Polyxena sacrificed by Neoptolemos at tomb of Achilles near Troy. Tyrrhenian amphora by the Timiades Painter, ca. 570–560 B.C. (illustration credit ill.57)
Some skeptics view the folded fabric in the so-called peplos scene as being too large for the funerary dress of a sacrificial maiden. But throughout Greek tragedy special emphasis is placed on the voluminousness of the garments worn by virgins as they go to sacrifice. Viewed as an expansive winding sheet, the cloth displayed on the Parthenon frieze is entirely appropriate for dressing the little Erechtheid. In Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Iphigeneia is described as being “wrapped round in her robes” as her father leads her to the altar.88 The word used here is peploisi, the plural of peplos, suggesting several fabrics wrapped entirely around Iphigeneia. Before the maiden Makaria is killed in Euripides’s Children of Herakles, she asks her father’s companion Iolaos to veil her with peploi,89 likewise indicating a plurality of veils. Little remains of a lost play by Sophokles called Polyxena that dramatized the sacrifice of King Priam’s youngest daughter at the tomb of Achilles. Nonetheless, a surviving fragment refers to Polyxena’s “endless” or “all enveloping” tunic (chiton apeiros), further attesting that the draping of the maiden as she is led to be killed is no small matter.90
The violence of Polyxena’s death is explicitly portrayed on a sixth-century B.C. amphora in London (previous page).91 The princess of Troy is held horizontally high above the altar just the way an animal is raised as it is sacrificed.92 Achilles’s son, Neoptolemos, slits Polyxena’s throat. Great streams of blood burst forth. Most distinctive here is Polyxena’s costume. Her arms are wrapped inside what is truly an “all enveloping” garment, a vast winding sheet woven with elaborate patterned decorations. Polyxena is already fully enfolded in her shroud as her neck is cut.
On the central panel of the Parthenon’s east frieze, the young daughter of Erechtheus, just like Polyxena, Iphigeneia, and Makaria, must be veiled in voluminous fabric as she goes to her death. Just as one decorated a sacrificial animal, wrapping ribbons around its horns, so, too, one dresses up a virgin for sacrifice, draping her in beautifully woven garments evocative of bridal costume.
I maintain that the central image of the east frieze should be read as a dressing scene, a kosmos, or adornment of the maiden, just prior to sacrifice. The fact that we are shown a moment prior to the bloody climax is in keeping with the conventions of Greek art of the high classical period. We should not expect to see the altar of sacrifice, the knife that will slit the throat, or any of the blood and gore so obvious as in Archaic depictions of virgin sacrifice.93 Images like that on the Polyxena vase are out of fashion by the 430s B.C. So, too, is the scene depicted on a white-ground lekythos in Palermo showing Agamemnon leading Iphigeneia to the sacrificial altar.94 To be sure, the knife is shown in Agamemnon’s hand. But this vase predates the Parthenon frieze by sixty years, reflecting an Archaic taste for the gruesome detail of the culminating act. By the time the Parthenon frieze is carved in the 430s, the approach is more sophisticated, favoring anticipatory tension over graphic violence.
Still, it must be said that there are few surviving representations of human sacrifice in Greek art before the fourth century B.C. It is an extraordinary subject, confined to extraordinary contexts. One can hardly speak of established conventions for it in Greek art. One of the reasons that the “peplos scene” has remained such a puzzle is that it shows an uncommon event for which no standard iconography exists.95
Both in visual and in dramatic arts, the high classical period saw tastes move away from earlier preference for the explicit, favoring the subtler pleasure of expectation over the high drama of execution. The vogue for understatement can be seen in the famous statue of a discus thrower, the Diskobolos, attributed to the sculptor Myron and dated to the middle of the fifth century B.C.96 In the many copies of this work, we see the nude athlete crouching, rotating, and lifting the discus high behind him. Tightly wound like a spring about to be released, the athlete is captured in a split second of maximum potential prior to the kinetic burst of hurling the discus. Myron became so associated with this “pregnant” instant before the climax that we speak today of the “Myronic moment” when describing statuary of the period. Similarly, in classical Greek drama, climactic death scenes are never shown onstage but, instead, are recounted to the audience by messengers.
