The Parthenon Enigma

by Joan Breton Connelly

  A marble metope from the Bluebeard Temple was salvaged after the temple’s destruction and inscribed with an important text, dated to 485/484 B.C. Known as the “Hekatompedon Inscription,” it names two distinct buildings that stood on the Acropolis: the Neos (referring to the Archaios Neos, or Old Athena Temple), and the Hekatompedon, or “Hundred-Footer.”59 An excellent case has been made, contra Dörpfeld, for the identification of the Bluebeard Temple as the Hekatompedon, placing it on a site beneath the present Parthenon.60 Indeed, the eastern room of the Parthenon was still called the hekatompedon in the fifth century B.C. and into the Roman era, perhaps reflecting a continuity in the naming of successive buildings on this site. And, as Rudolph Heberdey documented long ago, every piece of Archaic poros sculpture found on the Acropolis was recovered from the area to the south of the Parthenon, between the temple and the south fortification wall. 61

  Herakles battling the Lernaean Hydra, limestone pediment. Athens, Acropolis Museum. (illustration credit ill.16)

  The Bluebeard Temple looks eastward for inspiration, not only in its narrative themes that focus so deliberately on genealogical succession myths and primordial battles between weather monsters and composite fiends, but also in its architectural forms. The incision of lotus flowers beneath the cornice, the trumpet-shaped spouts that guided rainwater from its gutters, and the upturned edge of the roof above the gable’s apex in a tong-shaped embellishment, all these features show influence from the grand visual traditions of the ancient Near East.62

  The Hekatompedon Inscription mentions additional buildings that stood on the Archaic Acropolis for which no stone foundations survive today. These are called the oikemata, or “houses,” a term that suggests they were of smaller scale than the Hekatompedon and Archaios Neos. Fragments of small limestone sculptures can be reconstructed to fill at least five small pediments from buildings that might be the oikemata mentioned in the inscription (one is shown above).63 It is likely that these structures served as treasuries, perhaps housing gifts dedicated to Athena by rival Eupatrid families of Attica, much as the treasury buildings at contemporary Olympia and Delphi held offerings of rival city-states. Their pedimental sculptures range in date from around 560–550 B.C. to the early fifth century.64

  ONE OF THESE PEDIMENTAL groups shows Herakles battling the Lernaean Hydra (previous page), the aforementioned water serpent with huge body and nine heads that, when cut off, grew back again.65 Herakles and his nephew Iolaos worked as a team in subduing this monster.66 As Herakles bashed off each head with his club, Iolaos would quickly cauterize the wound with a flaming torch. This prevented new heads from regenerating. Thus, the slimy monster was exterminated. Importantly, Hydra was the child of Typhon. So we find, once again, two successive generations in pitched battle on the Archaic Acropolis. Zeus kills Typhon in the age of the Titans (Bluebeard pediment), while his son Herakles kills Typhon’s daughter Hydra in the era that follows (the small poros pediment). As we shall soon see, by the close of the sixth century another great temple will be built (the Archaios Neos or Old Athena Temple), this on the north side of the Acropolis plateau, and its pediment will display a cosmic conflict of a later generation still, the battle of the gods and the Giants. But this will come after the momentous years of Peisistratos’s illustrious tyranny.

