The Parthenon Enigma
Page 26
At Athens, local memory would have held this particular spot especially sacred. It was from these high walls that the heroic ancestors kept the enemy at bay. In fact, the architects of the fifth-century Nike temple were so keen to keep the epic past visible that they cut windows into the bastion, through which one could see and touch the Mycenaean walls, those of the so-called Cyclopean masonry.51
Athena Nike temple and bastion, Athenian Acropolis, from northwest. (illustration credit ill.86)
Such immediate proximity to a preserved stretch of Mycenaean fortifications made the placement of Kleon’s Spartan shields all the more potent. Decades following their dedication, the Nike bastion would be crowned with a stunning sculptured parapet. On it were carved a series of winged Victories shown leading cattle to a thanksgiving sacrifice for Athena, the goddess who made Athenian triumph possible.52 Among the winged figures we see the famous “Sandalbinder,” a Nike who gracefully bends over to tie her shoe. We also see a Nike who holds a helmet, while another adorns a trophy, and on the south side of the parapet, armor is shown, further spoils of triumph. At the very west end of this south flank, we see the goddess Athena herself (below). Her job is done, and she takes her rest, seated on a large block of stone. Her shield, no longer needed, is propped upright against the back of her seat. A Victory approaches the goddess, bringing yet another trophy from the battlefield, the base of which can be made out in front of Athena’s right foot. Kleon’s Spartan shields would thus have been beautifully echoed in the relief sculptures above them, sculptures depicting a panoply of helmets, shields, and armor, carved years after Kleon’s booty was first displayed.
Seated Athena from south side of Nike temple parapet. Acropolis Museum. (illustration credit ill.87)
Reconstruction drawing of Bronze Athena with other dedications on the Acropolis. By G. P. Stevens. (illustration credit ill.88)
ACROSS SOME EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS, the first image to greet worshippers as they walked through the gateway and into the Acropolis precinct was Pheidias’s colossal bronze statue of Athena (above), itself a victory monument, said to have been financed by a tithe of the Persian spoils taken at Marathon in 490 B.C.53 The image stood just in front of what remained of the Old Athena Temple, 40 meters (131 feet) beyond the Propylaia. Part of its base survives in situ and shows that it measured 5.5 meters (18 feet) square.54 Traditionally dated to the 460s–450s B.C., the statue is now believed by some to have been more or less contemporary with the Parthenon.55 An inscribed marble slab listing expenses for the materials and labor that went into the making of the statue indicates that it took nine years for the Bronze Athena to be completed.56 Like the Athenians themselves, the Bronze Athena looked forward, gazing out from the Acropolis directly at the island of Salamis, where the Athenians had won their freedom and defeated the Persian foe.57
There had never been anything quite like it at Athens; indeed, the colossal goddess is estimated to have stood somewhere between 9 and 16 meters (30 and 50 feet) in height.58 Pausanias tells us that one could see the tip of Athena’s spear and the crest of her helmet all the way from Cape Sounion, some 70 kilometers (43 miles) east of Athens.59 We have some idea of what the statue looked like, thanks to firsthand accounts and images replicating it on coins, vases, and sculpture.60 Athena is believed to have stood with shield at her left side and her right hand outstretched, holding a winged Nike or, possibly, an owl. Her spear would have rested at her side. Pausanias tells us that her shield was decorated with carved figures showing the battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs. Coins dating to A.D. 120–150 show the Bronze Athena standing before a gabled temple that must be the Parthenon, with a staircase and gateway leading up the Sacred Rock.61
Walking past the Bronze Athena, pilgrims would have been faced with a brilliant abundance of rich dedications from across centuries of worship and victory. A stretch of Xerxes’s cables, another piece of those we have seen dedicated at Delphi, was displayed here on the Acropolis as well. But what could be seen standing on the Sacred Rock could not compare with the precious treasures locked inside the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and the opisthodomos of the Old Athena Temple. In fact, some of the most illustrious trophies of Athenian victories were housed in this surviving back chamber of the ruined Archaic temple of Athena (this page).62 Here was the sword of the hated Persian general Mardonios, who sacked Athens in 480, only to die the following year at Plataia.63 And here was the golden breastplate and bridle of Masistios, commander of the Persian cavalry who died in a skirmish leading up to the Battle of Plataia. So deeply mourned was this talented horseman that the inconsolable Persians shaved the manes of all their horses and pack animals, as well as their own hair, to express their collective grief.64
Inscribed treasury accounts document a vast catalog of bounty that filled the Parthenon itself: its eastern cella, westernmost room, and porches were packed with arms and armor, precious metal vessels, jewelry, coins, furniture, musical instruments, and more.65 We hear of Persian daggers (akinakes), some overlaid with gold, others with sheaths of ivory; dozens and dozens of bronze helmets, including an Illyrian one from Lesbos and another from Achaia; hundreds of bronze shields, dozens made of gilded wood; sabers and swords, greaves, a panoply dedicated by Alexander, son of Polyperchon; over a hundred spear points, used arrows, and a small ivory javelin.
