, for example, was converted into a Byzantine and later a Roman Catholic church and then, after the Ottoman conquest of Greece, into a mosque. Each time the building was remodeled for a different religion, it was modified structurally. The Christians early on removed the colossal statue of Athena inside. The churches had a great curved apse at the east end

5-42 Aerial view of the Acropolis looking southeast, Athens, Greece.

Under the leadership of Pericles, the Athenians undertook the costly project of reconstructing the Acropolis after the Persian sack of 480 BCE. The funds came from the Delian League treasury.

housing the altar, and the mosque had a minaret (tower used to call Muslims to prayer). In 1687 the Venetians besieged the Acropolis, which at that time was in Turkish hands. Venetian weaponry scored a direct hit on the ammunition depot the Turks had installed in part of the Parthenon. The resultant explosion blew out the building’s center. To make matters worse, the Venetians subsequently tried to remove some of the statues from the Parthenon’s pediments. In more than one case, they dropped statues, which then smashed on the ground. From 1801 to 1803, Lord Elgin brought most of the surviving sculptures to England. For the past two centuries they have been on exhibit in the British Museum (FIGS. 5-47 to 5-50), although Greece has appealed many times for the return of the “Elgin Marbles.” Today, a uniquely modern blight threatens the Parthenon and the other buildings of the Periclean age. The corrosive emissions of factories and automobiles are decomposing the ancient marbles. A major campaign has been under way for decades to protect the columns and walls from further deterioration. What little original sculpture remained in place when modern restoration began, the Greeks transferred to the Acropolis Museum’s climate-controlled rooms.

PARTHENON: ARCHITECTURE Despite the ravages of time and humanity, most of the Parthenon’s peripteral colonnade (FIG. 5-44) is still standing (or has been reerected), and art historians know a great deal about the building and its sculptural program. The architects were IKTINOS and KALLIKRATES. The statue of Athena (FIG. 5-46) in the cella was the work of PHIDIAS, who was also the overseer of the temple’s sculptural decoration. In fact, Plutarch claimed that Phidias was in charge of the entire Acropolis project.

Just as the contemporary Doryphoros (FIG. 5-40) may be seen as the culmination of nearly two centuries of searching for the ideal proportions of the various human body parts, so, too, the Parthenon may be viewed as the ideal solution to the Greek architect’s quest for perfect proportions in Doric temple design. Its well-spaced columns, with their slender shafts, and the capitals, with their straight-sided conical echinuses, are the ultimate refinement of the bulging and squat Doric columns and compressed capitals of the Archaic Hera temple at Paestum (FIG. 5-15). The Parthenon architects and Poly-

5-43 Restored view of the Acropolis, Athens, Greece (John Burge).

(1) Parthenon, (2) Propylaia, (3) pinakotheke, (4) Erechtheion,

(5) Temple of Athena Nike.

Of the four main fifth-century BCE buildings on the Acropolis, the first to be erected was the Parthenon, followed by the Propylaia, the Erechtheion, and the Temple of Athena Nike.

kleitos were kindred spirits in their belief that beautiful proportions resulted from strict adherence to harmonious numerical ratios, whether in a temple more than 200 feet long or a life-size statue of a nude man. For the Parthenon, the controlling ratio for the symmetria of the parts may be expressed algebraically as x = 2y 1. Thus, for example, the temple’s short ends have 8 columns and the long sides have 17, because 17 = (2 8) 1. The stylobate’s ratio of length to width is 9:4, because 9 = (2 4) 1. This ratio also characterizes the cella’s proportion of length to width, the distance between the centers of two adjacent column drums (the interaxial) in proportion to the columns’ diameter, and so forth.

The Parthenon’s harmonious design and the mathematical precision of the sizes of its constituent elements tend to obscure the fact that this temple, as actually constructed, is quite irregular in shape. Throughout the building are pronounced deviations from the strictly horizontal and vertical lines assumed to be the basis of all Greek post- and-lintel structures. The stylobate, for example, curves upward at the center on the sides and both facades, forming a kind of shallow dome, and this curvature is carried up into the entablature. Moreover, the peristyle columns lean inward slightly. Those at the corners have a diagonal inclination and are also about two inches thicker than the rest. If their lines continued, they would meet about 1.5 miles above the

temple. These deviations from the norm meant that virtually every Parthenon block and drum had to be carved according to the special set of specifications dictated by its unique place in the structure. This was obviously a daunting task, and a reason must have existed for these so-called refinements in the Parthenon. Some modern observers note, for example, how the curving of horizontal lines and the tilting of vertical ones create a dynamic balance in the building—a kind of architectural contrapposto—and give it a greater sense of life. The oldest recorded explanation, however, may be the most likely. Vitruvius, a Roman architect of the late first century BCE who claimed to have had access to Iktinos’s treatise on the Parthenon—again note the kinship with the Canon of Polykleitos—maintained that the builders made these adjustments to compensate for optical illusions. Vitruvius noted, for example, that if a stylobate is laid out on a level surface, it will appear to sag at the center, and that the corner columns of a building should be thicker because they are surrounded by light and would otherwise appear thinner than their neighbors.

