The Parthenon Enigma

by Joan Breton Connelly

  6 WHY THE PARTHENON

  1. Carroll, Parthenon Inscription, 1; Andrews, “How a Riddle of the Parthenon Was Unraveled.” Andrews (303) remarks that, from a perspective of some 45 feet (13.7 meters) below, the architrave looked like the top of a pepperbox, riddled with nail holes from the attached letters. They were hard to distinguish from old bullet holes left from the Ottoman period.

  2. Andrews remarks that each morning when he awoke in his room at the American School of Classical Studies (on the slopes of Mount Lykabettos), he would rush to his window with field glasses, looking out at the Acropolis to see if his squeezes had survived the night. Andrews, “How a Riddle of the Parthenon Was Unraveled,” 304.

  3. In a letter to his sister Andrews writes: “The inscription proved to be a dedication to Nero, whereat I’m much disgusted.” See Carroll, Parthenon Inscription, 7.

  4. Arrian, Anabasis 1.16.7; Plutarch, Life of Alexander 16.8.

  5. Plutarch, Life of Alexander 16.17; Pritchett, Greek State at War, 3:288.

  6. SEG 32 251. Translation by S. Dow, “Andrews of Cornell,” Cornell Alumni News 75 (1972): 13–21, who made some additions to Andrews’s reconstruction of the text. See Carroll, Parthenon Inscription, 12–15, fig. 5.

  7. See paper given by G. Alföldy, “Der Glanz der römischen Epigraphik: litterae aureae,” at the conference Festvortrag des Ehrendoktors der Universität Wien emer. Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Géza Alföldy, University of Heidelberg, June 28, 2011, forthcoming. For Augustus’s introduction of such “golden letters” on attached metal dedications, see G. Alföldy, “Augustus und die Inschriften: Tradition und Innovation: Die Geburt der imperialen Epigraphik,” Gymnasium 98 (1991): 289–324. Like Eugene Andrews, Alföldy has similarly examined dowel holes to decipher lost dedicatory inscriptions, including those on the Colosseum: G. Alföldy, “Eine Bauinschrift aus dem Colosseum,” ZPE 109 (1995): 195–226, as well as on the Roman aqueduct at Segovia on the Iberian peninsula: Alföldy, “Inschrift des Aquädukts von Segovia: Ein Vorbericht,” ZPE 94 (1992): 231–48. I am indebted to Angelos Chaniotis and Michael Peachin for these references.

  8. Carroll, Parthenon Inscription, 7.

  9. Translation: Collard and Cropp, Euripides VII: Fragments, 387.

  10. Plutarch, Life of Nikias 9.5.

  11. Pritchett, Greek State at War; Pritchard, War, Democracy, and Culture; A. Chaniotis, War in the Hellenistic World (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005); H. van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Rituals (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2004); K. Raaflaub, “Archaic and Classical Greece,” in War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, the Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica, ed. K. Raaflaub and N. Rosenstein (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 129–61; Whitley, “Monuments That Stood Before Marathon”; Rich and Shipley, War and Society in the Greek World; B. Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); E. Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

  12. Plato, Laws 1.626a.

  13. D. Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969); D. Kagan, The Archidamian War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974); D. Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981); D. Kagan, The Fall of the Athenian Empire (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987); D. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War (New York: Viking Press, 2003); Hanson, A War Like No Other; V. D. Hanson, Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

  14. Xenophon, Agesilaus 2.14.

  15. Herodotus, Histories 7.9. Translation: Godley, Herodotus: Histories, 315.

  16. P. Vaughn, “The Identification and Retrieval of the Hoplite Battle-Dead,” in Hanson, Hoplites, 38–62.

  17. Polyainos, Strategies 1.17; Diodoros Siculus, Library 8.27.2; Pritchett, Greek State at War, 4:243–46; J. H. Leopold, “De scytala laconica,” Mnemosyne 28 (1900): 365–91.

  18. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.29. N. Arrington, “Inscribing Defeat: The Commemorative Dynamics of the Athenian Casualty Lists,” ClAnt 30 (2011): 179–212.

  19. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.34.1–5.