There were also baskets and boxes by the dozens, some of gilt wood, others of silver and bronze; gold coins and unmarked gold and silver; gilt statues of maidens, golden Nikai, Gorgons, monsters, and griffins; and a silver gilt mask. Hundreds of gold and silver libation bowls and other precious vessels filled the temple, along with lyres made of ivory, gold, and wood and a gilt ivory case for double-pipes. There were hundreds of pairs of earrings, and rings of gold and onyx; five wide-collar necklaces with stones; a golden belt; a necklace with stones and rosettes and a ram’s head. But the most famous jewelry of all was that dedicated by Roxane, Baktrian wife of Alexander the Great, who offered a gold necklace to Athena Polias along with a golden rhyton. Her gifts appear in the inventories for the year 305/304 B.C.66
A writing tablet, a gilt bridle, a lustral basin, an incense burner, a sacrificial knife with ivory sheath, a linen chiton, some fine muslin cloth, boots: these are varied and very personal offerings that filled the shelves and floors and porches of the temple. Its westernmost room, that which the inventory accounts refer to as the parthenon, had giant doors, even bigger than those opening onto the eastern cella, and a great treasure trove locked within: seven gilt Persian swords and a gold-plated helmet, three bronze helmets, and many shields, as well as quantities of furniture, including seven couches from Chios and ten from Miletos, stools, and tables (one with inlaid ivory).67 And then there were those hundreds of pairs of gold earrings, silver and gold bowls, and so many lyres, all dedicated here in the room called the parthenon.
THIRTY YEARS AGO, in a pair of identically titled back-to-back articles, the Assyriologist Georges Roux and the Greek epigraphist Jacques Tréheux vigorously debated the big question: “Pourquoi le Parthénon?”68 Indeed, why is the Parthenon called by this name? Its translation is simple enough: “Place of the Maidens.” But which maidens and why? Roux rejected this meaning out of hand, advancing the opinion that the word refers not to a group of girls but to the virginity of the goddess Athena and that the room called parthenon was, in fact, the eastern cella of the temple, home to Athena’s monumental cult statue. Tréheux vehemently disagreed, arguing that the word parthenon demands a plurality of maidens and that the room in question is the westernmost or back chamber of the building (this page).
