that continued into the interior of the temple. Here was Phidias’s masterpiece, the colossal Athena Parthenos, towering more than forty feet. Like the bronze Athena Promachos outside, she wore a peplos and carried a shield and a spear, but she was made of materials far more precious than bronze: her skin was fashioned from thin sheets of luminescent ivory molded over wood, while her helmet, peplos and shield were gold.2020
Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.24.5–7.
This technique of combining ivory with gold, known as chryselephantine, was a specialty of Phidias. Not only was it hugely expensive, it was also a technological marvel, as the ivory had to be imported and then carefully soaked to make it flexible. So much gold was required for this statue that it caused a scandal of its own. Pericles tamped down the criticism by pointing out that the gold elements were detachable and could be melted down to pay for the defense of Athens and the Delian League in future times of need, then recast from the original molds when the danger had passed.2121
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.13.5. According to some sources, this ingenious plan was put into action in 300 BC when the tyrant Lachares melted down the detachable gold plates to pay his mercenary army. They were replaced with bronze replicas, rather than with the gold as Pericles specified. Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.25.7. The Athena Parthenos disappeared without a trace in late antiquity.
Like the Parthenon, the chryselephantine figure of Athena was covered with symbolic sculptural ornament. The griffins on her helmet were the mythological guardians of gold. The head of Medusa on her breast warded off evil. The figure of Nike in her right hand represented victory. On the outside of her shield, the Greeks battled the invading Amazons. On the inside, the Olympians defeated the giants. On her sandals, the Lapiths fought the centaurs. On the base of the statue, the gods witnessed the birth of Pandora, the first woman.2222 From her head to her toes, the Athena Parthenos reprised the larger message of the temple, visibly conveying the wealth, power, ingenuity – in a word, the superiority – of the Athenians, from the ancient days of gods and heroes to the age of Pericles.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 36.4.5 (available at the Perseus Digital Library).
The Sacred Way: November 431 BC
The Athena Parthenos was dedicated during the Great Panathenaic Festival of 438 BC, although work on the temple’s exterior went on until 432 BC. Toward the end of the following year, the complex on the Acropolis formed the backdrop for Pericles as he climbed up on a specially constructed platform, artfully placed so his audience down on the ground would see him framed by the Parthenon and the Athena Promachos. Now in his sixties and completing his third decade as the leader of Athens, Pericles was in his thirteenth year as an elected general. He had been personally managing the conflict with Sparta, known as the Peloponnesian War, which had started in earnest that year. The early battles were going well for Athens.
Pericles remained undeniably the first citizen of Athens, but in a democracy that did not mean he was unopposed. His policies of broadening and strengthening the city’s democratic system ensured that he had enemies, who were perpetually on the watch for weakness. In recent years they had been attacking him through some of his unorthodox relationships, particularly those with Phidias and Aspasia. Accusations of immorality and graft had, perhaps with some basis, dogged the sculptor throughout the Acropolis building projects. He was also accused of including portraits of himself and Pericles among the mythological Greeks fighting the Amazons on the shield of the Athena Parthenos, and was imprisoned on a charge of impiety.2323 Phidias ended up leaving Athens for Olympia, where he created a huge chryselephantine sculpture of Zeus that would be accounted one of the wonders of the ancient world.
Plutarch, Pericles 31.
Aspasia turned out to be a greater vulnerability for Pericles. She was his most powerful confidante and was famous for her intellect as well as her beauty. He freely acknowledged her, making no effort to mask their relationship. Her house became a regular stop on his daily walk through the city, and he would kiss his hand to her when she appeared in her window at the appointed time.2424 Besides being a mistress and so essentially an independent woman, Aspasia was also, even more dangerously, a foreigner. She hailed from Miletus, one of the Ionian colonies that had been involved in the revolt against the Persians.
Plutarch, Pericles 24.
Athenians nursed a deep distrust of foreigners and tried to keep them at arm’s length. They had to compete in separate games during the Panathenaic Festival and had few political rights. Rumor had it that even the most quintessential of Athenians, Pericles, might be subject to their pernicious influence through Aspasia. Female, foreign and not his wife, she was an easy target and was publicly tried for lewd behavior. Pericles sprang to her defense; according to Plutarch, he made a most uncharacteristic outburst on her behalf, weeping with such emotion that the shocked jurors, accustomed to his famous poise, acquitted her on the spot.2525
Plutarch, Pericles 32.
The comic playwright Aristophanes would later claim that Pericles started the Peloponnesian War either to distract from the scandals of Phidias or to avenge the abduction of two prostitutes working for Aspasia, but neither theory has been substantiated.2626 Relations between the Greek city-states were increasingly contentious as the unifying Persian threat receded into the past, though Pericles’ specific rationale for leading Athens into war with Sparta remains obscure. After his long tenure as a general he had to be aware that Sparta, with its tradition of military excellence and large network of wealthy client states, would be a formidable foe. Pericles may have believed that their conflicting interests made war inevitable, and that the best chance of victory for Athens would be in a quick campaign of his own initiation.
Aristophanes, Peace 605–11; and Acharnians 515ff; see also Anthony J. Podlecki, Perikles and His Circle (Routledge, 1998), 104–5, 112–13.
At first, the plan went well. Pericles’ strategy was to protect the city of Athens and depend heavily on the navy to harass the enemy while avoiding major engagements on land. The Athenian navy defeated Sparta’s ally Corinth in an early engagement at Corfu with remarkably few Athenian casualties.
By tradition, those cut down in battle were cremated on the spot and their bones brought back to Athens for burial in a common grave just outside the city in an annual ceremony. Marathon was the only exception, the soldiers who died there being considered so heroic that they got a special monument on the field of battle.2727 The war with Sparta was not (yet) seen as unusual, so the normal protocols were followed. As the winter of 431/430 approached and the campaign season ended, Athenians prepared for a state funeral and selected Pericles to give a speech in praise of the fallen.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.34.5.
Since there were not (yet) many to mourn, he did not spend much time on consolation after he had climbed onto the platform in front of the new Acropolis temple complex. His theme was, rather, the glory of Athens and why it was in the best interest of all that Athens rather than Sparta prevail in this conflict. Sparta was a monarchy with a tightly regimented society that gave little value to the rights of individuals. According to Pericles, what made Athens exceptional was the city’s experiment in democracy, through which free citizens could rise on their merits under the rule of law:
Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations
