The Parthenon Enigma

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The Parthenon Enigma Page 44

by Joan Breton Connelly


  43. The “Bluebeard Monster” was first identified as Typhon by Harrison, Primitive Athens as Described by Thucydides, 27. Boardman, “Herakles, Peisistratos, and Sons,” 71–72, suggests the beast represents the “body politic” of Athens in which the people of the plains, the people of the coast, and the people of the mountains are signaled by what is held in the monster’s hands: water, cornstalks, and a bird. The Bluebeard Monster has also been identified as the triple-bodied Geryon; as a composite of Okeanos, Pontos, and Aither; as wind divinities known as the Tritopatores; as Zeus Herkeios; as Nereus; as Proteus; and even as Erechtheus. For an overview of these various interpretations, see F. Brommer, “Der Dreileibige,” Marburger Winckelmann-Programm (1947): 1–4; Ridgway, Archaic Style, 283–88; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 106–14.

  44. Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen Inv. 596, by the Inscription Painter. M. Beard, The Invention of Jane Harrison (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 103–5, is quick to dismiss Harrison’s association of this image with the Bluebeard Monster, though it has held up well over time; see U. Höckmann, “Zeus besiegt Typhon,” AA (1991): 11–23. While there are, of course, methodological difficulties in relating images from monumental stone sculpture to those from vase painting, when dealing with such early periods for which the surviving corpus of images is slight and iconographies are not yet “codified,” one must look as broadly as possible across surviving material culture.

  45. Hymn to Pythian Apollo, 305–10.

  46. Ibid., 305–15. I am indebted to Nickolas Pappas for making this point.

  47. As West has shown, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 253, 255–57, Zeus kills Typhon, just as Baal fights Yam and Mot in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, just as Kumarbi fights Ullikummi in the Hurrian-Hittite Song of Ullikummi, and just as Marduk fights Tiamat in Babylonian myth. For dragon myths and serpent cult in the Greek and Roman worlds, see Ogden, Drakon.

  48. Apollodoros, Library 1.6.3. For full discussion of Typhon, see Ogden, Drakon, 69–80.

  49. Hesiod, Theogony 820.

  50. Ridgway, Archaic Style, 286, points to holes drilled in the upper body of the centermost demon of the Bluebeard Monster (for the attachment of snakes?) and to a scar on his chest indicating he has been wounded. Shield bands from Olympia show Typhon with multiple snakes coming out of his head and shoulders, LIMC 8, s.v. “Typhon,” nos. 16–19.

  51. Apollodoros, Library 1.6.3.

  52. Translation: West, Hesiod: Theogony, 27.

  53. Translation: ibid., 28.

  54. Acropolis no. 36. Ridgway, Archaic Style, 286; Boardman, “Herakles, Peisistratos, and Sons,” 71–72.

  55. Geison, Acropolis no. 4572; painted gutter, Acropolis no. 3934; painted images of water birds, Heberdey, Altattische Porosskulptur.

  56. Oppian, Halieutica 3.7–8 and 3.208–9; Nonnus, Dionysiaca 1.137–2.712.

  57. I thank Nancy Klein for helpful discussion of this point.

  58. Dörpfeld, “Parthenon I, II und III.” Claw chisel marks, identified on the foundations of the temple but not on the sculptures, have led to the conclusion that in fact the two cannot be associated, see Plommer, “Archaic Acropolis”; Beyer, “Die Reliefgiebel des alten Athena-Tempels der Akropolis”; Preisshofen, Untersuchungen zur Darstellung des Greisenalters. Summarized in Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 111–12; Bancroft, Problems Concerning the Archaic Acropolis, 50.

  59. For a complete analysis of the Hekatompedon Inscription and restoration of the text, see P. A. Butz, The Art of the Hekatompedon Inscription and the Birth of the Stoikhedon Style (Leiden: Brill, 2010). R. S. Stroud provides additional commentary and bibliography in “Adolph Wilhelm and the Date of the Hekatompedon Decrees,” in Attikai epigraphai: Praktika symposiou eis mnemen A. Wilhelm (1864–1950), ed. A. P. Matthaiou (Athens: Hellenike Epigraphike, 2004), 85–97. A. Stewart examines the larger context of the Hekatompedon Inscription in his study of Acropolis stratigraphy, “The Persian and Carthaginian Invasions of 480 B.C.E., Part 1.” See also G. Németh, Hekatompedon: Studies in Greek Epigraphy, vol. 1 (Debrecen: Kossuth Lajos University, Department of Ancient History, 1997).

