The Parthenon Enigma

by Joan Breton Connelly

  96. A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum: Geordnet nach Attischem Kalendar, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1898), 158. For a review of relevant ancient testimonia see Mikalson, Sacred and Civil Calendar, 23, and Shear, “Polis and Panathenaia,” 37. It should be said that the practice of marking birthdays is much more popular in late Hellenistic and Roman times than in the Archaic or classical Greek periods.

  97. See W. Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, trans. P. Bing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 154–58, for New Year’s festival; see Robertson, “Origin of the Panathenaea,” 240–81, for celebration of new fire.

  98. Robertson, “Origin of the Panathenaia,” 232.

  99. See Vian, La guerre des géants, 246–59; Ferrari Pinney, “Pallas and Panathenaea”; Shear, “Polis and Panathenaia,” 29–33. Aristotle, frag. 637 (Rose); quoted by the scholiast to Aristides, Panathenaic Oration 362 (Lenz and Behr) = Dindorf 3:323 = Jebb 189, 4; cf. scholiast to Aristophanes, Knights 566a (II); repeated by Suda, s.v. πέπλος.

  100. Homer, Iliad 3.257–897.

  101. See W. Raschke, ed., The Archaeology of the Olympic Games (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).

  102. Thompson, “Panathenaic Festival,” 227.

  103. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.19, 49–50.

  104. Wesenberg, “Panathenäische Peplosdedikation und Arrhephorie”; Barber, “Peplos of Athena”; Ridgway, “Images of Athena”; Barber, Prehistoric Textiles; Mansfield, “Robe of Athena”; B. Nagy, “The Peplotheke: What Was It?,” in Studies Presented to Sterling Dow on His Eightieth Birthday, ed. K. J. Rigsby (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1984), 227–32; W. Gauer, “Was geschieht mit dem Peplos?,” in Berger, Parthenon-Kongreß Basel, 220–29; D. M. Lewis, “Athena’s Robe,” Scripta Classica Israelica 5 (1979–1980): 28–29.

  105. H. Goldman, “The Acropolis of Halae,” Hesperia 9 (1940): 478–79; H. Goldman, “Inscriptions from the Acropolis of Halae,” AJA 19 (1915): 448; S. J. Wallrodt, “Ritual Activity in Late Classical Ilion: The Evidence from a Fourth Century B.C. Deposit of Loomweights and Spindlewhorls,” Studia Troica 12 (2002): 179–96. S. J. Wallrodt, “Late Classical Votive Loomweights from Ilion,” AJA 105 (2001): 303 (abstract); L. Surtees, “Loomweights,” in Stymphalos: The Acropolis Sanctuary, ed. G. P. Schaus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming); L. Surtees, “The Loom as a Symbol of Womanhood: A Case Study of the Athena Sanctuary at Stymphalos” (master’s thesis, University of Alberta, 2004), 68–85. I am indebted to Laura Surtees for sharing information and bibliography on ritual weaving with me.

  106. Alkman, Parthenion 61; Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.16.2, 5.16.2, 6.24.10; Hesychios, Lexicon, s.v. γεραράδες. The Palatine Anthology (6.286) records in its inventory lists dedications of clothing to the gods. Homer, Iliad 6.269–311, describes the ritual offering of a peplos placed on the knees of Athena’s cult statue.

  107. Norman, “The Panathenaic Ship,” 41–46; Barber, “Peplos of Athena,” 114; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 45; Mansfield, “Robe of Athena,” 51–52, 68. Shear, “Polis and Panathenaia,” 145–46, discusses the fragment of Strattis (writing around 400 B.C.): “and ths peplos, the men without number, hauling with the rigging, drag to the top, just like the sail on a mast,” Strattis frag. 31 (PCG), quoted by Harpokration s.v. τοπεˆιον. For a full discussion of the Panathenaiac ship, see Shear, “Polis and Panathenaia,” 143–55.

