East pediment, voluptuous female figure reclines on a low couch, attended by two women (figures K, L, and M). (illustration credit ill.33)
The west façade of the Parthenon, and the twenty-five larger-than-life figures that fill its gable, would have been the first sight to confront worshippers emerging from the Acropolis gateway and entering the sacred space (insert this page, right). This first impression manifests on a grand scale the common genealogy of the Athenian people, that which made their supremacy possible. We see the primeval contest of Athena and Poseidon for patronage of the city as witnessed by the ancestral royal families of the Athenian Bronze Age. The gable suffered greatly in the Venetian cannon fire of 1687, and also from the Venetian commander General Morosini, who, the following year, attempted to pull down the images of Athena and Poseidon, only to shatter them upon the ground. More than a century later, Lord Elgin would pick up some of the pieces and carry them off. But other bits were left lying on the Acropolis, and so today the magisterial figures of Athena and Poseidon remain divided between the British Museum in London and the Acropolis Museum in Athens.
One can hardly imagine a more fitting commemoration of Athena’s victory over Poseidon than the thrilling composition at the very center of the gable, where god and goddess meet in the heat of the contest.77 Thanks to the Nointel Artist, and derivative images from Greek vase paintings, we have a good idea of the original disposition of the figures in a dynamic V shape.78 The divine contestants have arrived on the Acropolis, Athena’s chariot driven by Nike (foretelling her victory) and Poseidon’s by a female figure who must be his wife, the Nereid Amphitrite.79 Athena’s right arm is raised high as she hurls her spear into the Acropolis rock, whence springs her olive tree. Though no tree is preserved among the pedimental fragments, fourth-century vase painting, clearly inspired by this image, shows an olive sprouting between Athena and Poseidon.80 The sea god, in turn, hurls his trident into the bedrock. Whether we are witnessing the sea spring bursting forth or the subsequent earthquake and deluge that the disgruntled Poseidon unleashed is difficult to know. What is clear is that this bombastic central composition could not have failed to seize the attention of anyone entering the Acropolis.
Relics from the contest of Athena and Poseidon are not only described in literature but preserved in material remains on the Acropolis itself.81 Apollodoros tells us that Athena planted her olive tree in the sanctuary of Pandrosos, which lay just beside the Erechtheion; Pausanias saw the tree growing near the north porch, where a modern incarnation of the olive grows today (below).82 And he tells us that on the day following the Persian sack of the Acropolis, Athena’s tree sprouted a new branch four feet long, signaling that Athens would be reborn. Over the years, invading enemies attempted to cut the olive down, but a sprig was always saved for replanting, and the tree always grew back. Shoots from the original were carried out to the Academy and planted in the protected grove that remained ever sacred to Athena. Indeed, it was oil from these trees that filled the amphorae awarded victors at the Panathenaic Games.
Poseidon’s gift of a sea spring was heard by Pausanias, roaring from its cistern beneath the Erechtheion, in a din of crashing waves that kicked up whenever a south wind blew. And with his own eyes the traveler saw three holes piercing the Acropolis rock, where Poseidon had hurled his mighty trident, a witness also borne by Strabo.83 To this day, one can see a three-pronged indentation in the bedrock beneath the Erechtheion’s north porch, visible through an opening deliberately cut through the floor.84 High in the ceiling, directly above, is an aperture cut through the coffer blocks giving direct access to the sky (above). Thus, the trajectory of Poseidon’s trident was left unbroken when the temple was built upon the very spot where the god’s spear pierced the earth, the trident marks and sea spring giving, as Pausanias tells it, “evidence in support of Poseidon’s claim upon the land.”85
Erechtheion, from west, showing olive tree of Athena replanted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 1952. © Robert A. McCabe, 1954–55. (illustration credit ill.34)
Aperture in ceiling of north porch, Erechtheion, Athenian Acropolis. (illustration credit ill.35)
Returning to the west pediment (insert this page, right), we find the messenger gods Hermes (behind Athena) and Iris (behind Poseidon) rushing to bring word of the outcome of the contest. Iris, the rainbow goddess of sea and air, would have hovered slightly, her feet just off the ground, her diaphanous dress windswept to reveal the swelling form of her lovely body. She is the very essence of the ephemeral rainbow, a cosmic phenomenon that witnessed the very beginnings of Athens.
Similarly, watery depths are conjured, just as on the Archaic Acropolis, by a plethora of marine serpents and slithering snakes. In the Nointel drawing, a male torso, probably that of a Triton, can be made out rising from the pediment floor to support the outermost of Athena’s horses. And beneath Poseidon’s chariot, we find a similar Triton buoying up a yoked horse, his finned and snaky tail curling up from the watery depths. We see, too, a wonderful-looking ketos—a vicious sea beast with porcine snout and huge, deadly teeth—skimming the water’s surface while supporting the left foot of Amphitrite as she drives the chariot. Together with the snake lurking by Kekrops’s leg (this page), and that which probably circled Athena’s olive tree, these creatures manifest a contrast of earth and water embodied in Athena and Poseidon themselves.