In amplifying this debate, the French duo seized on an enigma that had puzzled experts since the early days of classical archaeology. Already in 1893, Adolf Furtwängler insisted that parthenon be understood in a plural sense, indeed as a cult place for a group of Athenian maidens. He even named the daughters of Erechtheus (or, possibly, the daughters of Kekrops) as the maidens in question.69 Wilhelm Dörpfeld saw these maidens not as m
ythical princesses but as historical ergastinai, the “worker women” who wove the peplos for the Panathenaic festival. He suggested that the actual weaving took place within the rear chamber of the Parthenon.70 But there were also, in these early days, those who looked to Athena’s virginity as the source of the name of the building and who, like Roux in later years, believed the parthenon to be one and the same with the eastern cella of the temple.71
At the root of this debate are a series of inscribed inventories that record sacred property housed within the Parthenon (facing page). Beginning in 434/433 B.C. and running until circa 408/407 B.C., the inventories of the treasurers of Athens describe offerings held in the proneos (the east porch), in the hekatompedon (believed to be the eastern cella), and in a place called parthenon (most likely the western room of the building).72 The accounts also speak of the contents of the opisthodomos, which has now been identified as the surviving back room of the Old Athena Temple where treasures, and possibly the olive wood statue of Athena, were kept, at least until the Erechtheion was built (this page).73
The building we call Parthenon today was known by several names in antiquity. In the fifth century it was simply referred to as “the temple,” ho neos.74 According to a late source, the architects who actually worked on the project and wrote a treatise on its construction—Mnesikles and Kallikrates—called the building the “Hekatompedos,” or “Hundred-Footer.”75 This name could have been used in remembrance of what came before it on this same spot. (As discussed in chapter 2, something called the Hekatompedon is attested on the Archaic Acropolis and may have occupied the space where the Parthenon stands today.)76 But by the fourth century, the word parthenon had come to be used for the entire temple.77 It is Demosthenes who, in 345/344 B.C., gives us our first attested use of this word to describe the Parthenon as a whole.78 Interestingly, Plutarch combines the two names, referring to the building as the “Hekatompedon Parthenon.”79 And by the time Pausanias writes in the second century A.D., he refers to the temple simply as “the building they call Parthenon.”80
As Roux and Tréheux point out, there are other sanctuaries besides that of Athena at Athens that have places called parthenon within them. These include the shrines of Artemis at Brauron, Artemis at Magnesia on the Maeander, and Meter Plakiane at Kyzikos on the Black Sea.81 The presence of maidens, and a room for them, at the shrines of the virgin goddess Artemis are easy to understand. Less clear would be why the mother goddess Meter Plakiane would be associated with a parthenon.82 Seizing on the case at Magnesia, Roux points out that Artemis was worshipped here under the epithet Loukophryne and not Parthenos, and uses this to bolster his argument that Athena Polias at Athens could still have a temple called Parthenon.83
Plan of Acropolis showing classical and Hellenistic monuments. (illustration credit ill.89)
Which invites the question: Is “Parthenos” an epithet at all? Indeed, Athena is not worshipped under the name Athena Parthenos at any site outside Athens.84 But even if it were, it would be highly unusual for a place-name to be formed from an epithet. Normally, place-names are formed from a divinity’s proper name. A place sacred to Hera is called a Heraion. A place sacred to Artemis is an Artemision. A precinct sacred to Athena should be called an Athenaion. A room belonging to a single maiden is a parthenion (in Greek script, παρθένιον, with the ending -ιον). A parthenon (written παρθενών, with the ending -ων), however, is clearly a place that belongs to a plurality of maidens. Most nouns whose ending is spelled -ων or -εων have a collective sense.85 Elaion is therefore a place full of olive trees, hippon a place for horses, andron is a place for men, and gynaikon a place for women.
Our “place of the maidens” could well be explained by Athena’s words at the very end of Euripides’s Erechtheus in which she instructs Praxithea to bury her dead daughters in a single earth-tomb and to establish a temenos to them. Athena then orders the queen to build, for her dead husband, a precinct (sekos) with stone enclosure in the middle of the Acropolis. Euripides is here offering by etymology an explanation for the foundation of the two great cult buildings on the Periklean Acropolis: if the Erechtheion incorporates the tomb of Erechtheus, then the Parthenon must incorporate the tomb of the virgins.
Indeed, the westernmost room of the Parthenon could have been perceived to cover the very spot where the tomb of the virgin daughters of Erechtheus lay. This would accord with the Erechtheion, where the tomb of Erechtheus was understood to rest beneath the western part of the building. If this is so, then the heroic father and daughters were more intimately connected to the worship, and cult buildings, of Athena than we have previously imagined. Not only was their sacrifice celebrated on the frieze; together with the goddess herself, they received the most holy and most glorious temple honors, sacrifices, and ritual devotions.
Western room of Parthenon as reconstructed with proto-Corinthian columns. By P. Pedersen. (illustration credit ill.90)
While heroes of other Panhellenic sites may have died tragic deaths and received burial within sanctuaries, cult honors, and funerary games, it is at Athens alone that the heroic deaths served a higher purpose. Indeed, only at Athens did the city’s founder-hero and his heroic daughters give their lives to save their entire community and its future. The transcendent selflessness of the Athenian heroines speaks directly to the core values that the citizens of Athens professed as uniquely their own.