This same principle can be seen in the east pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia (this page). Without Pausanias’s description of the central scene as the preparation for the chariot race of Pelops and Oinomaos, we might never guess who was who among the dignified and somber figures. Would we catch the subtle reference to the impending action, hinted at in the crouching figure of the untrustworthy groom tampering with the chariot wheel?97 A tragedy is about to occur: Pelops will cheat in the chariot race, and King Oinomaos will be killed. The Parthenon’s east frieze, like the east pediment at Olympia, shows the local founding family in its own “pregnant” moment solemnly preparing for the awful outcome.
These iconic images of the founding families of Athens and Olympia were created exclusively for their respective contexts: the primary temples of each sanctuary. Neither the family group on the Parthenon’s east frieze nor the family group on the Olympia east pediment has iconographic parallels in vase painting or sculpture. Nor would any clues to their subjects have been needed at the time. Greeks at Olympia would have not only recognized but expected to see a reference to the local foundation myth in the place of prominence on Zeus’s temple. So, too, would the Athenians have instantly recognized the royal house of Erechtheus. Indeed, Greeks on the whole were accustomed to the depiction of prominent families, both heroic and divine, in their visual culture.98 But the impulse to connect the general population to the first family was nowhere more spiritually urgent or politically motivated than at Athens. To see the Erechtheids at the center of this central sculpture of the preeminent temple itself represents a kind of culmination, that of the larger program of genealogical narrative we have seen at work on the Acropolis since the Archaic period. It is also a culmination of that narrative’s societal function.
Serving boy bringing clean clothes to Kastor and Polydeukes; at right, their father, King Tydareos. Amphora, by Exekias, ca. 540 B.C. (illustration credit ill.58)
The two older girls at the far left of the panel have never fit comfortably into the historical reading of the scene (this page). While many scholars have identified them as the two arrephoroi who figured so importantly in the rituals of Athena,99 the pair are clearly too old to fill a post reserved for seven- to eleven-year-old girls. Their costumes, a tunic (chiton) beneath a mantle (himation), are the standard dress for adult women, not prepubescent girls, who regularly wore the peplos. Costume is an important indicator of age and here precludes the possibility that these young women could be arrephoroi.100
Upon their heads, the maidens carry what appear to be cushioned stools. It is imagined that these are for the two adult figures, the “priestess of Athena” and the “priest of Poseidon-Erechtheus,” to sit on.101 Some believe that these “sacred officials” are destined to join the assembly of divinities shown to either side of the central panel. Already in 1893, Adolf Furtwängler expressed the opinion that the priest and the priestess are about to sit down to share a sacred meal with the gods, the so-called Theoxenia (this page).102 But this reading poses problems. Can historical individuals join a group of invisible immortals?103 And why should the priest and priestess have cushioned stools when all but two of the gods (Dionysos and Artemis) do not?
Sometimes a stool is not just a stool. In the Greek world, it was used not only for sitting but also for transporting clean clothes, especially precious garments not to be sullied by unnecessary handling, elaborately woven fabrics that were enormously expensive, representing countless hours of labor at the loom. Images from vase painting regularly show such finery carried on stools. A black-figured amphora by Exekias presents a serving boy bearing clean clothes on a stool
carried upon his head (facing page).104 These are intended for the twins Kastor and Polydeukes, young princes of Sparta (brothers of Helen), who arrive at the left of the scene. The little servant also carries a jar of oil, suspended from his wrist, a further signal that the twins are about to wash, perfume themselves, and change. The fabric on the stool appears rounded from the front, where it is folded over, and squared off from behind, where we see its opened ends. Were we to view the boy head-on, the bundle would appear rounded and cushion-like, just like that carried by the girls on the Parthenon frieze.
A red-figured jug in the Metropolitan Museum of Art presents two women perfuming richly woven fabrics on a swinging stool suspended above a fire (previous page).105 One bends down to pour fragrant oil on the embers while the other tends the clothing. Here, as on the Exekias vase, we see bundles of fabric representing not seat cushions but folded garments. In its original state, the Parthenon frieze would have been painted, and lively details of the fabric, its woven decoration, creases, and folds, would have made its identity clear.
