The Parthenon Enigma

by Joan Breton Connelly

  125. Kavvadias and Giannikapani, South Slope, 30–32; S. Aleshire, The Athenian Asklepieion: The People, Their Dedications, and the Inventories (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1989); J. Jensen, Drømmenes rige: Votivreliefferne fra Asklepieion på sydskrænten af Athens Akropolis (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitet, 2000); Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 219–21.

  126. Immerwahr, Neolithic and Bronze Ages, 3, 51–54; G. Zimmer, Griechische Bronzegusswerkstätten: Zur Technologieentwicklung eines antiken Kunsthandwerkes (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1990), 62ff.; O. Pelon, Tholoi, tumuli et cercles funéraires (Paris: École Française d’Athènes, 1976), 79–80; N. Platon, “Εργασίες διαμορφώσεως και τακτοποιήσεως τού ἀρχαιολογικου χὠρου ’Ακροπὀλεως,” ArchDelt 19 (1966): 32.

  127. IG I3 1064 (SEG 17.10); Kavvadias and Giannikapani, South Slope, 29–30.

  128. Rosivach, “Autochthony”; Blok, “Gentrifying Genealogy.” See Herodotos, Histories 7.161.

  129. Rosivach, “Autochthony.”

  130. Plato, Menexenus 237b–c and 237d; see Pappas, “Autochthony in Plato’s Menexenus,” 66–80.

  131. Guy Smoot points out that the “g/k” alternation suggests non-Greek origins; scholia to Lykophron and Aeschylus have Ogyges as an Egyptian. Blok, “Gentrifying Genealogies,” 258, gives sources for Ogyges: Hellanikos of Lesbos, FGrH 323a F 10; Philochoros, FGrH 328 F 92; Apollodoros, Library 3.14.

  132. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.5.1.

  133. Kretschmer, “Pelasger und Etrusker,” lays out the “kt,” “tt,” “tth” alternation in Attica/Aktaios and the attested “Ath-” form, which, like the others, is non-Greek.

  134. Hellanikos, F 10, FHG 62 and 156.

  135. LIMC 4, s.v. “Erechtheus”; LIMC 6, s.v. “Kekrops.”

  136. Blok, “Gentrifying Genealogies,” 258.

  137. Homer, Iliad 2.546–48.

  138. Apollodoros, Library 3.14.6.

  139. N. Loraux, Born of the Earth: Myth and Politics in Athens (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000); Parker, “Myths of Early Athens”; M. Miller, “The Athenian Autochthonous Heroes from the Classical to the Hellenistic Period” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1983).

  140. Aeschylus, Eumenides 243.

  141. Hesiod, Theogony 929a; Apollodoros, Library 3.144; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.14.6.

  142. Herodotos, Histories 1.180.

  143. Apollodoros, Library 1.20. See Deacy, Athena, 1–32; K. Sydinou, “The Relationship Between Zeus and Athena in the Iliad,” 15 (1986): 155–64.

  144. For the east pediment, see Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.5; Palagia, Pediments, 18–39; Brommer, Die Skulpturen der Parthenon-Giebel; E. Berger, Die Geburt der Athena im Ostgiebel des Parthenon (Basel: Archäologischer Verlag, 1974), 18; Palagia, “First Among Equals.”

  145. Deacy, Athena, 41–43; S. Deacy, “Athena and Ares: War, Violence, and Warlike Deities,” in War and Violence in Ancient Greece, ed. H. van Wees (London: Duckworth, 2000), 185–98; A. Villing, “Athena as Ergane and Promachos: The Iconography of Athena in Archaic East Greece,” in Fisher and van Wees, Archaic Greece, 147–68.

  146. Herodotos, Histories 8.55; Isokrates, Panathenaikos 193; scholia on Aelius Aristides, Panathenaic Oration 40–44 (Lenz and Behr) = Dindorf 3.58–59 = Jebb, 106; Apollodoros, Library 3.14.1. See Parker, “Myths of Early Athens,” 198n49.

  147. That this so-called sea spring must have offered sweet, potable water seems logical and likely; see R. Waterfield, Athens: A History from Ancient Ideal to Modern City (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 36.

  148. Flood myths also existed among the Indo-Europeans (in ancient India, for example), and the influence could have come from this direction as well. See G. Nagy, “The Epic Hero,” in A Companion to Ancient Epic, ed. J. M. Foley (Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2006), §60–62; also §44, §58, §59, §63–64.

  149. Ataç, Mythology of Kingship, 151.

  150. Hesiod, Works and Days 109–201.

  151. Hesiod’s configuration of five ages is unusual in that most traditions, including that of India, have only four. Hesiod adds a Second Bronze Age, the Age of Heroes, which comprises a generation that is actually better than the one that preceded it, setting it apart from the model we find in the East. See J. G. Griffiths, “Archaeology and Hesiod’s Five Ages,” Journal of the History of Ideas 17 (1956): 109–19; Nagy, Pindar’s Homer.