  WE CANNOT KNOW exactly what Peisistratos’s involvement in the Great Panathenaia of 566 entailed, but he clearly regarded it as an opportunity to advance his ambitions for taking control of Athens. This he tried three times, establishing his first tyranny in 561/560 B.C. through a clever ruse in which he first claimed his life was under threat and then, once the people had granted him protection, employed his bodyguard to help him seize the Acropolis. Soon expelled from Athens, Peisistratos returned in the mid-550s for a short, second regime and, finally, in 546, when he succeeded in establishing a tyranny that lasted for thirty-six years. Peisistratos spent the decade between his second and his third coups in very productive exile, developing strengths that can, in a sense, be seen to exemplify what would become ideal Athenian virtues: careful planning, an entrepreneurial spirit in building wealth through hard work, dogged determination, a taste for culture, and the projection of strong personal charisma. Relocating to distant Thrace in the northeast of Greece, Peisistratos amassed a fortune in mining concessions from the gold and silver of Mount Pangaion, developed a network of international contacts with powerful tyrants, and rallied a mercenary army in anticipation of his return to Athens for a final takeover. Once back in power, he adopted a progressive global economic view, engaging Athens in international trade, minting the city’s first coins and encouraging productivity that, for example, saw Athens overtake Corinth as the leading exporter of fine painted pottery.67 Peisistratos was, no doubt, impressed by the vast stone temple (55 meters by more than 108 meters, or 180 by 354 feet) begun by the tyrant Polykrates on Samos in mid-century and by the grandeur and excess of the East Greek sanctuaries at Ephesos, Didyma, and Miletos. We cannot know how he might have enhanced the Hekatompedon or old shrine of Athena in his day. But taking careful note of what strong rulers were accomplishing abroad, he followed their example. Like Polykrates on Samos, he introduced a major upgrade in the local water supply at Athens, building an aqueduct from Mount Lykabettos to the Agora and, apparently, constructing the Enneakrounos Fountain House above the spring of Kallirrhöe. As John Camp has explained, the laying out of the Agora, the very focal point of Athenian life and government, was largely the work of Peisistratos and his sons, who also established new drainage systems, fountains, and shrines, including the sanctuary of Dionysos Eleutherios on the south slope of the Acropolis.68

  Peisistratos effectively exploited the power of his “cult of personality” in appealing to the sensibilities of the Athenian masses. Herodotos tells us that returning to Athens after his first exile, Peisistratos contrived a spectacular homecoming in which he was taken up the Acropolis in a chariot driven by a woman dressed as Athena.69 Nearly 6 feet tall (1.8 meters) and strikingly beautiful, Phye wore the armor of the goddess, explicitly communicating to the crowd of spectators that Athena herself welcomed Peisistratos back. The tyrant lost no opportunity to parade before the people his particular devotion to the goddess, taking care at the same time to flaunt her special fondness for him.70

  This highly visible display recalls another attempt at tyranny played out upon the Acropolis stage some seventy-five years earlier, that of Kylon in 632/631 B.C. Having risen to fame as a victor in the Olympic Games, encouraged by a Delphic oracle, and supported by his father-in-law (the tyrant of Megara), Kylon tried to seize the Acropolis during the annual festival of Zeus. He and his accomplices met with strong resistance and became trapped on the Sacred Rock, where they took sanctuary at Athena’s statue, according to Herodotos, or at her altar, according to Thucydides.71 Kylon escaped, but his co-conspirators were held on the Acropolis without food or water in a long standoff that left them close to death. Some of the archons from the Alkmeonid family (whose leader, Miltiades, was chief magistrate at the time) promised the accomplices safe passage off the Acropolis but later reneged, killing them as they took refuge at the altars of the accursed goddesses (Semnai) down below. This act of gross impiety—murder within a sanctuary—brought a lasting curse upon the entire Alkmeonid clan.72

  The stories of Kylon and Peisistratos illustrate the dominance of the Acropolis plateau as an ever-visible landmark and target for takeover. Seizing the Sacred Rock symbolized a conquering of all Attica for aspiring tyrants, as it would for the Persian army in 480 B.C. Even with its transformation from Bronze Age fortress to Iron Age sanctuary, the Acropolis retained its power as a bulwark, the ultimate prize for contenders in a centuries-long game of King of the Mountain.

  To be sure, Peisistratos commandeered power in an unconstitutional manner, but by all accounts he governed according to the laws of Solon, taking care of the city masses as well as the rural majority. He made loans to small farmers, encouraged the cultivation of olives fo
r export, and exacted a 5 percent tax on agricultural production. He unified disparate local cults from all across Attica into a centralized whole in which all Athenians held a stake, exercising special care to preserve their long-standing relationships with particular noble clans. Indeed, it is likely that Peisistratos instituted hereditary priesthoods that ensured the oldest families would forever keep their responsibility (and privilege) of looking after these cults.73 The Eteoboutadai, that is, the clan of the plains led by Lykourgos, received the distinction of providing priests for the most venerable of the Acropolis cults, those of Athena Polias and Poseidon-Erechtheus. From this point forward, civic, religious, and cultural life at Athens was deeply intertwined. It was becoming clearer and clearer just what it meant to be an Athenian.

