The Parthenon Enigma

by Joan Breton Connelly

  IN 200 B.C., while harbored on the island of Aegina with his fleet, Attalos I found himself summoned to Athens. He was welcomed at the Dipylon Gate by an ecstatic throng of magistrates, priests and priestesses, and the citizen body as a whole. The people of Athens had a truly astounding honor to offer him: the assembly had voted that Attalos should henceforth be regarded as one of Athens’s founding heroes. A new tribe would be named the Attalis, and his image would be added to the bronze statue group of the Eponymous Heroes that had stood in the Agora since the 430s B.C.46 This was the monument to the city’s ten founding heroes, who had given their names to the Athenian tribes established during the early days of the Kleisthenic democracy, in the last decade of the sixth century.

  Thus was an eastern king, with family roots on the Black Sea, made not merely a citizen of Athens but a founding father. That such an honor could be awarded retroactively, as it were, demonstrates the flexibility and practicality of genealogical succession myths. It makes the Parthenon Inscription honoring Nero in A.D. 61/62 seem rather a small token. But in both cases, the Athenians, having seen better days, were bartering for survival with the most precious thing remaining to them: their singular identity (what we might call the most prestigious “brand” in the ancient world). For assimilating Attalos, they wanted something quite substantial in return: that he join with Rome in defending Athens against Philip V in the Second Macedonian War (200–197 B.C.). Attalos duly complied, bringing soldiers to fight alongside the armies of Rhodes and Rome to defeat the Macedonian foe.

  With his new Athenian identity in hand, Attalos I had only to make a few further changes to the Pergamene acropolis to establish an august mythic past for his relatively short-lived kingdom. This he (and his sons) would do via the legend of the hero Telephos, son of Herakles.

  Meanwhile, before leaving town, the Pergamene king seems to have dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis a series of bronze sculptures celebrating his triumphs over the Gauls in 233 and 228 B.C.47 Since the fragmentary inscription preserves only the name Attalos, there is a possibility that this offering was made by his son, Attalos II, but the agency of the father is perfectly conceivable. In any case, the installation followed the long-standing tradition discussed in chapter 6, by which conquests over eastern enemies were conspicuously commemorated with shields, swords, and other booty dedicated on, in, or near the Parthenon. Attalos’s victory monuments were set atop the southern ramparts of the Acropolis practically in the shadow of the Parthenon.

  Pausanias saw the dedications of Attalos when he visited the Athenian Acropolis in the second century A.D.48 He describes a series of bronze statues showing gods battling Giants, Theseus fighting the Amazons, Athenians clashing with Persians, and Pergamene warriors defeating Gauls. Thus, Attalos integrated his own victories over barbarian tribes into the hallowed succession of military boundary events celebrated on the Acropolis from the Archaic period on. Manolis Korres has even identified the cuttings for the attachment of these statue groups atop the southern wall of the Acropolis.49 We can envision, then, a series of bronze images set up just beneath the Parthenon and just above the Theater of Dionysos.

  Attalos’s sons, Eumenes II and Attalos II, were quick to understand the value of cultivating this painlessly acquired heritage, and they carried on strengthening ties with Athens and bestowing sumptuous benefactions upon the city. When we look to the south slope of the Acropolis today, we see the Theater of Dionysos, which, by the Hellenistic period, seated around seventeen thousand spectators (this page). But where did these crowds take shelter from the intense sun and occasional rain? Enter Eumenes II, bearing an efficient solution that had already worked at Pergamon. At his home citadel, Eumenes had erected two tremendous stoas just beneath the theater, one of the colonnades an astonishing 246.5 meters (809 feet) long (this page). So the king donated funds for the construction of a smaller version at Athens, just 163 meters (535 feet) long, to the west of the Theater of Dionysos. The “Stoa of Eumenes,” as it came to be called, shows the same system of arcaded buttresses that support the theater at Pergamon, a neat answer for the problem of building up against a steep cliff. Eumenes may have also provided Pergamene engineers to work on the south slope of the Acropolis.50 The interior colonnade of the upper story was adorned with palm-leafed capitals, a signature of Pergamene style and of Attalid benefaction.