  152. Greek tradition differs from that of the ancient Near East in that we hear of many floods instead of one great deluge. Theresa Howard Carter’s review of the geological, geomorphological, and stratigraphic evidence for a great flood in Sumer (Eridu, Ur, and Warka) and throughout the Arabian Gulf points to a date of around 3500 B.C.; see T. H. Carter, “The Tangible Evidence for the Earliest Dilmun,” JCS 33 (1981): 210–23. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Carter for many helpful discussions of this material.

  153. Julius Africanus, Chronography, quoted in Eusebios, Praeparatio evangelica 10.10.

  154. Translation: Waterfield, Timaeus and Critias, 109–10. Plato also references this flood in Timaeus 25d: “Appalling earthquakes and floods appeared and in the course of a single, terrible day and night the whole fighting force of your city sank all at once beneath the earth.” Translation: Waterfield, Timaeus and Critias, 13–14.

  155. According to Plato, Kritias 112a, the Egyptian priests at Saïs told Solon that the destruction of Atlantis was three floods earlier.

  156. According to Syncellus’s king list, Herodotos’s Euterpe, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Apollodoros, Library 1.47, and Proklos, On Hesiod’s “Works and Days” 157–58. As M. L. West points out, Deukalion’s flood is something of a latecomer, not mentioned in Hesiod and not attested until the first half of the fifth century B.C. Epicharmos, P.Oxy 2427 frag. 1; Pindar, Olympian Ode 9.49. See West, Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 55; West, East Face of Helicon, 489. Could the deluge of Deukalion, then, be an invention of the Athenians, a way to incorporate their own legendary royal succession into the larger flood myth?

  157. West, Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 50–52; West, East Face of Helicon, 65–67, 166–67, 174–76, 377–81, and 490–93; López-Ruiz, When the Gods Were Born, 59; C. Penglase, Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Homeric Hymn (New York: Routledge, 1994), 191.

  158. See West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth; West, East Face of Helicon, 166–67, 490–93, who points to Ziusudra of the Eridu Genesis (third millennium), Atrahasis of the Epic of Atrahasis (tablet 3, ca. 1647–1626 B.C.), Utnapishtim of The Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 1100 B.C.), and Noah of the Bible’s book of Genesis (sixth–fifth century B.C.). See also W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atrahasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999); Q. Laessoe, “The Atrahasis Epic: A Babylonian History of Mankind,” Biblioteca Orientalis 13 (1956): 90–102; J. H. Tigay, The Evolution of the “Gilgamesh Epic” (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). The theme also appears in the Quran (sura 71), where an ark floats for seven days and nights.

  159. For the three daughters of Deukalion, see West, Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 51–53, 173, table 1.

  160. Pindar, frag. 76; Acts of the Apostles 17.22.

  161. Translation: Nehamas and Woodruff, Phaedrus, 86.

  2 BEFORE THE PARTHENON

  1. I. Ridpath and W. Tirion, Stars and Planets Guide (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), 142–43; R. H. Allen, Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning (New York: Dover, 1963), 202; F. Boll and H. Gundel, “Sternbilder,” in Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, ed. W. H. Roscher (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1884), 6:821–24.

  2. Translation: M. Grant, Myths of Hyginus (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960).

  3. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.7.

  4. Herodotos, Histories 8.41.2–3; Philostratos, Imagines 2.17.6.

  5. Plutarch, Life of Themistokles 10.1.

  6. Herodotos, Histories 8.41. See H. B. Hawes,
“The Riddle of the Erechtheum,” unpublished manuscript in the Smith College Archive (Amherst, Mass., 1935); H. B. Hawes, “The Ancient Temple of the Goddess on the Acropolis,” AJA 40 (1936): 120–21; and full discussion in Lesk, “Erechtheion and Its Reception,” 40n5, 161–62, no. 487, 162n490, 329. N. Robertson, “Athena’s Shrines and Festivals,” in Neils, Worshipping Athena, 32–33, translates Thyechoos as “the watcher of the burnt offering.”

  7. Lesk, “Erechtheion and Its Reception,” 161–62.

  8. In Euripides’s Erechtheus F 370.71–74 Kannicht, the daughters of Erechtheus are catasterized as the Hyades/Hyakinthides. For full discussion of the catasterism of Erechtheus as Auriga and his daughters as the Hyades/Hyakinthides, see Boutsikas and Hannah, “Aitia, Astronomy, and the Timing of the Arrephoria,” especially 1–7.