  108. Scholia on Aristophanes’s Knights 566a (II).

  109. Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes 10.5 and 12.3.

  110. Ridgway, “Images of Athena on the Acropolis,” 124.

  111. Heliodoros, Aethiopika 5.31.

  112. For full discussion see I. Mylonopoulos, ed., Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greek and Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2010); I. Mylonopoulos, “Divine Images Versus Cult Images: An Endless Story About Theories, Methods, and Terminologies,” in ibid., 1–19.

  113. More precisely, 11.54 meters, or 37 feet 10 inches.

  114. The statue is cast from a composite of gypsum cement and ground fiberglass from multiple molds that were assembled inside the Parthenon by A. LeQuire in 1982–1990. The statue was gilded in 2002. A. LeQuire, “Athena Parthenos: The Re-creation in Nashville,” in Tsakirgis and Wiltshire, Nashville Athena, 8–10. B. Tsakirgis and S. F. Wiltshire, eds., The Nashville Athena: A Symposium (Nashville, 1990); Ridgway, “Parthenon and Parthenos.”

  115. Pliny, Natural History 36.18; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.5–7; Plutarch, Life of Perikles 31.4; Ridgway, “Images of Athena,” 131–35; Ridgway, “Parthenon and Parthenos,” 297–99; Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary; K. D. S. Lapatin, “Pheidias ἐλεφαντουργός,” AJA 101 (1997): 663–82; Lapatin, “Ancient Reception of Pheidias’ Athena Parthenos and Zeus Olympios.”

  116. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, 1:361, maintained that Pliny’s text is corrupt and that he probably never saw the statue. See L. Berczelly, “Pandora and Panathenaia: The Pandora Myth and the Sculptural Decoration of the Parthenon,” Acta ad Archaeologiam et Atrium Historiam Pertinentia 8 (1992): 53–86; A. Kosmopoulou, The Iconography of Sculptured Statue Bases in the Archaic and Classical Periods (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 112–17. Hurwit, “Beautiful Evil,” 173, 175; Jeppesen, “Bild und Mythus an dem Parthenon,” 59; J. J. Pollitt, Art and Experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 98–99; J. J. Pollitt, “The Meaning of Pheidias’ Athena Parthenos,” in Tsakirgis and Wiltshire, Nashville Athena, 1–23; Loraux, Children of Athena, 114–15.

  117. Hesiod (Works and Days 80; Theogony 560–71) tells us that when Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus took revenge by causing Hephaistos to make a woman out of earth, a terrible woman who by her charms and beauty would bring misery upon the human race. According to some mythographers, Pandora and Epimetheus had two children, Pyrrha and Deukalion (Hyginus, Fabulae 142; Apollodoros, Library 1.7.2; Proklos, On Hesiod’s “Works and Days”; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.350). But according to others, Pandora was the daughter of Pyrrha and Deukalion (Eustathios, Commentary on Homer 23).

  118. Jane Harrison stressed that this Attic Pandora is an Earth-Goddess in the kore form, entirely humanized and vividly personified in myth; see Harrison, “Pandora’s Box,” and Harrison, Prolegomena, 281–85. For the two distinct aspects of Pandora, see Hurwit, “Beautiful Evil,” 177. Significant differences also can be found between the Attic version of the Prometheus story and Hesiod’s account of it.

  119. West, Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, F2/4, F5n20; for date of catalog, see 130–37.

  120. Hesiod, F2/4 and F5; West, Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 50–56.

  121. In fact, a scholiast to Aristides, Panathenaic Oration 85–87 (Lenz and Behr) = Dindorf 3:110, line 9, and 3:12, lines 10–15, identifies Aglauros, Herse, and Pandrosos as the daughters of Erechtheus, rather than as the daughters of Kekrops.

  122. See Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 196–98.

  123. G. P. Stevens suggested a height of ca. 0.90 meters for the Athena Parthenos base; see “Remarks upon the Colossal Chryselephantine Statue of Athena in the Parthenon,” Hesperia 24 (1955): 260.

