been well paid. Some say too well paid. And there are obvious benefits.” He nodded toward the curtain. “Besides, aren’t you now the most famous artist in Greece?”
Plutarch, Pericles 7.
The scope of Pericles’ building projects, combined with his firm faith in the genius of Phidias, had given the sculptor a singular opportunity to remake the city center in his own style. Pericles had decided that the Acropolis would be completely razed, and what little the Persians left would be removed or embedded in the new foundations. Thousands of workmen, from day laborers to the most sophisticated engineers and craftsmen, were required to complete the task on the ambitious timeline Pericles had set, and only Phidias had the ability to coordinate this army so that their collective product was coherent.
Statuette of Athena Promachos, 50 BC–25 AD.
His workshop was half stonemason’s yard and half laboratory, with various tools for carving marble and chasing metal. The furnaces to cast bronze were nearby, on the south slope of the Acropolis. When Pericles dropped in, Phidias was working on a large clay figure of Athena holding a spear in one hand.
“I don’t see why you need a nude model for this, Phidias. I’ve never seen a woman so covered up in all my life.” Pericles gestured to the heavy, embroidered peplos that was pinned at the figure’s shoulders and belted at her waist, draping all the way to the floor.
“The virgin Athena is always chaste, more’s the pity,” Phidias agreed. “But the important thing is to get the anatomy right beneath the drapery. Our old sculptors didn’t care about such things and the bodies they carved were just blocks. But even under that shroud you can see that my Athena has the figure of a goddess. Look how gracefully she strides forward.”
“Her head is exquisite, but she is certainly fierce,” Pericles observed.
“The goddess at war!” said Phidias, with visible satisfaction. “She is ready to lead Athenians into battle – truly promachos (first in war.)”
“How big will she be?” asked Pericles. He hated anything small.
“Thirty feet. Athena Promachos will tower over all the buildings. Her body will be bronze but her helmet and spear will be gold, so when they flash in the sunlight you will be able to see her all the way from the port at Pireaus.”1414
Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.28.2 (available at the Perseus Digital Library).
“Perfect. Then you can concentrate on finishing the temple – and the Athena Parthenos to go inside it.”
The Acropolis: 432 BC
Pericles had to admit that even by his exacting standards, what Phidias and his team had accomplished was staggering. From the charred rubble there emerged a gleaming new complex that would stand as a testament to Athenian achievements in the decades since the Persians had been repelled. The ancient sacred way had zigzagged up the rock, but now visitors ascended a grand central ramp and were greeted by the Propylæa, or gatehouse, a massive structure of limestone and white marble with both Doric and Ionic columns. Inside the main space was a wall with five gates into the temple complex. On the western, outward-facing side, two wings flanked the building. Corresponding wings planned for the eastern side would never be built; reality caught up with ambition as tensions grew between Athens and Sparta, breaking into full-scale war in 431 and putting an end to the building projects.
Fortunately, the crown jewel in Pericles’ complex had already been completed by this time. The space atop the Acropolis was dominated by a new temple to Athena, which came to be known as the Parthenon, taking its name from her title Athena Parthenos (virgin). Rectangular stone temples surrounded by columns standing on a platform of steps had a long tradition in the Greek world, and had been constructed as far afield as Sicily. The Parthenon had all the customary elements of this temple type, but on a larger scale and with an unprecedented quantity and quality of decoration.
Phidias had employed two engineer-architects, Ictinus and Callicrates, to oversee the building process. He planned to put a second statue of Athena even taller than the bronze Athena Promachos inside the temple, which was also to house whatever was left of the Delian treasury, so its proportions threatened to become bulky. Ictinus and Callicrates approached the project with surgical precision, adjusting their measurements by the millimeter to trick the eye into believing this huge masonry structure was light and elegant.1515
The design of the Parthenon was so complex that Ictinus wrote a mathematical treatise on its intricacies, which is now lost.
Reconstruction of the Acropolis with the Propylaea, Athena Promachos, and Parthenon.
Greek temples traditionally had peaked roofs, creating a triangular space known as a pediment above the horizontal shelf on top of the columns. Pediments were logical places for sculptural decoration, being highly visible. They were also awkward spaces; fitting a composition into a triangle was always a challenge. Earlier artists had simply made figures on a smaller scale in the sharp angles, but Phidias wanted to craft a design that would appear more natural, with all figures on the same scale.
The east pediment of the Parthenon, facing out toward the city, showed Athena’s miraculous birth. Her mother, Metis, the primordial goddess of wisdom, had been one of Zeus’s many paramours. When she became pregnant there was a dire prophecy that if the baby was a girl, she would be a goddess and a close ally of Zeus, but if a boy, he might one day dethrone his father. Zeus attempted to solve the problem by swallowing Metis whole. Nine months later, he suffered a headache so severe that he called for Hephæstus, the god of fire and the forge, and demanded that he cut open his head with an axe. Hephæstus obliged. To the amazement of all, Athena emerged full-grown and armed to the hilt. Metis was not heard from again.
Plan of the Parthenon.
This blessed event, according to legend, had occurred at dawn. Phidias envisioned it taking place in a sort of communal bedroom as the Olympian gods and goddesses were just starting up from their couches. The chariot of the sun was peeping out of the left-hand corner, while the tired horses of the moon goddess, Selene, descended into the right. The rest of the pediment was crowded with figures of the Olympians reclining in various states of undress. Dionysus, for example, was naked. For the goddesses like Hera and Aphrodite, less prudish than Athena, Phidias had been able to indulge his taste for clinging, diaphanous drapery. While they were still clothed, their voluptuous forms were so clearly revealed that everyone assumed he had used models covered in wet linen.
On the west pediment, Phidias had carved the foundation myth of Athens, the scene of the contest between Athena and Poseidon for control of the city. All Athenians coming up through the Propylæa toward the Parthenon would be reminded both of their special relationship with their protectress, and of how their ancestors had participated in deciding their city’s future.1616
This pediment was severely damaged in the seventeenth century and is almost impossible to reconstruct.
Moving around the temple, visitors would have found seventy-eight rectangular stone reliefs known as metopes above the exterior colonnade. Rather like a comic strip, the metopes