  20. Nathan Arrington has plotted all excavated remains associated with the public cemetery along the Academy Road; see Arrington, “Topographic Semantics,” and his forthcoming monograph Ashes, Images, and Memories: The Presence of the War Dead in Fifth-Century Athens.

  21. For the excavations, see T. Karagiorga-Stathakopoulou, “Ѓ Eφορεία Προϊστορικών και Kλασικώv Aρχαιοτήτων” ArchDelt 33 (1978): B I , 10–42, esp. 18–20. For the inscriptions, see A. P. Matthaiou, “’Hρίον Λυκούργου Λυκόφρονς Βουτάδου,” Horos 5 (1987): 31–44 (SEG 37.160–62); Arrington, “Topographic Semantics,” 520; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.29.15, sees the tomb of Lykourgos near the Academy during his visit to the public cemetery.

  22. As Onassander, Strategikos 36.1–2, put it: “For if the dead are not buried, each soldier believes that no care will be taken of his own body, should he chance to fall.” See P. Low, “Commemoration of the War Dead in Classical Athens: Remembering Defeat and Victory,” in Pritchard, War, Democracy, and Culture, 342–58.

  23. V. D. Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

  24. V. D. Hanson, A War Like No Other, 252; Hale, Lords of the Sea, 95, 120–21, 208.

  25. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 8.1.2–4. Translation: Jowett, Thucydides, with changes.

  26. Snodgrass, Archaic Greece, 53–54; A. Snodgrass, Early Greek Armor and Weapons from the End of the Bronze Age to 600 B.C. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964).

  27. Snodgrass, “Interaction by Design”; Snodgrass, Archaic Greece, 131ff.; Morgan, Athletes and Oracles, 16–25, 233–34.

  28. The traditional date for the founding of the Olympics is 776 B.C., the Pythian Games in 586, the Isthmian Games in 582, and the Nemean Games in 573. Morgan, Athletes and Oracles, 16–20, 212–14.

  29. Snodgrass, “Interaction by Design”; Morgan, Athletes and Oracles, 16–25, 203.

  30. Snodgrass, Archaic Greece, 131.

  31. A. H. Jackson, “Hoplites and the Gods: The Dedication of Captured Arms and Armour,” in Hanson, Hoplites, 228–49, esp. 244–45.

  32. A. Jackson, “Arms and Armour in the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia,” in Coulson and Kyrieleis, Proceedings of an International Symposium on the Olympic Games. Jackson will further discuss this material in his volume on arms and armor.

  33. Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.8.7. P. Kaplan, “Dedications to Greek Sanctuaries by Foreign Kings in the Eighth Through Sixth Centuries BCE,” Historia 55 (2006): 129–52.

  34. Herodotos, Histories 8.27. The other two thousand shields seized from this battle were dedicated at the shrine of Abai (Kalapodi). Pritchett, Greek State at War, 3:285.

  35. Aeschines 3.116.

  36. Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.19.3–4.

  37. Scott, Delphi and Olympia, 169–75.

  38. Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.11.5, which would put its construction sometime in the 480s. This dating has been disputed by some scholars who think the building looks earlier than this, though Richard Neer defends the date given by Pausanias; R. Neer, “The Athenian Treasury at Delphi and the Material of Politics,” ClAnt 23 (1982): 67.

  39. Ober, Democracy and Knowledge, 178.

  40. As explained by Morgan, Athletes and Oracles, 18.

  41. Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.10.4.

  42. D. White, “The Cyrene Sphinx, Its Capital, and Its Column,” AJA 75 (1971): 47–55.

  43. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.15.5.

  44. T. L. Shear, “A Spartan Shield from Pylos,” ArchEph 76 (1937): 140–43; T. L. Shear, “The Campaign of 1936,” Hesperia 6 (1937): 331–51.

  45. Lipp
man, Scahill, and Schultz, “Nike Temple Bastion.”

  46. I. S. Mark, Sanctuary of Athena Nike in Athens: Architectural Stages and Chronology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).

  47. E. Petersen, “Nachlese in Athen,” JdI 23 (1908): 12–44.

  48. Aristophanes, Knights 843–59.

  49. Lippman, Scahill, and Schultz, “Nike Temple Bastion.” I thank Richard Anderson for helpful discussions of this material.