The corners of the west pediment are inhabited by figures that have long been identified as the great rivers of Athens, the Kephisos, Ilissos, and Eridanos.86 This interpretation conforms with the east pediment of Zeus’s temple at Olympia, where the two local rivers, the Alpheios and the Kladeos, lie in the corners of the gable, as Pausanias confirms during his visit.87 The river gods on the Parthenon similarly serve to establish the topographical coordinates of the contest on the Athenian Acropolis. The grand Kephisos is shown at the very north (or left) side (facing page), lying beside its younger tributary, the Eridanos, known from the Nointel drawings. At the opposite (south) end of the gable the Ilissos kneels just beside a female figure that is the spring of Kallirrhöe (insert this page, right) in another topographically correct arrangement.
But the river gods of the west pediment serve a purpose far beyond spatial orientation; indeed, they are integral to the genealogical message of the sculptural program as a whole. The Kephisos River was the father of the naiad nymph Praxithea, who married King Erechtheus and became queen of Athens and mother to a generation of royal daughters. And so the presence of the Kephisos here further validates the Athenian claim upon the land of Attica: not only are Athenians autochthonous, descendants of the gegenic Kekrops and Erechtheus/Erichthonios, but on the maternal line they are descended from Athens’s greatest river.
There is little consensus about the figures that fill out the rest of the gable.88 Barbette Spaeth suggests that at left (north side) are the descendants of the Athenian royal house while at right (south side) are the dynastic family of Eleusis.89 And so the descendants of Athena inhabit the space behind her while the offspring of Poseidon crowd the space behind him. This would be wholly in keeping with the larger genealogical project of architectural sculpture seen on the Acropolis from the Archaic period on.
Kephisos River, west pediment, Parthenon. (illustration credit ill.36)
Kephisos River, west pediment, Parthenon. (illustration credit ill.37)
Athena’s victory was not the end of the contest exactly. Poseidon’s son Eumolpos carries on his father’s bid for Athens, rallying an army of Thracians to take the city. In the ensuing battle, Erechtheus kills Eumolpos’s son Himmarados before he himself is killed by Poseidon. Thus, the primeval clash is carried on through the generations that follow. This foundation myth may, in fact, speak to the ancient tensions between Athens and Eleusis during the historical period. It is through cult ritual that this conflict is resolved, and so the west pediment presents the origins of cult practice within the sanctuaries of Athena Polias at Athens and of Demeter and
Kore at Eleusis. Eumolpos plays a pivotal role in founding the Eleusinian Mysteries, serving as one of the first priests of Demeter and Kore. A clan named the Eumolpidai held the special privilege of providing Eleusinian priests throughout the historical period.
Kekrops, father of the Athenian royal line, is, as we’ve said, king during the contest between Athena and Poseidon. At the north side of the pediment we find him kneeling, a snaky coil beneath his left knee signaling his earthborn origins (below). Wrapping her arm around her father from behind is one of his three daughters, probably Pandrosos. Her two sisters, Aglauros and Herse, sit farther to the right, as known only from the Nointel drawings. The crayon sketches (insert this page, right) also show a young boy leaning across their laps, no doubt Erechtheus/ Erichthonios, who came into their care following his gegenic birth.
Kekrops and Pandrosos, west pediment, Parthenon. (illustration credit ill.38)
At the opposite end of the gable we find a parallel arrangement for the royal house of Eleusis.90 Here, we see Queen Metaneira, wife of King Keleos, with her three daughters, said to be named Diogeneia, Pammerope, and Saisara.91 And here, too, we find a young boy stretched across the laps of the maidens, no doubt the child Triptolemos, who was looked after by the Eleusinian princesses just as Erichthonios was by the daughters of Kekrops. And so, we observe a perfect genealogical symmetry, with two sets of three royal daughters, one at Athens and the other at Eleusis, each set with a boy to nurse. And just as the daughters of Kekrops perform special rites for their local goddess, Athena, so, too, the daughters of Keleos perform sacred offices for Demeter and Kore in the Eleusinian Mysteries.92 Religious practice of the historical period is thus explained through the charter myths of the ancestors, the founders of the cults that survive for nearly a thousand years at Athens and Eleusis.
IT BECOMES APPARENT that we cannot understand the Parthenon or the Athenians themselves outside the sphere of religion. This is true of the birth of democracy, too. Indeed, the novelty of democratic rule would not have been conceivable without the intense awareness of the common bond forged by shared genealogy as fostered by religion. The nexus between the cosmology that defined Athenian consciousness and the unique civic life that these people created for themselves is not only revealed but exalted in that epitome of Athenian self-awareness, the Parthenon. To this extent the Parthenon celebrates democracy, but not on the terms that have been suggested since the Enlightenment. And perhaps not even on the terms that obtained in Athens by the age of Perikles.