  124. Pliny, Natural History 36.18. See Leipen, Athena Parthenos, 24–27, plate 86C; see also W.-H. Schuchhardt, “Zur Basis der Athena Parthenos,” in Wandlungen: Studien zur antiken und neueren Kunst: Ernst Homann-Wedeking gewidmet (Waldsassen-Bayern: Stiftland, 1975), 120–30, plates 26–27; C. Praschniker, “Das Basisrelief der Parthenos,” JOAI 39 (1952): 7–12; Becatti, “Il rilievo del Drago e la base della Parthenos”; Hurwit, “Beautiful Evil”; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 187–88; A. Kosmopoulou, The Iconography of Sculptured Statue Bases in the Archaic and Classical Periods (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 113–24.

  125. Leipen, Athena Parthenos, plate 86.

  126. London, British Museum E 467, GR 1856.1213.1, by the Niobid Painter, ca. 460–450 b.c.; ARV2 601, 23; Addenda2 266; LIMC
7, s.v. “Pandora,” no. 2.

  127. Euripides, Erechtheus F 360.34–45 Kannicht.

  128. London, British Museum D 4, ARV2 869, 55; LIMC 7, s.v. “Pandora,” no. 1; ca. 460 B.C., from Nola. See Bremmer, “Pandora,” 30–31; E. D. Reeder, Pandora: Women in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, 1995), 284–86. A fragment of a crocodile rhyton by the Sotades Painter (BM E 789; ARV2 764.9; LIMC 1, s.v. “Anesidora,” no. 3), ca. 460–450 B.C., shows the lower portion of what seems to be a similar scene, with a girl standing frontally at center, flanked by Athena and a male figure.

  129. The Anesidora/Pandora relationship is first discussed by Jane Harrison, “Pandora’s Box”; Harrison, Prolegomena, 281–85; J. E. Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 295, 298–99. See also West, Works and Days, 164–65; Bremmer, “Pandora,” 30–31; Boardman and Finn, Parthenon and Its Sculptures, 249–50.

  130. C. Bérard, Anodoi: Essai sur l’imagerie des passages chthoniens (Rome: Institut Suisse de Rome, 1974), 161–64. A chthonic nature is attested for Pandora in Hipponax 104.48 W, where she receives an offering of a potted plant at the Thargelia, as celebrated in Ephesos. The name Anesidora has been attested as an epithet for Demeter, since she sends up the fruits of the earth; see Sophokles, frag. 826, 1010, and discussion in Bremmer, “Pandora,” 30–31. At the very end of the surviving fragments of Euripides’s Erechtheus, Demeter’s name appears, see F 370 102 Kannicht.

  131. Harpokration A 239 Keaney 101 on E 85: Πανδρόσῳ KM, Πανδῴρα ep QNP (var. lect. KM). FGrH 3 Β Ι 276–77. For sacrifices to Pandora see Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, 1:290; RE (1949), s.v. “Pandora.”

  132. Aristophanes, Birds 971.

  133. In Homer, Odyssey 3.371.2, Athena metamorphoses into a sea eagle or vulture.

  134. Aristophanes, Wasps 1086.

  135. Plutarch, Life of Themistokles 12.1.

  136. See Kroll, The Greek Coins, no. 182, A.D. 120–150.

  137. Ferrari, Figures of Speech, 7–8, 55, 72–73; G. Ferrari, “Figure of Speech: The Picture of Aidos,” Métis 5 (1990): 186–91.