  Eumenes’s younger brother Attalos II (220–138 B.C.) studied in Athens as a young man, possibly under the philosopher Karneades, head of the Athenian Academy. This would explain the inscription of Attalos’s name on the base of a bronze statue of Karneades found in the Agora.51 A second dedicator is also named, Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, who just happened to be Attalos’s brother-in-law. This joint offering suggests that the two princes might have spent their salad days together in Athens, studying under Karneades. Son of an Eponymous Hero of Athens, Attalos II was awarded the great honor of Athenian citizenship in recognition of his benefactions to the city. He famously financed the construction of a great two-storied stoa, its colonnade built entirely of Pentelic marble.52 Measuring 115 meters (377 feet) long, the so-called stoa of Attalos featured the same telltale Pergamene capitals used in the stoa of Eumenes. In 1952–1956, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens fully reconstructed the stoa of Attalos on its original foundations, making it one of the only ancient Greek buildings ever to be completely restored and used; to this day it houses the Agora Museum and the Agora Excavations offices and storerooms.53

  The special relationship between Athens and Pergamon is further attested in a series of impressive commemorative monuments on the Acropolis. All four sons of Attalos I competed in the equestrian events at the Great Panathenaia of 178 B.C., each winning his respective competition. The princes continued to contend for prizes in subsequent Panathenaic festivals.54 To celebrate their victories, they set up two very conspicuous monuments. Eumenes II built a pillar monument, surmounted by a four-horse chariot group cast in bronze,55 on the terrace just below the northwest wing of the entrance to the Acropolis, in a spot roughly parallel to the placement of the Athena Nike temple at the south. It should be remembered that the princes’ ancestor Philetairos had introduced the worship of Athena Polias Nikephoros at Pergamon back in the second quarter of the third century B.C. The pairing of the Attalid victory monument with the Athenians’ own temple to Victory emphatically manifested the special link between the two cities. The chariot group would come and go, but the pillar base proved durable: it later held bronze statues of Antony and Cleopatra, and following their defeat at Actium in 31 B.C. it was rededicated to the great hero of the battle, the Roman consul Marcus Agrippa. The monument can be seen to this day just to the left, in front of the northwest wing of the Propylaia as one enters the Sacred Rock.

  A second monument was erected, probably to commemorate Attalos II’s victory in equestrian competitions that he seems to have won at three separate Panathenaias: 178/7, 170/69, and 154/3 B.C.56 Its towering marble podium supported a bronze four-horse chariot group (facing page).57 Erected at the northeast corner of the Parthenon, the monument reached the height of the temple’s architrave, bringing it face-to-face with the shields dedicated by Alexander after his victory at Granikos. It also directly faced the northernmost metope of the Parthenon’s east façade (no. 14), which shows Helios driving his chariot up from the watery, and fishy, depths (this page). One can only wonder how close the Pergamene dedication stood to the famous statue group of Erechtheus battling Eumolpos, a leading work by the master sculptor Myron in the mid-fifth century B.C. Pausanias describes these sculptures as set up “right by the temple of Athena.”58 Thus, by the Hellenistic period, the Parthenon precinct was filled with victory monuments from across the ages, juxtaposing images of venerable local heroes with those of newly minted Attalid kings.

  Reconstruction drawing of victory monument of Attalos II, with bronze quadriga on tall pillar at northeast corner of Parthenon, by M. Korres. (illustration credit ill.110)

  BA
CK AT PERGAMON, the Attalids imported cults that had long existed at Athens.59 They combined the worship of Athena Polias with that of Athena Nike to produce the cult name Athena Polias Nikephoros. Beneath the Pergamene theater stood a small temple of Dionysos, mirroring exactly the plan at Athens, where the temple of Dionysos sits just below his theater on the Acropolis’s south slope.60 High above the theater at Pergamon, we find the sanctuary of Athena Polias, again a direct quotation of the plan at Athens, where the sanctuary of Athena sits atop the theater, crowning the Acropolis citadel (this page and this page). So important was visual correspondence with the Athenian model that Pergamene builders turned their Athena temple off the standard east-west axis so that it faced north, its long flank appearing above the theater just as the Parthenon does above the Theater of Dionysos on the Acropolis’s south slope.