When we marvel today at the extraordinary triumph of engineering, architecture, and aesthetics that endures on the Sacred Rock, it is hard to fathom that anyone could have opposed its creation in the first place. But Plutarch tells us it was this more than any other of Perikles’s endeavors that his enemies maligned and slandered. In the assembly, they shouted that Athens had lost its good name in the disgraceful transfer of the common fund from Delos to the Acropolis. “The Greeks regard it as outrageously arrogant treatment, as blatant tyranny, when they can see that we are using the funds they were forced to contribute for the military defence of Greece,” critics cried.93 Indeed Perikles’s excuse about safeguarding the treasure was only a ruse to spend it on his own extravagant enterprise. Squandering the compulsory contributions of the confederation, Perikles and his supporters were now, it was charged, “gilding and decorating the city, which like a wanton woman, adds to her wardrobe precious stones and costly statues and temples worth their millions.”94 The Athenian Empire was not only flexing its muscles but covering them in purple.
Not that the effort lacked admirers. Plutarch, for his part, could only marvel at how such magnificence and permanence of construction had been wrought so fast.
This is what makes Perikles’ works even more impressive, because they have durability despite having been completed quickly. In terms of beauty each of them was a classic straight away at the time, but in terms of vigour each is a new and recent creation even today; and so a kind of freshness forms a constant bloom on them and keeps their appearance untouched by time, as if they contained an evergreen spirit and an unaging soul mingled together.
Plutarch, Life of Perikles 1395
But it is Thucydides who has the final word, looking into the future with uncommon prescience. He foresaw that the marble summit of the Acropolis would live on through the ages, giving the impression that the Athenians were even greater than they were. The lasting spectacle of its soaring marble, exquisitely hewn, would, in future, eclipse any of rival Sparta’s achievements:
For if the city of Lakedaimon [Sparta] were to become desolate and nothing of it left but temples and foundations of buildings, I think as time went by future generations would believe her fame to be greater than her power was. And yet, the Spartans occupy two-fifths of the Peloponnese and lead the alliance, not to speak of their numerous partners abroad. Still, as their city is scattered near and far and lacks magnificent temples and public buildings, spread out as it is in villages after the old fashion of Hellas, their power will seem inferior. But if the same things happen to Athens, one will think by the sight of their city, that their power was double what it is.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 1.10.296
Thus, over the course of the fifth century, a new Athenian identity emerges, one carefully constructed to glorify Athens and incite fear in the hearts of its enemies. The trappings (and overreach) of empire continued to bloat Athenian self-regard.97 Still, it must be said that the picture that Athens consistently projected of itself—in funeral orations, speeches in the law courts, dramatic performances, and the sculptures of the Parthenon—stands in contrast to the self-image expressed by other cities. We continually hear from the Athenians about their exceptionalism, how they are resilient, persistent, competitive, aggressive, quick but thoughtful in action, innovative, aesthetically aware, and open to engaging outsiders on the world stage. And many non-Athenians accepted this characterization. Perhaps no words capture it more powerfully than those Thucydides attributes to the Corinthian envoys who addressed the first Spartan congress in 432 B.C.
On the eve of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans summoned members of the Peloponnesian League (especially those with grievances toward Athens) to testify before the Spartan assembly. The Corinthians were gravely worried by the Athenians’ alliance with their former colony, now enemy, Kerkyra (Corfu), a pact signed in 432 B.C. amid the Corinth-Kerkyra War. Combining its great naval might with Kerkyra’s (as well as with that of Rhegium in southern Italy and Leontini in Sicily, according to alliances forged in 433/432), Athens would soon be in a position to threaten trade routes, especially those that carried shipments of grain from the west. This was of critical concern to all Peloponnesians, especially to the landlocked Spartans, whom the Corinthians considered far too complacent for their own good. The ambassadors stressed the growing cause for alarm and pulled no punches in contrasting the natures of the Athenian and the Spartan peoples:
You have never considered what manner of men are these Athenians with whom you will have to fight, and how utterly unlike yourselves. They are revolutionary, equally quick in the conception and in the execution of every new plan; while you are conservative—careful only to keep what you have, originating nothing, and not acting even when action is most urgent. They are bold beyond their strength; they run risks which prudence would condemn; and in the midst of misfortune they are full of hope.
…They are impetuous, and you are dilatory; they are always abroad, and you are always at home. For they hope to gain something by leaving their homes; but you are afraid that any new enterprise may imperil what you have already. When conquerors, they pursue their victory to the utmost; when defeated, they fall back the least. Their bodies they devote to their country as though they belonged to other men; their true self is their mind, which is most truly their own when employed in her service.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 1.3.70–7198
One can only imagine the emotional effect of such a spe
ech on the Spartans who listened.99 As Josiah Ober has shown, Spartan culture had long aimed to instill a deep-seated code of conduct among its soldier citizens. Behavior contrary to its norms was simply unthinkable under Sparta’s military oligarchy. As we have seen, Athens, too, had a code of sorts, one well summarized by the words Thucydides attributes to the Corinthians: “Their bodies they devote to their country as though they belonged to other men; their true self is their mind, which is most truly their own when employed in her service.” It was this delicate balance of individualism and the polis, the citizen’s utter devotion, uncompelled, to its good, that made Athens unique, even before its radical democracy, which perforce created certain possibilities and dynamisms other political systems could not sustain. Of course, Thucydides is writing as an Athenian and as one of Perikles’s greatest admirers. But whether these words truly came from Corinthian lips or no, there is a truth to them.
The Parthenon Enigma Page 14