  138. Homer, Iliad 17.567; Hesiod, Theogony 886–900.

  139. See Korshak, Frontal Face in Attic Vase Painting, for a full treatment of the subject.

  140. London, British Museum 2003, 07180.10. H. Frankfort, “The Burney Relief,” Archiv für Orientforschung 12 (1937): 128–35; E. G. Kraeling, “A Unique Babylonian Relief,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 67 (1937): 16–18; E. Porada, “The Iconography of Death in Mesopotamia in the Early Second Millennium B.C.,” in Death in Mesopotamia: Papers Read at the XXVIe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, ed. B. Alster, Mesopotamia 8 (Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1980), 259–70. For the view that the relief is a modern forgery, see P. Albenda, “The ‘Queen of the Night’ Plaque: A Revisit,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 125 (2005): 171–90; and rebuttal, D. Collon, “The Queen Under Attack—a Rejoinder,” Iraq 69 (2007): 43–51.

  141. London, British Museum E 477, GR 1772, 0320.36, by the Hephaistos Painter. ARV2 1114; Addenda2 331; LIMC 6, s.v. “Kephalos,” no. 26. Harrison, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, lxix, fig. 14.

  142. Translation: G. Ferrari, Alcman, First Parthenion, 70–71, 156. The bibliography is vast. See C. Calame, ed., Alcman: Introduction, Texte critique, témoinage, traduction, et commentaire (Rome: 1983), Calame, Les choeurs des jeunes filles.

  143. G. Ferrari, Alcman, 90-92, 121. See N. Loraux, The Mourning Voice (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002).

  144. Euripides, Erechtheus F 370.107–8 Kannicht. For catasterized Erechtheids as Hyades, see scholiast to Aratus, Phaenomena 172, 107.

  145. Kansas City, Mo., Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Nelson Fund 34.289. By the Athena Painter. See Haspels, ABL 257, no. 74; Para. 260, no. 74; Neils, Goddess and Polis, 148–49n7.

  146. Ferrari suggested this in a talk given at the symposium “Parthenon and Panathenaia” at Princeton University, on September 18, 1993; see S. Peirce and A. Steiner, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, March 9, 1994. Ferrari made the case that owls appearing on Athenian coins, state stamps, owl skyphoi, and other objects represent the daughters of Kekrops.

  147. Uppsala, Uppsala University 352. Douglas, “Owl of Athena”; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, 1:290.

  148. See note 119.

  149. Paris, Musée du Louvre CA 2192. ARV2 983.14; Addenda2 311. Ca. 475–450 B.C.

  150. For owl skyphoi, see ARV2 982–84 with bibliography; F. P. Johnson, “An Owl Skyphos,” in Studies Presented to David Moore Robinson on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. G. Mylonas and D. Raymond (St. Louis: Washington University, 1953), 96–105; F. P. Johnson, “A Note on Owl Skyphoi,” AJA 59 (1955): 119–24.

  151. Bryn Mawr, Pa., Bryn Mawr College, Art and Artifact collection, T-182, ca. 300 B.C. G. Ferrari Pinney and B. S. Ridgway, eds., Aspects of Ancient Greece (Allentown, Pa.: Allentown Art Museum, 1979), 291n148; Neils, Goddess and Polis, 151n12; H. Herdejürgen, Die Tarentinischen Terrakotten des 6. bis. 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. im Antikenmuseum Basel (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1971), 73–74.

  152. The image shown on this page is American Numismatic Society, 1977, 158.834. P. van Alfen, “The Coinage of Athens, Sixth to First Century B.C.,” in The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Coinage, ed. W. E. Metcalf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 88–104, dates their beginning to around 515 B.C.; Douglas, “Owl of Athena”; E. D. Tai, “ ‘Ancient Greenbacks’: Athenian Owls, the Law of Nikophon, and the Greek Economy,” Historia 54 (2005): 359–81; Kroll and Waggoner, “Dating the Earliest Coins of Athens, Corinth, and Aegina.” I thank Dr. Peter van Alfen of the American Numismatic Society for providing the image.