The identification of the west room of the Parthenon with the tomb of the Erechtheids is bolstered by evidence for burials of other heroic maidens in proximity to the temples of the goddesses with whom they were closely connected. Iphigeneia’s tomb was located in the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron, while the tomb of the daughters of Antipoinos was set within the sanctuary of Artemis of Glory in Thebes. Of course, Iphigeneia was sacrificed to resolve a crisis for the collective good of the Greeks; she helped the Greek fleet set sail for the Trojan War. And the daughters of Antipoinos gave their lives in order to save their city of Thebes from attack, just as the Erechtheids did for Athens. All these maidens received heroic burials and sacred rites within the holy precincts of the goddesses they were close to.86
The westernmost room of the Parthenon, in fact, gives us an important hint of its ambient funerary character (previous page). Poul Pedersen has persuasively argued that the four interior columns supporting its roof were crowned by a proto-version of Corinthian capitals.87 He further relates the layout of this unusual “center-space room” to the cult building of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Telesterion at Eleusis, a structure designed by none other than the architect of the Parthenon itself: Iktinos.88
Vitruvius tells us that the Corinthian order originated with a basket (kalathos) left at the tomb of an aristocratic maiden at Corinth. An akanthos plant grew up and around the openwork of the basket, giving it a beautiful, leafy appearance that caught the eye of the architect Kallimachos as he passed by. Inspired by this pleasing form, Kallimachos reportedly designed a column capital imitating the shape of the tender leaves entwining the basket: thus, the Corinthian order was born. And as Joseph Rykwert has demonstrated, Vitruvius’s account contains five telltale elements: a virgin, a death, an offering basket, akanthos, and the notion of rebirth.89 As we shall see at the end of this chapter, the daughters of Erechtheus are intimately associated with each of these elements. And it would seem that the deliberate innovation of proto-Corinthian capitals on the columns in the room called parthenon signals the funerary function of this deeply sacred space.
Akanthos leaves take center stage, once again, at the very peak of the Parthenon’s gables, which were crowned by an astonishing pair of giant floral akroteria, one at either end of the temple (insert this page, bottom). Carved in Pentelic marble, these show a highly innovative and ambitious openwork design and soar to an astounding height of nearly 4 meters (13 feet). Some twenty-seven fragments of these rooftop anthemia survive, showing fully developed akanthos scrolls and spreading leaves. It is a wonder that this delicate masterpie
ce of openwork, carved from heavy marble, could have survived production and hoisting into place.90 Indeed, Pedersen emphasizes the groundbreaking free-plastic manner in which the openwork floral finials have been rendered. He makes a connection between these pioneering akanthos akroteria and the akanthos leaves of the equally innovative proto-Corinthian capitals he restores in the Parthenon’s westernmost room. Tracing the metamorphosis of traditional lotus-palmette and scroll anthemia seen on Archaic and classical funerary monuments, Pedersen sees a development toward akanthos leaf finials for gravestones of the late fifth and early fourth centuries.91 Of essential importance to our argument is the relation between the akanthos elements on grave stelai and those atop and within the Parthenon. With four Nikai hovering above the corners of its roof (this page) and two akanthos akroteria at the very peak of its gables (insert this page, bottom), the Parthenon signals loud and clear that it is at once a monument to Athenian victory and at the same time a final resting place for the maidens who gave their lives to win Athenian triumph.
This reading may also help explain just why the Erechtheion and the Parthenon shared a single priestess and a single altar (this page). Normally, each temple had its own altar and its own presiding priest or priestess. The peculiarity of Acropolis cult practice can now be understood in light of the founding myth that has Praxithea looking after the tomb shrine of her husband as well as that of her daughters, both housed within temples of Athena: the Erechtheion and the Parthenon. As the sole surviving member of the royal family, Praxithea is appointed first priestess of Athena on the Acropolis. She alone has the right to initiate burnt sacrifice on Athena’s altar, an altar that serves both temples.