  The precinct of Athena Polias Nikephoros, established at Pergamon by Philetairos, was enhanced with double-storied stoas added by Eumenes II.61 The upper balustrades of these stoas were ornamented with sculptured reliefs depicting trophies of Pergamene victories: great panoplies of weapons, shields, armor, standards, and aphlasta (apulstres, tall ornaments that decorate the sterns of ships and symbolize maritime power). In this, the Pergamene shrine of Athena Polias Nikephoros borrows from the temple of Athena Nike at Athens. We will remember the ninety-nine shields seized by Kleon from the Spartans at Sphakteria and hung as trophies around the podium of the Nike temple. The symmetry between the booty displayed at Athens and the seized weapons depicted on the Pergamene balustrade makes the association of the two sanctuaries all the more emphatic.

  The so-called Altar of Zeus, set high on a terrace near the summit of the Pergamon acropolis, was a monument like no other (below).62 It measured roughly 35 square meters, or 100 Ionian feet, making it a true hekatompedon, or “hundred-footer.” The date of its construction and its identification as an altar are much debated.63 While it has traditionally been placed during the reign of Eumenes II, new study of context pottery has pushed the date down to the very end of his reign and extending into that of Attalos II and, even possibly, that of Attalos III.64 Work appears to have begun after 165 B.C., or even later, in commemoration of Eumenes II’s victories over the Gauls in 167–166 B.C. In any case, the monument was never completed.

  The Great Altar’s sumptuous sculptural program is a tour de force carved in marble. The exterior frieze wraps around the base of the monument, in defiance of all architectural conventions that normally require such a frieze to be set high above the Ionic colonnade. Through the radical innovation of bringing the sculptured figures down to ground level, the altar seems intended to engage human viewers in the energy of its composition. So much for the gods as the only intended viewers; perhaps an acquired legacy was thought to require more on-the-ground selling.

  Great Altar of Zeus from Pergamon, with broad western staircase leading up to a raised court; Gigantomachy frieze wraps around exterior beneath colonnade. (illustration credit ill.111)

  The frieze presents a very ancient narrative, one borrowed straight from Athens: the Gigantomachy, the cosmic conflict presented through a multitude of images capturing the very heat of combat. It is estimated that there were between eighty and a hundred figures in the original composition spread across a field 113 meters (371 feet) long and 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) high. In what survives, we can recognize the full pantheon of divinities listed in Hesiod’s Theogony.65 Gods of the cosmos and the oceans join with the younger generation of Olympians to battle the Titans and the Giants, fantastic creatures depicted with wings, serpent legs, the heads of beasts, and other marks of monstrosity.

  Plan of the Pergamon Altar showing placement of the Gigantomachy frieze (beneath colonnade wrapping around the exterior) and the Telephos frieze (inside the raised court, wrapping around the interior colonnade). (illustration credit ill.112)

  Athena fights winged giant (at left) while Nike crowns her (from right); Ge emerges from the earth, pleading for her son. East frieze, Pergamon Altar. (illustration credit ill.113)

  The Giants of the Pergamon Altar can be seen as Hellenistic incarnations of the terrifying creatures that appeared in our discussion of the Archaic Acropolis at Athens (chapter 2). Some recall aspects of the hideous Typhon with broad wings and serpent legs. Still others are reminiscent of the fish-tailed Triton that we saw wrestling with Herakles on the poros pediments. The triumph of order over chaos, as represented by the Olympian gods’ overcoming the Giants, works also as a metaphor for Pergamene victory over the barbaric Gauls.

  At the west side of the altar, a flight of two dozen steps 20 meters (66 feet) wide leads up to an interior court. Here, a second, smaller frieze wraps around its interior colonnade (previous page). Forty-seven of its original seventy-four relief panels survive. They tell the story of the foundation of Pergamon through the exploits of the hero Telephos, son of Herakles and the princess Auge of Tegea on the Greek mainland.66