  9. Scholia on Aelius Aristides, Panathenaic Oration 362 (Lenz and Behr) = Dindorf 3.323 = Jebb 189, 4.

  10. Aristotle, frag. 637 Rose; scholia to Aelius Aristides, Panathenaic Ora- tion 189.

  11. Ruggles, Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy; Ruggles, Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy; J. Davidson, “Time and Greek Religion,” in Ogden, Companion to Greek Religion, 204–18; R. Hannah, Greek and Roman Calendars: Constructions of Time in the Classical World (London: Duckworth, 2005); Pasztor, Archaeoastronomy.

  12. Boutsikas, “Greek Temples and Rituals”; Boutsikas and Hannah, “Aitia, Astronomy, and the Timing of the Arrhēphoria”; Boutsikas and Hannah, “Ritual and the Cosmos”; Boutsikas, “Astronomical Evidence for the Timing of the Panathenaia”; E. Boutsikas and C. Ruggles, “Temples, Stars, and Ritual Landscapes: The Potential for Archaeoastronomy in Ancient Greece,” AJA 115 (2011): 55–68; E. Boutsikas, “Placing Greek Temples: An Archaeoastronomical Study of the Orientation of Ancient Greek Religious Structures,” Archaeoastronomy: The Journal of Astronomy in Culture 21 (2009): 4–16; E. Boutsikas, “The Cult of Artemis Orthia in Greece: A Case of Astronomical Observations?,” in Lights and Shadows in Cultural Astronomy, ed. M. P. Zedda and J. A. Belmonte (Isili: Associazione Archeofila Sarda, 2008); E. Boutsikas, “Orientation of Greek Temples: A Statistical Analysis,” in Pasztor, Archaeoastronomy, 19–23; Salt and Boutsikas, “When to Consult the Oracle at Delphi”; L. Vrettos, Λεξικό τελετών, εορτών και αγώνων των αρχαίων Ελλήνων (Athens: Ekdoseis Konidari, 1999).

  13. Such as Starry Night Pro and Stellarium.

  14. Boutsikas, “Greek Temples and Rituals,” examines the use of astronomical observations as universal mechanisms of advance warning for Panhellenic religious events and how, in determining the proper time for the start for the celebrations at Delphi, the same event could look quite different when observed from the Attic horizon and when observed from elsewhere.

  15. See Boutsikas, “Astronomical Evidence for the Timing of the Panathenaia.”

  16. P. Michalowski, “Maybe Epic: Sumerian Heroic Poetry,” in Epic and History, ed. D. Konstan and K. Raaflaub (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 21.

  17. Hesiod, Theogony 108–16, 123–32.

  18. Homer, Iliad 8.13. Translation: A. T. Murray (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924).

  19. Sources for the Titanomachy include Hesiod’s Theogony and a lost Titanomachia attributed to Eumelos, a semi-legendary bard of Corinth. See M. L. West, “ ‘Eumelos’: A Corinthian Epic Cycle?,” JHS 122 (2002): 109–33; M. L. West, Hellenica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 355. See also Dörig and Gigon, Götter und Titanen.

  20. The term “boundary catastrophe” is used by Scodel, “Achaean Wall,” 36, 48, 50, where she describes the Trojan War as a catastrophe that serves as a boundary between the heroes and later, weaker generations, that is, between mythical and truly historical time. I extend the term here to include floods and cosmic wars as well.

  21. Hesiod, Theogony 424, 486, as discussed by West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 162–64. For an overview of Near Eastern influence on Archaic Greece, see W. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 94–95.

  22. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 162–63.

  23. Ibid., 162–65; Ataç, Mythology of Kingship, 172.

  24. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 166.

  25. Ibid., 248.

  26. Clemente Marconi employs this term to describe the experience of Archaic Greek sanctuaries; see Marconi, “Kosmos,” 222; the phrase is first used by R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), 12–25, and by A. Huxley, The Doors of Perception (London: Chatto & Windus, 1954), 43.

  27. G. Rodenwaldt, Korkyra: Die Bildwerke des Artemistempels von Korkyra II (Berlin: Mann, 1939), 15–105; J. L. Benson, “The Central Group of the Corfu Pediment,” in Gestalt und Geschichte: Festschrift Karl Schefold zu seinem Sechzigsten Geburstag am 26. Januar 1965, ed. M. Rohde-Liegle and K. Schefold (Bern: Francke, 1967), 48–60.

  28. Kypselos took control of Corinth in 657 B.C., and in around 620 Theagenes became tyrant at Megara and Kleisthenes at Sikyon, where remains of a seventh-century shrine have been found beneath the sixth-century temple. Though these tyrants seized power unconstitutionally, they were regarded by the masses as preferable to rule by aristocracy or oligarchy. See P. H. Young, “Building Projects Under the Greek Tyrants” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980).