The Parthenon is “irregular” in other ways as well. One of the ironies of this most famous of all Doric temples is that it is “contaminated” by Ionic elements (FIG. 5-45). Although the cella had a twostory Doric colonnade, the back room (which housed the goddess’s treasury and the tribute collected from the Delian League) had four

5-44 IKTINOS and KALLIKRATES,

Parthenon (Temple of Athena Parthenos, looking southeast), Acropolis, Athens, Greece, 447–438 BCE.

The architects of the Parthenon believed that perfect beauty could be achieved by using harmonic proportions. The ratio for larger and smaller parts was

x = 2y 1 (for example, a plan of 17 8 columns).

5-45 Plan of the Parthenon, Acropolis, Athens, Greece, with diagram of the sculptural program (after Andrew Stewart), 447–432 BCE.

The Parthenon was lavishly decorated under the direction of Phidias. Statues filled both pediments, and figural reliefs adorned all 92 metopes. There was also an inner 524-foot sculptured Ionic frieze.

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5-46 PHIDIAS, Athena Parthenos, in the cella of the Parthenon, Acropolis, Athens, Greece, ca. 438 BCE. Model of the lost chryselephantine statue. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

Inside the cella of the Parthenon was Phidias’s 38-foot-tall gold-and- ivory statue of Athena Parthenos (the Virgin), fully armed and holding Nike (Victory) in her extended right hand.

tall and slender Ionic columns as sole supports for the superstructure. And whereas the temple’s exterior had a canonical Doric frieze, the inner frieze that ran around the top of the cella wall was Ionic. Perhaps this fusion of Doric and Ionic elements reflects the Athenians’ belief that the Ionians of the Aegean Islands and Asia Minor were descended from Athenian settlers and were therefore their kin. Or it may be Pericles’ and Iktinos’s way of suggesting that Athens was the leader of all the Greeks. In any case, a mix of Doric and Ionic features characterizes the fifth-century BCE buildings of the Acropolis as a whole.

ATHENA PARTHENOS The costly decision to incorporate two sculptured friezes in the Parthenon’s design is symptomatic. This Pentelic-marble temple was more lavishly adorned than any Greek temple before it, Doric or Ionic. Every one of the 92 Doric metopes was decorated with relief sculpture. So, too, was every inch of the 524-foot-long Ionic frieze. The two pediments were filled with dozens of larger-than-life-size statues. And inside was the most expensive item of all—Phidias’s gold-and-ivory (chryselephantine) statue of Athena Parthenos, the Virgin. Art historians know a great deal about Phidias’s lost statue from descriptions by Greek and Latin authors and from Roman copies. A model (FIG. 5-46) gives a good idea of its appearance and setting. Athena stood 38 feet tall, and to a large extent the Parthenon was designed around her. To accommodate the statue’s huge size, the cella had to be wider than usual. This,

in turn, dictated the width of the facade—eight columns at a time when six columns were the norm.

Athena was fully armed with shield, spear, and helmet, and she held Nike (the winged female personification of Victory) in her extended right hand. No one doubts that this Nike referred to the victory of 479 BCE. The memory of the Persian sack of the Acropolis was still vivid, and the Athenians were intensely conscious that by driving back the Persians, they were saving their civilization from the eastern “barbarians” who had committed atrocities at Miletos. In fact, the Athena Parthenos had multiple allusions to the Persian defeat. On the thick soles of Athena’s sandals was a representation of a centauromachy. The exterior of her shield was emblazoned with high reliefs depicting the battle of Greeks and Amazons (Amazonomachy), in which Theseus drove the Amazons out of Athens. And Phidias painted a gigantomachy on the shield’s interior. Each of these mythological contests was a metaphor for the triumph of order over chaos, of civilization over barbarism, and of Athens over Persia.

PARTHENON: METOPES Phidias took up these same themes again in the Parthenon’s Doric metopes (FIG. 5-45). The best-preserved metopes—although the paint on these and all the other Parthenon marbles long ago disappeared—are those of the south side, which depicted the battle of Lapiths and centaurs, a combat in which Theseus of Athens played a major role. On one extraordinary slab (FIG. 5-47), a triumphant centaur rises up on its hind legs, exulting over the crumpled body of the Greek it has defeated. The relief is so high that parts are fully in the round. Some have broken off. The sculptor knew how to distinguish the vibrant, powerful form of the living beast from the lifeless corpse on the ground. In other metopes the Greeks have the upper

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5-47 Lapith versus centaur, metope from the south side of the Parthenon, Acropolis, Athens, Greece, ca. 447–438 BCE. Marble, 4 8 high. British Museum, London.

The Parthenon’s centauromachy metopes allude to the Greek defeat of the Persians. The sculptor of this metope knew how to distinguish the vibrant living centaur from the lifeless Greek corpse.