  50. N. C. Loader, Building in Cyclopean Masonry: With Special Reference to the Mycenaean Fortifications on Mainland Greece (Jønsered: Paul Åström, 1998), 84–85.

  51. Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.16.5, 2.25.8. J. A. Bundgaard, Parthenon and the Mycenaean City on the Heights (Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1976), 43–46. I thank Benjamin Schwaid, my former student at New York University, for his insights on the deliberate placing of the Nike temple upon the Mycenaean bastion.

  52. R. Carpenter, The Sculptures of the Nike Temple Parapet (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929).

  53. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.4.1; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.28.2, refers to the statue as the “Bronze Athena,” as does Demosthenes, On the False Embassy 272. It is a scholiast to Demosthenes, Against Androtion 12–15, who first calls the statue Promachos, “She Who Fights in the Front of Battle,” though no surviving sources of the classical period refer to it in this way. For the traditional date of 460–450 see Harrison, “Pheidias,” 28–30; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 151–52; Djordjevitch, “Pheidias’s Athena Promachos Reconsidered,” 323. For the financing and dating of the statue, see IG I3 435, though this inscription’s relevance to the Bronze Athena has been put in question; for a summary of the issues see O. Palagia, “Not from the Spoils of Marathon,” 117–37, where there is also a nice critique of the various reconstruction drawings that have been made for the statue, including the (not perfect) rendering by G. P. Stevens shown here on this page. For the statue in late antiquity, see Frantz, Late Antiquity, 76–77.

  54. A. E. Raubitschek and G. P. Stevens, “The Pedestal of the Athena Promachos,” Hesperia 15 (1946): 107–14. Dinsmoor, in “The Pedestal of the Athena Promachos,” AJA 25 (1921): 128, restored the statue’s height at 16.40 meters (including base); Stevens, in “The Periclean Entrance Court to the Acropolis,” Hesperia 5 (1936): 495–99, restored the statue at 9 meters (including base).

  55. Palagia, “Not from the Spoils of Marathon,” 18–19, 124–25, 127.

  56. IG I3 435; Dinsmoor, “Statue of Athena Promachos.”

  57. Martin-McAuliffe and Papadopoulos, “Framing Victory,” 345–46.

  58. IG I3 427–31, 435; Harrison, “Pheidias,” 28–34; Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary, 169–72; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 24–25; Linfert, “Athenen des Phidias,” 66–71; Robertson, History of Greek Art, 294; Dinsmoor, “Two Monuments on the Athenian Acropolis”; Dinsmoor, “Statue of Athena Promachos.” B. D. Meritt, “Greek Inscriptions,” Hesperia 5 (1936): 362–80.

  59. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.28.2.

  60. See B. Lundgreen, “A Methodological Enquiry: The Great Bronze Athena by Pheidias,” JHS 117 (1997): 190–97; Harrison, “Pheidias,” 28–34; Ridgway, “Images of Athena,” 127–31; Linfert, “Athenen des Phidias,” 66–71; Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary, 170; E. Mathiopoulos, “Zur Typologie der Göttin Athena im fünften Jhr. v. Chr.” (Ph.D. diss., University of Bonn, 1961–1968); B. Pick, “Die ‘Promachos’ des Phidias und die Kerameikos-Lampen,” AM 56 (1931): 59–74.

  61. F. W. Imhoof-Blumer, P. Gardner, and A. N. Oikonomides, Ancient Coins Illustrating Lost Masterpieces of Greek Art (Chicago: Argonaut, 1964), 128–29, plate Z i–viii; J. Boardman, Greek Sculpture: The Classical Period (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 203, fig. 180; Djordjevitch, “Pheidias’s Athena Promachos Reconsidered,” 323.

  62. G. P. Stevens, “Dedication of Spoils in Greek Temples,” Hesperia Supplement 3 (1940).

  63. Herodotus, Histories 9.13, 22; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.27.1; Demosthenes, Against Timokrates 129. For archaeological evidence of the Persian sack, see T. L. Shear, “The Persian Destruction of Athens: Evidence from Agora Deposits,” Hesperia 62 (1993): 383–482.