  29. For the temple of Apollo at Corinth: R. Rhodes, “Early Corinthian Architecture and the Origins of the Doric Order,” AJA 91 (1987): 477–80. For the temple of Poseidon at Isthmia: O. Broneer, Isthmia: Excavations by the University of Chicago, Under the Auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Princeton, N.J.: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1971); Broneer, Isthmia: Topography and Architecture; E. Gebhard, “The Archaic Temple at Isthmia: Techniques of Construction,” in Archaische griechische Tempel und Altägypten, ed. M. Bietak (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001). For broader context see A. Mazarakis-Ainian, From Rulers’ Dwellings to Temples: Architecture, Religion, and Society in Early Iron Age Greece (1100–700 B.C.) (Jonsered: Paul Åström, 1997), 125–35.

  30. By 630 B.C. at Thermon in Aetolia, the first mainland Greek temple measuring a hundred feet long (hekatompedon) with wooden columns wrapping around all four sides was constructed (in both respects it followed the second-phase temple of Hera at Samos, ca. 675–625 B.C.). For the temple of Apollo at Thermon: J. A. Bundgaard, “À propos de la date de la péristasis du Mégaron B à Thermos,” BCH 70 (1946): 51–57. For the temple of Hera on Samos: O. Reuther, Der Heratempel von Samos: Der Bau seit der Zeit des Polykrates (Berlin: Mann, 1957); N. Hellner, “Recent Studies on the Polycratian Temple of Hera on Samos,” Architectura: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Baukunst 25 (1995): 121–27. The temple of Hera and Zeus at Olympia (ca. 600 B.C.) had a colonnade of wooden columns set on stone socles, while the temple of Artemis at Kerkyra (580 B.C.) had a colonnade of limestone columns.

  31. Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 30. For Solon, see J. Blok and A. P. M. H. Lardinois, Solon of Athens: New Historical and Philological Approaches (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

  32. Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 20, 104.

  33. IG I3 507, ca. 565 B.C. See A. Raubitschek, Dedications from the Athenian Akropolis: A Catalogue of the Inscriptions of the Sixth and Fifth Centuries B.C. (Cambridge, Mass.: Archaeological Institute of America, 1949), 305–53 (no. 326) and 353–58 (nos. 327 and 328); Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 26–27.

  34. Marcellinus, Life of Thucydides 3: “Hippokleides in whose archonship the Panathenaia were instituted” was archon in 566/565 B.C.; and Eusebios, Chronica on Olympic 53.3–4: “Agon gymnicus, quem Panathenaeon vocant, actus.” For the date of 566 B.C. as the inauguration of the Great Panathenaia see Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 25–31; V. Ehrenberg, From Solon to Socrates (London: Methuen, 1968), 82–83.

  35. Scholiast on Aelius Aristides’s Panathenaic Oration 13.189.4–5 =
Dindorf 3:323 credits the introduction of the festival to Peisistratos.

  36. Aristotle, Athenian Constitution 13. For discussion of these families and their roles in shaping the conditions from which Athenian democracy emerged, see Camp, “Before Democracy,” 7–12.

  37. Aristotle, Athenian Constitution 16.9.

  38. The hypothetical visualization shown on this page is not a scientific reconstruction but is meant only to help the reader understand the placement of the early temples on the Akropolis. For scientific treatment, see Korres, “Die Athena-Tempel auf der Akropolis”; Korres, “Athenian Classical Architecture,” 7; Korres, “History of the Acropolis Monuments,” 38; Korres, “Recent Discoveries on the Acropolis,” 178.

  39. Head and belt of Gorgon figure are Acropolis no. 701 in Acropolis Museum, Athens. Some have identified this figure as an akroterion, but Korres has shown that it cannot be.

  40. Snakes in corners of the gables are Acropolis Museum no. 37 and no. 40.

  41. For overview see Bancroft, “Problems Concerning the Archaic Acropolis,” 26–45; Ridgway, Archaic Style, 284–85; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 107–12; Knell, Mythos und Polis, 1–6; Dinsmoor, “The Hekatompedon on the Athenian Acropolis,” and for more recent study of these questions, N. L. Klein, “The Origin of the Doric Order on the Mainland of Greece: Form and Function of the Geison in the Archaic Period” (Ph.D. diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1991), 7–16.

  42. Dinsmoor, “Hekatompedon on the Athenian Acropolis,” 145–47, assigned this group to the east pediment of the temple, though this cannot be known. Reconstructions of the temple’s pedimental compositions were offered early on by T. Wiegand, Die archaische Poros-Architektur der Akropolis zu Athen (Cassel: Fisher, 1904), and R. Heberdey, Altattische Porosskulptur, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der archaischen griechischen Kunst (Vienna: Hölder, 1919). See also W. H. Schuchhardt, “Die Sima des alten Athena-Tempels der Akropolis,” AM (1935–1936): 60–61; Korres, “History of the Acropolis Monuments,” 38.