Women perfuming fabric on swinging stool. Oinochoe, Meidias Painter, ca. 420–410 B.C. (illustration credit ill.59)
In the Greek world, there were three great necessities for such elaborately woven fabrics: the baby’s swaddling clothes, the bride’s wedding dress, and the corpse’s shroud. The word “peplos” applies to all three; indeed, it simply means an “uncut length of heavy woolen cloth.” Depending on the context, we find the word “peplos” translated as “robe,” “dress,” “tapestry,” “awning,” “swaddling clothes,” and “shroud.”106 The weaving of fabrics with figural designs took many months, even years, and would have been one of the chief occupations of women within the Greek household. Penelope is the archetypal woman at the loom, painstakingly weaving (and unweaving) a shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, across the years of her husband’s absence, as recounted in the Odyssey. Shrouds were prepared well in advance, anticipating the deaths of family members. Even to this day in certain Greek families, luxury sheets or embroidered cloths are set aside for the wrapping of bodies at the time of burial.
From antiquity through the Middle Ages, the shroud was a highly charged signifier, proof that a death had occurred. One need only think of the rich symbolism invested in the so-called Shroud of Turin, which, forgery or not, has so potently symbolized the death and resurrection of Christ.107 The presence of three shrouds in the central panel of the Parthenon frieze clearly communicates that three deaths are imminent. The stark white flesh of the youngest daughter, caught in the process of changing into her funerary dress, signals the impending tragedy is already in train, the time of sacrifice ineluctably near.
By this new reading we have three girls preparing for death (this page). The youngest goes first, so her peplos is being unfolded and displayed. The oldest daughter, second from left, is handing her stool to her mother. The daughter at far left stands frontally, her garment still folded and carried upon her head. According to the myth, the oracle at Delphi had demanded the death of one daughter. Apollodoros tells us this was to be the youngest of the three.108 Praxithea and Erechtheus agree to that girl’s sacrifice, unaware that the sisters have pledged the famous oath, that if one of them should die, so will the others. That the other two are shown carrying their own funeral dresses with unannounced plans of leaping from the Acropolis ironically foreshadows an even greater sacrifice than the parents expected to make.
What is the object cradled in the arm of the girl at far left? Though damaged and difficult to read, the shape of a lion’s paw has been deciphered at its lower right corner.109 This has led to its identification as a footstool, presumably for use with one of the stools carried by the girls.110 Lion’s paws, however, are used to adorn not only footstools but the legs of small metal chests, including jewelry boxes. Images from vase painting regularly show such boxes cradled in the arms of serving maids. Reading the frieze panel as a dressing scene prior to virgin sacrifice, we can understand this object to hold the precious ornaments with which the maiden offering will be adorned.111 The second-century A.D. orator Aelius Aristides described the preparations for the sacrifice of Erechtheus and Praxithea’s daughter as follows: “And her mother, dressing her up, led her just as if she were sending her to a spectacle.”112
A red-figured pyxis in Paris provides an excellent parallel for this dressing scene. It shows preparations for the costuming of a maiden about to be married (below).113 The bride is seated at the left and looks up at the wedding dress dramatically held out to her by a serving maid. At far right, a second servant carries a small metal box containing the bride’s jewelry, the finishing touches to her wedding kosmos. The same can be seen on the Parthenon’s east frieze. Father and sacrificial daughter display the funerary dress she is about to put on. At left, one of her sisters carries the box of jewelry with which she will be adorned just prior to her sacrifice.
Bridal kosmos with dress and jewelry displayed before bride. Pyxis, Painter of the Louvre Centauromachy, ca. 430 B.C. (illustration credit ill.60)
Andromeda dressed for sacrifice to sea dragon, Ethiopian servants bring clothing and jewelry. Pelike, workshop of the Niobid Painter, ca. 460 B.C. © 2014, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (illustration credit ill.61)
The princess Andromeda, lashed to stakes and left for an insatiable sea dragon, is depicted in Greek vase painting with very similar iconography.114 When a sea monster terrorized the Ethiopian coastline, the Delphic oracle proclaimed that the beast could be placated only through the sacrifice of the king’s daughter. And so Andromeda was led to a cliff overlooking the sea and chained to great rocks to prevent her from fleeing, should she not agree with her father’s act of selflessness. A red-figured vase in Boston shows the princess in her finest raiment and jewelry, ready to meet death (above).115 An Ethiopian servant approaches from the left, upon his head a folding stool with a small chest resting atop what appears to be a cushion but what surely represents the clean and carefully folded fabric of Andromeda’s funerary dress.