  64. Herodotus, Histories 9.20–25.

  65. All listed in Harris, Treasures of the Parthenon and Erechtheion, with epigraphical citations and bibliography.

  66. Ibid., 234.

  67. Ibid., 81–103.

  68. Roux, “Pourquoi le Parthénon?,” and Tréheux, “Pourquoi le Parthénon?” I thank Patricia D. Connelly and Louise Connelly for their kind assistance with these texts.

  69. Furtwängler, Meisterwerke, 172–74.

  70. W. Dörpfeld, “Das Alter des Heiligtums von Olympia,” AM 31 (1906): 170. Solomon Reinach followed in 1908, arguing that “Parthenon” signals a multiplicity of virgins; see S. Reinach, “ΠΑΡΘΕΝΟΝ,” BCH 32 (1908): 499–513. For a summary of the scholarship up to 1984, see Roux, “Pourquoi le Parthénon?,” 301–6, and Tréheux, “Pourquoi le Parthénon?,” 238–42.

  71. Tréheux, “Pourquoi le Parthénon?,” 238, points out that Böckh, Bötticher, Stark, and Michaelis preceded Roux in locating the Parthenon within the eastern cella and in linking the word to the virginity of Athena. He cites A. K. Orlandos, H άρχιτεκτονικ του Παρθενου, I–III (Athens: Archaeological Society of Athens, 1977), 143, for complete bibliography.

  72. For inventories referring to the chamber called Parthenon see chapter 3, note 52.

  73. Harris, Treasures of the Parthenon and Erechtheion, 4–5, 40–80; see also T. Linders, “The Location of the Opisthodomos: Evidence from the Temple of Athena Inventories,” AJA 111 (2007): 777–82.

  74. IG II2 1407.

  75. Harpokration; see Roux, “Pourquoi le Parthénon?,” 304–5; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 161–62.

  76. IG I3 343 4 (ca. 434/433 B.C.); IG I3 376.14 (ca. 409/408 B.C.).

  77. Roux, “Pourquoi le Parthénon?,” 304–5; Tréheux, “Pourquoi le Parthénon?,” 233; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 161–62.

  78. Demosthenes, Against Androtion 76 and 184. Existence of a “Parthenon” on the Acropolis is attested in IG II2 1407, dating to 385 B.C.

  79. Plutarch, Life of Perikles 13.7. In his Life of Cato 5.3, however, Plutarch calls it simply Hekatompedon.

  80. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.5.

  81. Tréheux, 238–40; Brauron, SEG 46.13; Magnesia on the Maeander, SEG 15.668; and Kyzikos, IMT Kyz Kapu Dag˘ 1433.

  82. As pointed out by I. Mylonopoulos, “Buildings, Images, and Rituals in the Greek World,” in The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Architecture, forthcoming.

  83. Roux, “Pourquoi le Parthénon?,” 311–12.

  84. Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 36, fig. 32, cites IG I3 728, 745 as possibly giving the earliest appearance of the words “Athena Parthenos,” inscribed on a base dedicated on the Acropolis (no. 6505) by one Telesios sometime between 500 and 480 B.C.

  85. Whatever its primary meaning, as comparative philologist and linguist Anna Morpugo Davies observed, the word “Parthenon” is unlikely to have been formed with the meaning of a single maiden in mind. I am indebted to Professor Davies for a very helpful discussion of the word parthenon in 1996.

  86. Euripides, Iphigeneia at Tauris 1452–53; Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.17.1.

  87. Pedersen, Parthenon and the Origin of the Corinthian Capital, 11–22. He points to the circular lines inscribed on the floor of the room which indicate the placement of these columns and clearly show that they were not Doric. This leaves two possibilities: Ionic and Corinthian. The use of Ionic capitals here is problematic, since they have distinctive “front” and “side” faces. Since this room is longer on its north–south axis than on its east–west axis, it forms what is called a “center-space room” in which the main corridor lies on a different axis from the rest of the building. This introduces a problem vis-à-vis which way the Ionic volutes faced: Would they have been aligned on the long a
xis of the Parthenon temple or on the shorter axis of the parthenon room? The introduction of Corinthian capitals here would solve this design problem, since akanthos leaves would completely encircle the crown of the columns, spreading equally on all sides and therefore specifying no “front” or “back” faces.