  When Peisistratos died in 528/527 B.C., he was succeeded by his sons, who ruled until Hipparchos was murdered in 514 and Hippias was exiled in 510. The early years of their rule went smoothly as they devoted their energies to their father’s vision, beautifying the city with buildings and monuments and greatly enhancing its cultural and religious institutions.74 The sons of Peisistratos (known as the Peisistratids) played a major role in promoting music, poetry, and the arts at Athens. Their most ostentatious project was the construction of an enormous temple to Olympian Zeus (the Olympieion, this page)on the banks of the Ilissos River, replacing a shrine that their father had built on this very ancient site, occupied already in Neolithic days. The hugely ambitious plan called for a temple platform measuring 41 by 108 meters (135 by 354 feet), clearly meant to rival the gargantuan temples of Hera on Samos and Artemis at Ephesos. But the project would be abandoned and languish incomplete for centuries until the Roman emperor Hadrian finished it in A.D. 131/2.75

  It was not until Hipparchos made a reckless advance on Harmodios, a young man already attached to an older lover, Aristogeiton, that the fortunes of the Peisistratids turned. The ensuing rejection, affront, and further retaliatory insult led to Hipparchos’s assassination at the Panathenaia in 514.76 Hippias now grew bitter and difficult while the rival Alkmeonid family, having spent much of the Peisistratid tyranny in exile, planned a comeback. They persuaded Sparta (with the encouragement of the Delphic oracle) to help them overthrow Hippias. The Spartan king, Kleomenes, obliged, setting siege to the Acropolis, where Hippias and his supporters were ensconced. In 510 B.C., after some family members were taken hostage, Hippias agreed to leave Athens for good. The ousted despot took refuge with the Persian governor at Sardis in Anatolia and, twenty years later, returned to Attica in the company of the Persian army, traitorously giving advice on how best to defeat the Athenians at Marathon.

  Having successfully ousted the tyrant, the Athenian people now sought to remove the Spartan-led army that was in control of their citadel. Demonstrating an extraordinary ability to take quick and decisive collective action in the face of crisis, ordinary Athenians gathered en masse at the foot of the Acropolis and forced the surrender of the coalition of Spartans and Athenian nobility holding the summit. They called for the return of Kleisthenes, a member of the Alkmeonid family who had helped in overthrowing Hippias but was later expelled by a rival within his clan.77 Kleisthenes returned as champion of the people in 508/507 and swiftly introduced sweeping reforms that laid the foundations for true and direct demokratia, in which the people (demos) held the power (kratos), the very basis for our modern democratic system today.78 Kleisthenes reconfigured the legislature, the court system, and the formation of the Athenian “tribes,” breaking the power of the nobility and establishing the framework for a national army. Ten new tribes were geographically described so that each contained people from different parts of Athenian territory: the coastal districts, the inland regions, and the urban areas. Each tribe would henceforth consist of a mix of individuals from across these diverse areas, bringing together men of vastly different backgrounds, skill sets, and kinship networks.79 But the experience of serving on tribal teams, both in the legislature and in the Panathenaic competitions, would soon knit these men together in a real brotherhood of common interests. Kleisthenes extended Athenian citizenship to all adult resident males and their offspring, creating a new Council of 500 to which each of the ten newly created tribes would send fifty delegates chosen, democratically, by lot. Furthermore, he instituted ostracism, establishing a process through which unpopular leaders could be expelled. In short, Kleisthenes ushered in an egalitarian revolution, bringing to the Athenian people what he called isonomia (equality vis-à-vis law) and what we call democracy itself.

  By the end of the sixth century B.C., Athens was ready not only for a new system of government but also for a new temple on the Acropolis. Just as, sixty-five years before, the Bluebeard Temple had projected dynamic images of cosmic combat in the wake of Solon’s reforms, so the temple of the young democracy would launch a powerful narrative of genealogical struggle: the battle of the gods and the Giants. This theme featured prominently in the Panathenaia, woven as it was into the figured fabric (peplos) presented to Athena at the festival and, during the second half of the sixth century, painted on so many Attic vases (especially those found on the Acropolis itself).80 Within the realm of myth, the Gigantomachy may be seen as the next generational conflict following that in which Zeus destroyed Typhon.

