Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/15

Rh allies; when the ^ye/xovta of Athens passed insensibly into a Tvpawk (Thucyd., ii. 63); when the contribution of ships and men was commuted in most cases for a money payment, and the funds of the confederation were transferred from the Apollonium at Delos to the Athenian Acropolis, an enormous revenue became at the disposal of the Athenian Government. It is to their credit that so little of it found its way into private pockets. It was natural for the thoughts of a Greek, especially of an Athenian, to turn to the decoration of his city ; it was politic that the central city of the Ionian confederacy should be adorned with a beauty equal to her prestige. The buildings connected with the name of Cimon had been chiefly for utility or defence ; those of Pericles were mainly ornamental. The first edifice completed by him seems to have been the n. Odeium, on the E. of the Dionysiac theatre, to serve as a place for recitations by rhapsodists, and for musical per formances. It was burnt by Aristion during Sulla s siege of Athens, but afterwards rebuilt. Mention has already been made of the building of the Long Walls and the laying out of the Pirseeus by Pericles ; but it was the Acropolis itself which witnessed the greatest splendours of his administration. Within its limited area arose buildings and statues, on which the genius of Phidias the sculptor, of Ictinus and Mnesicles the architects, were employed for years; while multitudes of artists and craftsmen of all kinds were busied in carrying out their grand designs. 1 The spoils of the Persian War had already been consecrated under Cimon to the honour of the national goddess, in the tue of erection of a colossal statue of Athena by Phidias between iena the entrance of the Acropolis and the Erechtheium ; her ma- warlike attitude gained her the title of ITpo/Aa^o?, and the gleam of her helmet s plume and uplifted spear was hailed by the homeward seaman as he doubled Cape Sunium (Pausan., i. 28). But the national deity was to receive yet greater honours at the hand of Pericles. That an old temple stood on the site afterwards occupied by the Par thenon is proved, less by the doubtful expressions of Hero dotus (viii. 51, 55), and the testimony of later compilers like Hesychius, than by recent excavations, which reveal that a large temple must have been at least begun upon this spot when the Persian invaders destroyed the old buildings of the Acropolis by fire. Here, then, Pericles proceeded to rear what has ever since been known as the Parthenon. The designer of this masterpiece of architecture thenon. was i c tinus ; the foundations of the old temple were at his suggestion extended in length and breadth, and thus arose upon the S. side of the Acropolis a magnificent temple of the virgin goddess. It was completed in the year 438 B.C. It stood upon the highest platform of the Acropolis, so that the pavement of the peristyle of the Parthenon was on a level with the capitals of the columns of the east portico of the Propylsea. The temple was built entirely of white marble from the quarries of Mount Pentelicus. Ascending a flight of three steps, you passed through the great east entrance into the Pronaos, wherein was stored a large collection of sacred objects, chiefly of silver. From the Pronaos a massive door led into the cella, called Hecatompedos (ve ws 6 EKaro /xTreSo?), because it measured in length 100 Attic feet. The ( treasure here bestowed consisted chiefly of chaplets and other objects of gold. The west portion of the cella was railed off (by Kty^X/ Ses), and formed the Parthenon proper, i.e., the adytum occupied by the chryselephantine statue by Phidias of Athena Parthenos, a work which yielded the pre-eminence only to one other statue by the same artist, viz., the Zeus at Olympia. In this adytum were stored a number of silver bowls and other articles employed at the Panathenaic festi- 1 See the animated description in Plutarch, Pericles, 12, foil. vals. The westernmost compartment at the rear of the cella was the Opisthodomus, which served as the national treasury; hither poured in the tribute of the Athenian allies. It is important to remember that the Parthenon was never intended as a temple of worship ; for this pur pose there already existed another temple, presently to be described as the Erechtheium, standing upon the primeval site of that contest between Athena and Poseidon which established the claim of the goddess to the Attic citadel and soil. The Parthenon was simply designed to be the central point of the Panathenaic festival, and the storehouse for the sacred treasure. The entire temple should be regarded as one vast dvaOrjfjM to the national deity, not as a place for her worship. Thus directly in front of her statue in the cella there stood an erection, which has been mistaken for an altar, but which is more probably to be regarded as the platform which the victorious competitors in the Panathenaic contests ascended to receive, as it were from the hand of the goddess, the golden chaplets and vases of olive oil that formed the prizes (see Michaelis s Parthenon, p. 31). This consideration lends significance to the decorations of the building, which were the work of Phidias. Within the outer portico, along the outside of the top of the wall of the building, ran a frieze 3 feet 4 inches in height, and 520 feet in total length, on which were sculptured figures in low relief 2, representing the Panathenaic procession. Nearly all of these sculptures are in the British Museum, and the entire series has been recently made complete by- casts from the other fragments, and arranged in the order of the original design. The marvellous beauty of these reliefs, which was heightened originally by colour, has been long familiar to all the world from numerous illustrated descrip tions. The procession of youths and maidens, of priests and magistrates, of oxen for sacrifice, of flute-players and singers, followed by the youthful chivalry of Athens on. prancing steeds is represented as wending its way from the west towards the eastern entrance. 3 Outside of the building, on the N. and S. sides, the metopes between the Doric triglyphs were filled with sculptures representing scenes from the mythical history of Athens. But the glory of the Parthenon were the sculptures of the E. and W. pediments. Unhappily but a few figures remain, and none are wholly perfect, of the statues which formed these groups ; and Pausanias appears to have thought it super fluous to give a minute description of objects so familiar to every connoisseur and traveller. The sculptures on the eastern pediment related to the birth of Athena ; the cen tral group was early destroyed by the Byzantine Christians in converting the Parthenon into a church, with the Pronaos for its apse. But nearly all the subordinate figures are preserved in a more or less injured condition in the British Museum. The noble head of the horse of the car of Night, the seated female figures of &quot; The Fates,&quot; and the grand torso commonly known as the &quot; Theseus,&quot; are familiar to us all. It would be out of place here even to enumerate the many attempts that have been made to reconstruct the groups of either pediment. The sculptures on the W. represented the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica; and although scarcely any por tions of these figures are now existing, yet they are better known to us than the E. pediment by means of the faithful (if clumsy) sketches made by the Frenchman Carrey in 1674, when they were in a comparatively perfect state. Those who desire to know all that is to be known concern ing the sculptures of the Parthenon should consult the beautiful work of Michaelis, Der Parthenon, v.iiile the 2 See the remarks of Mr Ruskin, Aratra Pentelica, p. 174. 3 Ho who desires to enjoy these sculptures, should co;r,e from a perusal of Michaelis s eloquent work Dcr Parthenon, and spend a day in the British Museum with the guide-book in his band. 