  88. Ibid., 16–20.

  89. Rykwert, Dancing Column, 317–27; Vitruvius, Ten Books of Architecture 4.1.

  90. H. Gropengiesser, Die pflanzlichen Akrotere klassischer Tempel (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1961), 2–17; P. Danner, Griechische Akrotere der archaischen und klassischen Zeit (Rome: G. Bretschneider, 1989), 13–14, no. 77; Korres, “Architecture of the Parthenon.”

  91. Pedersen, Parthenon and the Origin of the Corinthian Capital, 32–36.

  92. Euripides, Erechtheus F 370.85 Kannicht.

  93. Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 41–43.

  94. Zeus-Agamemnon: RE (1972), s.v. “Zeus”; A. Momigliano, “Zeus Agamemnone e il capo Malea,” Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica, n.s., 8 (1930): 317–19. Apollo-Hyakinthos: Aristotle, Politics 8.28; C. Christou, “Ανασκαφή Αμυκλών,” Praktika tes en Athenais Archaiologikis Etaireias (1960): 228–31; C. Christou, “Αρχαιότητες Λακωvίας-Αρκαδίας: Αμύκλαι,” ArchDelt 16 (1960): 102–3; J. M. Hall, “Politics and Greek Myth,” in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, ed. R. D. Woodard (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 331–54. Artemis-Iphigeneia at Brauron: J. Papadimitriou, “Excavations in Vravron Attica,” Praktika tes en Athenais Archaiologikis Etaireias 42 (1948): 81–90; J. Papadimitriou, “The Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron,” Scientific American 208 (1963): 110–20.

  95. The bibliography on hero cult is large and ever growing: Albersmeier, Heroes; Ekroth, “Cult of Heroes”; J. Bravo, “Recovering the Past: The Origins of Greek Heroes and Hero Cult,” in Albersmeier, Heroes, 10–29; G. Ekroth, “Heroes and Hero-Cults,” in Ogden, Companion to Greek Religion, 100–114; H. van Wees, “From Kings to Demigods: Epic Heroes and Social Change, c. 750–600 B.C.,” in Ancient Greece: From the Mycenaean Palaces to the Age of Homer, ed. S. Deger-Jalkotzy and I. S. Lemos (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 363–79; Pache, Baby and Child Heroes; Ekroth, Sacrificial Rituals of Greek Hero-Cults; J. Boardman, The Archaeology of Nostalgia: How the Greeks Re-created Their Mythical Past (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002); D. Boehringer, Heroenkulte in Griechenland von der geometrischen bis zur klassischen Zeit: Attika, Argolis, Messenien (Berlin: Akademie, 2001); A. Mazarakis Ainian, “Reflections on Hero Cults in Early Iron Age Greece,” in Hägg, Ancient Greek Hero Cult, 9–36; Antonaccio, Archaeology of Ancestors; Larson, Greek Heroine Cults; Whitley, “The Monuments That Stood Before Marathon”; D. Boedeker, “Hero Cult and Politics in Herodotus: The Bones of Orestes,” in Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics, ed. C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 164–77; S. E. Alcock, “Tomb Cult and the Post-Classical Polis,” AJA 95 (1991): 447–67; Kearns, Heroes of Attica; J. Whitley, “Early States and Hero Cults: A Re-appraisal,” JHS 108 (1988): 173–82; M. Visser, “Worship Your Enemy: Aspects of the Cult of Heroes in Ancient Greece,” HTR 74 (1982): 403–28; A. Snodgrass, “Les origines du culte des héros dans la Grèce antique,” in La mort: Les morts dans les sociétés anciennes, ed. G. Gnoli and J.-P. Vernant (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 107–19; H. Abramson, “Greek Hero Shrines” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1978); J. N. Coldstream, “Hero-Cults in the Age of Homer,” JHS 96 (1976): 8–17; T. Hadzisteliou-Price, “Hero-Cult and Homer,” Historia 22 (1973): 129–44; L. R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921).