  Having vanquished the older generation of Titans, the Olympians turned to the cosmic war with the Giants. These are the terrible creatures that sprang from blood dripping out of Ouranos’s severed testicles and mingling with Earth. The Giants, so big that their heads touched the clouds, outnumbered the Olympian gods twenty-four to twelve. And so the gods enlisted the help of mighty Herakles to improve their odds.81 Athena and Herakles fought side by side in battle, valiant warriors who made an excellent team. Athena so distinguished herself that she became known as Gigantoleteira or Gigantoletis (“She Who Destroyed the Giants”).82 Earlier in this chapter we saw Athena kill one giant named Drako and another named Aster. There is yet a third deadly beast she annihilates in the Gigantomachy, the fearsome Enkelados, whose name means “Sound the Charge.” According to some sources, Athena lifted and hurled the island of Sicily at this monster as he fled the battlefield, crushing him beneath Mount Aitna.83 The supreme size and strength of gods and Giants made them quite capable of throwing boulders, mountains, and even whole islands in the course of combat.

  The Gigantomachy took pride of place on the great gable of the Archaios Neos or Old Athena Temple, a structure built at the north side of the Acropolis at the turn of the sixth to the fifth century.84 The temple rose from the so-called Dörpfeld foundations, still visible today (below, and see also this page and insert this page, bottom). Its pediments were filled with colossal figures carved in expensive marble imported from the island of Paros. One of the gables showed lions savaging a bull just as on the old Bluebeard Temple. The other pediment featured the Gigantomachy, dominated by a dynamic image of Athena lunging toward a fallen giant (following page). The goddess is shown in feverish pursuit of the enemy, employing her snaky aegis not only as a shield but also as a weapon. She manipulates a hissing, biting snake head, using it to menace a fallen giant.85

  Erechtheion and foundations of Old Athena Temple, from south. (illustration credit ill.17)

  Athena from Gigantomachy pediment, Old Athena Temple. Athens, Acropolis Museum. (illustration credit (illustration credit ill.18)

  Athena slaying giant, Gigantomachy pediment, Old Athena Temple. Athens, Acropolis Museum. ill.19)

  Charioteer from frieze (?), Old Athena Temple. Athens, Acropolis Museum. (illustration credit ill.20)

  This bold composition crowned a Doric temple that measured roughly 21 by 43 meters (69 by 141 feet) and showed six columns across the façades and twelve down its flanks (following page and insert this page, bottom).86 Built of poros limestone quarried in the Piraeus, the Old Athena Temple was adorned with marble roof tiles, gutters, akroteria, lion’s-head waterspouts, and metopes.87 It seems also to have been decorated with a marble frieze of which lit
tle survives: one fragment clearly shows the god Hermes and another, a charioteer (above).88 As we shall see in chapter 5, chariots had very special meaning at Athens since being introduced into Athenian warfare by the founder, King Erechtheus/ Erichthonios himself.

  The plan of the Old Athena Temple was unusual as the main room at the east was completely separated from the three rooms at the back or west end of the structure (above and this page). Its eastern cella had two rows of three columns dividing the interior into three “aisles.” Here, an olive wood statue of Athena was housed, known as the “ancient image” (to archaion agalma). This relic, believed to have fallen from the heavens in the early days of Athens, was the most sacred object in the city. It was aniconic (an effigy without human shape), consisting of a simple olive wood tree trunk.89 Like cult statues in all Greek sanctuaries, the image was regarded not as a representation of the deity but as the divine essence itself. Therefore, Athena’s statue was dressed in ornate fabric and adorned with a golden diadem, earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. It even had its own gold libation bowl.90 Once a year the statue would be taken down to the sea at Phaleron for bathing before returning to its “house” on the Acropolis.

  Plan of Athenian Acropolis in 480 B.C. (illustration credit ill.21)

  The back of the Old Athena Temple was separated from the eastern room by a dividing wall and comprised an anteroom opening onto two smaller chambers, accessible through a single entrance on the west porch. This curious plan seems to reflect the integration of three distinct cult places and anticipates the unusual subdivision of the structure that would “replace” it in the last quarter of the fifth century, the Erechtheion (this page, this page, this page, and this page). Indeed, the Erechtheion reserves special cult places for Athena at the east and for Poseidon, Erechtheus, and his brother Boutes at the west, indicating that this building, like its predecessor, was devoted to the joint worship of multiple gods and heroes.91