  153. Aristophanes, Birds 301.

  154. Davies, “Athenian Citizenship,” 106.

  155. Rosivach, “Autochthony,” 303.

  156. Davies, “Athenian Citizenship,” 106.

  157. Translation is my own.

  158. Euripides, Erechtheus F 359 Kannicht. Translation: Collard and Cropp, Euripides VII: Fragments, 375.

  159. Euripides, Erechtheus F 366 Kannicht. Translation: Collard and Cropp, Euripides VII: Fragments, 385.

  160. Rosivach, “Autochthony,” 302–3.

  161. Ibid.

  162. Fehr, Becoming Good Democrats and Wives, 145–49.

  163. N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 15–24.

  164. Euripides, Erechtheus F 360a Kannicht, and F 360.53–55 Kannicht.

  165. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, trans. R. Crawley (New York: J. M. Dent, 1903).

  8 THE WELL-SCRUBBED LEGACY

  1. R. Fry, “The Case of the Late Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema,” in A Roger Fry Reader, ed. C. Reed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 147–49, reprinted from Nation, January 18, 1913, 666–67.

  2. R. Ash, Alma-Tadema (Aylesbury: Shire, 1973); V. Swanson, Alma-Tadema: The Painter of the Victorian Vision of the Ancient World (London: Ash & Grant, 1977); R. Ash, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (London: Pavilion Books, 1989; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990); V. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (London: Garton, 1990); J. G. Lovett and W. R. Johnston, Empires Restored, Elysium Revisited: The Art of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (Williamstown, Mass.: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1995), exhibition catalog; E. Becker and E. Prettejohn, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema (Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 1996), exhibition catalog.

  3. Barrow, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 192; E. Swinglehurst, Lawrence Alma-Tadema (San Diego: Thunder Bay Press, 2001); R. Tomlinson, The Athens of Alma Tadema (Stroud: Sutton, 1991).

  4. Buying-in reported in G. Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste, vol. 1: The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices, 1760–1960 (London: Barrie and Rockliffe, 1961), 243–44.

  5. Barrow, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 43–44.

  6. Athenaeum, December 8, 188
2, 779.

  7. Newton and Pullan, Halicarnassus, Cnidus, and Branchidae, 72–264 (description of monument), 78 (as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world), 185 (colors on its architectural members), and 238–39 (colors on the reliefs). See I. Jenkins, C. Gratziu, and A. Middleton, “The Polychromy of the Mausoleum,” in Sculptors and Sculpture of Caria and the Dodecanese, ed. I. Jenkins and G. Waywell (London: British Museum, 1997).

  8. Newton and Pullan, Halicarnassus, Cnidus, and Branchidae, 238–39.

  9. This continued straight to the end of the nineteenth century. See R. R. R. Smith and R. Frederiksen, The Cast Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum: Catalogue of Plaster Casts of Greek and Roman Sculptures (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2013); R. Frederiksen, ed., Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting, and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, Transformationen der Antike (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010); D. C. Kurtz, The Reception of Classical Art in Britain: An Oxford Story of Plaster Casts from the Antique (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 2000); Yalouri, Acropolis, 176–83.

  10. Winckelmann, Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, 147–48.

  11. Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens, 2: plate 6; 3: plate 9. For metal attachments on the Parthenon frieze, see Stuart and Revett’s Antiquities of Athens, 2:14.

  12. M. J. Vickers and D. Gill, Artful Crafts: Ancient Greek Silverware and Pottery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 1–32; M. J. Vickers, “Value and Simplicity: Eighteenth-Century Taste and the Study of Greek Vases,” Past and Present 116 (1987): 98–104.

  13. J.-I. Hittorff, Restitution du Temple d’Empédocle à Sélinonte (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1851).

  14. M. Fehlmann, “Casts and Connoisseurs: The Early Reception of the Elgin Marbles,” Apollo 544 (2007): 44–51. In 1811, the sculptor John Henning objected when the marbles were about to be cleaned with dilute sulfuric acid by Joseph Nollekens’s men. See Jenkins, Cleaning and Controversy, 4.