On the reverse of the vase (facing page), a second black attendant carries in even more trimmings for Andromeda’s kosmos: another jewelry box and a small jar of fragrant oil. Indeed, more is more when it comes to dressing up a virgin victim for sacrifice. Andromeda’s forlorn father, King Kepheus, gravely supervises the preparations, rather as King Erechtheus does on the Parthenon frieze, creating the same excruciating anticipation. In both images, we have the tragic ambiguity of a dressing ritual equally befitting a wedding and a virgin sacrifice.
King Kepheus oversees sacrifice of his daughter Andromeda; Ethiopian servant approaches. Pelike, ca. 460 B.C. © 2014, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (illustration credit ill.62)
Two groups of six seated Olympians turn their backs on the central panel of the east frieze (this page, this page, and this page). To the south we see Hermes, Dionysos, Demeter, Ares, Hera, and Zeus. Just beside Hera stands a winged figure who is variously identified as Nike, Iris, or Hebe (goddess of youth).116 At the north side we find Athena, Hephaistos, Poseidon, Apollo, Artemis (following page), Aphrodite, and a standing Eros.117 Strangely, the gods turn their backs on the goings-on of the central panel, looking out toward the groups of men and maidens filling the rest of the east frieze. Were this a historical Panathenaic procession, the gods would certainly be taking notice of the culminating moment of the ritual.118 If it were the presentation of the peplos to Athena, the goddess would hardly be so indifferent to her own birthday offering. Athena’s body language would then suggest a callous rejection of her people’s gift (above), an event without sense or precedent.119
Poseidon, Apollo, and Artemis, east frieze, slab 6, Parthenon. (illustration credit ill.63)
Erechtheus and daughter display fabric, Athena and Hephaistos turn away, east frieze, Parthenon. Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens 2: Pl. 23. (illustration credit ill.64)
But radically reimagining the central image of the Parthenon’s east frieze allows the puzzle pieces to fa
ll into place. Assuming a scene of preparations for virgin sacrifice makes the averted gazes of the flanking figures perfectly comprehensible: not only is it improper for gods to watch mortals die, but it would defile their divinity. In Euripides’s Alkestis, Apollo must leave before Alkestis dies, “lest pollution taint me in this house.” So, too, in Euripides’s Hippolytos, Artemis makes it clear that she must not watch the death of Theseus’s son: “Farewell: it is not lawful for me to gaze upon the dead, nor to trouble my eye with the dying gasps of mortals, and now I see that you are near the end.”120 Aelian, writing in the second or third century A.D., gives an account of a comic poet’s dream. In it, the nine Muses must leave the poet’s house just before his demise.121
On what occasions do gods assemble in the manner of the Parthenon’s east frieze? In the Iliad we find them convening atop Mount Ida to watch mortals in the Trojan War combat below. The gods cheer their favorites. In Greek architectural sculpture such “councils of the gods” always appear on the east end of temples and regularly for the purpose of watching battles. The Siphnian Treasury at Delphi, a building dated sometime before 525 B.C., shows the first continuous sculptured Ionic frieze in Greek architecture. On its east side, we find the gods seated on stools, one after another, just as on the Parthenon frieze, suggesting a clear influence (below).122 On the Siphnian Treasury, it is the Trojan War that commands the collective Olympian attention, a particular clash between Achilles and Memnon over the body of Antilochos.123 Gods supporting the Trojan Memnon—Ares, Aphrodite (or Eos?), Artemis, and Apollo—sit at the left; those in Achilles’s corner at right: a missing figure (probably Poseidon), followed by Athena, Hera, and Thetis. Between these two groups, we find Zeus enthroned.
The Parthenon Enigma Page 21