  In contrast to the flamboyant style of the Gigantomachy frieze, this interior frieze presents a quiet, dignified narrative, one that takes us rather literally through the life story of Telephos. The juxtaposition of two very different sculptural styles mirrors what we find on the Parthenon, where the vibrant poses of Athena and Poseidon on the Parthenon’s west pediment contrast with the calm, collected mood of the foundation story told on the frieze. Indeed, the Pergamon Altar is a very studied imitation of the Parthenon in its style, its content, and the programmatic organization of its sculptured decoration. The figures of Athena and Zeus on the east frieze of the Great Altar are directly modeled on the dynamic central composition of Athena and Poseidon on the Parthenon’s west pediment. We see Athena in the same energetic stance, lunging to the right, with her left leg bent at the knee and pushing through the great sweep of her dress (facing page). She grabs a fallen, winged giant (Enkelados?) by the hair while Ge (his mother?) emerges from the earth, imploring Athena to spare him. Meanwhile, Zeus’s explosive pose, with thick, exaggerated musculature, derives directly from the figure of Poseidon on the Parthenon’s west gable (below). He raises his arm to hurl a thunderbolt (in place of Poseidon’s trident) as three Giants are brought to their knees (and snake-legs) before him.

  Again and again on the Pergamon Altar, we find references to Athens, its cosmic struggles, and its defining boundary events. At the north side of the Gigantomachy frieze, we see a dynamic female figure poised to hurl a globe encircled with a coiling snake (following page). The maiden pulls her right arm back, fully cocked for the pitch, and thrusts her left arm straight out, to steady her aim. This figure has traditionally been identified as a personification of Nyx, goddess of the night, or, alternatively, as Persephone or Demeter.67 One cannot help but be reminded, however, of the young Athena, the only deity in Greek myth who is famous for pitching a serpent into the sky. Hurled to the very pole of heaven, Drako’s constellation dominates the northern sky ever after. Can it be a coincidence that this image of a serpent thrown skyward is placed on the north side of the Gigantomachy frieze? Even though this figure is not meant to represent Athena, it is deeply evocative of her vibrant catasterization of that most deadly of Giants.

  Zeus hurls thunderbolt at Giants. East frieze, Pergamon Altar. (illustration credit ill.114)

  “Nyx” hurls serpent into the heavens. North frieze, Pergamon Altar. (illustration credit ill.115)

  Further along the north frieze we find another quotation from Athens, indeed, from the Parthenon sculptures. A monstrous fish, replete with scales, gills, fins, and a bulging eye, emerges spectacularly from the waters beneath Helios’s chariot (inset, facing page). We think immediately of the Parthenon’s abundance of serpents and fish-tailed creatures, especially the fish that similarly swim beneath Helios’s chariot on east metope 14 (this page), just behind the victory monument of Attalos II (this page). The Pergamon Altar thus takes familiar land and marine creatures seen on the Athenian Acropolis and inflates them to an all-new level of amplification in the bombastic sculptures of
the Gigantomachy frieze. And one only need look to the snake bursting from its relief background and slithering up the altar’s staircase (above) to be reminded of the serpents of the Archaic Acropolis (insert this page, top, and this page, top). Makes one wonder just how much fishy iconography we have lost from the Acropolis.68

  Serpent slithers up western staircase, locked in combat with eagle of Zeus, while fallen winged giant looks on. Inset: Monstrous fish emerging from the sea beneath Helios’s chariot, north side. Gigantomachy frieze, Pergamon Altar. (illustration credit ill.116)

  EVEN THE ROOF of the Pergamon Altar was decorated with marble akroteria figures familiar from the Athenian Acropolis: Athena, Poseidon, Centaurs, and Tritons. Once again, the figures of Athena and Po- seidon seem to quote their likenesses on the Parthenon’s west pediment: Athena wears a Gorgon’s head aegis draped across her chest, as she rushes forward (following page, left); Poseidon turns his full, rippling torso to the viewer as he lifts what is, no doubt, a trident with his outstretched right arm (following page, center). As for the altar’s rooftop statues of rearing Centaurs, can they have been inspired by anything other than the south metopes of the Parthenon? Likewise with the burly Triton akroteria, hulking mermen with seaweed around their waists and fish tails emerging from their loins (above, right).69 These are the sons of Triton, the same sea monster shown wrestling Herakles on the Bluebeard Temple of the Archaic Acropolis and repeated in the Triton figures of the Parthenon’s west pediment (insert this page, right).