  60. Korres, “Die Athena-Tempel auf der Akropolis”; Korres, “History of the Acropolis Monuments,” 38; Dinsmoor, “Hekatompedon on the Athenian Acropolis”; W. B. Dinsmoor Jr., The Propylaia to the Athenian Akropolis (Princeton, N.J.: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1980), 1:28–30; Ridgway, Archaic Style, 283; Childs, “Date of the Old Temple of Athena on the Athenian Acropolis,” 1, 5n14.

  61. Harpokration, s.v. ‘Εκατόμπεδον, says Mnesikles and Kallikrates called the Parthenon hekatompedon, as did Plutarch, Life of Perikles 13.4; Life of Cato 5.3. See Roux, “Pourquoi le Parthénon?,” 304–5; Harris, Treasures of the Parthenon and Erechtheion, 2–5; C. J. Herrington, Athena Parthenos and Athena Polias (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1955), 13; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 161–63. For find spots of poros sculpture, see Heberdey, Altattische Porosskulptur. I thank Professor Manolis Korres for discussing this point with me. See A. Stewart, “The Persian and Carthaginian Invasions of 480 B.C.E.,” 395–402.

  62. As pointed out by Ridgway, Archaic Style, 287, who also notes that stone fragments of what looks to be a winged monster with snaky body have been found on Samos, perhaps providing an iconographic parallel to the Hekatompedon’s Bluebeard Monster/Typhon. See B. Freyer-Schauenburg, Bildwerke der archaischen Zeit und des strengen Stils, Samos 11 (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1974), nos. 111–12, 191n84. Ridgway also suggests that the marble relief felines were attached as antae decorations in the Eastern tradition of guardian figures at the doors. M. Korres has suggested that these relief felines may have been placed along the face of the architrave, at the corners of the building, in an arrangement similar to that seen on the Archaic temple at Didyma (personal communication with M. Korres).

  63. Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 115–16.

  64. See the forthcoming article by N. L. Klein, “Topography of the Athenian Acropolis Before Pericles: The Evidence of the Small Limestone Buildings,” in which she proposes modifications to the traditional dating. Klein places Building A around 560–550 B.C.; Buildings B and C in the second half of the sixth century; and Buildings D and E in the early fifth century. See also Ridgway, Archaic Style, 287–91; Bancroft, “Problems Concerning the Archaic Acropolis,” 46–76; N. Bookidis, “A Study of the Use and Geographical Distribution of Architectural Sculpture in the Archaic Period (Greece, East Greece, and Magna Graecia)” (Ph.D. diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1967), 22–33.

  65. Acropolis no. 1. For Hydra, see Ogden, Drakon, 26–28. For poros pediment, see N. L. Klein, “A Reconstruction of the Small Poros Buildings on the Athenian Acropolis,” AJA 95 (1991): 335 (abstract); Ridgway, Archaic Style, 287–88; W. H. Schuchhardt, “Archaische Bauten auf der Akropolis von Athen,” AA 78 (1963): 812, figs. 13–44. There is a second small pediment, Acropolis Museum no. 2, painted in deep red (and therefore nicknamed the “Red Triton Pediment”) that similarly shows Herakles fighting the Triton; see Ridgway, Archaic Style, 291. For Triton, see Ogden, Drakon, 119, 131, 134–35.

  66. In Euripides, Children of Herakles 87, 125, Iolaos is presented not as the nephew of Herakles but as a very close friend. According to Aristotle, at the tomb of Iolaos at Thebes, homosexual lovers pledged their fidelity to one another, while Iolaos guaranteed their oaths and punished unfaithful lovers. See J. Davidson, The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007), 354–56; Plutarch, Life of Pelopidas 18.5.

  67. J. P. A. van der Vin, “Coins in Athens During the Time of Peisistratos,” in Peisistratos and the Tyranny: A Reappraisal of the Evidence, ed. H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 2000), 147–53, argues that Wappenmünzen, or heraldic coinage, date from the period of Peisistratos and a little later (ca. 550–515 B.C.). See J. H. Kroll, “From Wappenmünzen to Gorgoneia to Owls,” American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 26 (1981): 10–15, and his 1993 monograph, The Gree
k Coins, where Kroll states, “Athenian numismatics begins with the anepigraphic Wappenmünzen (heraldic coins), a uniface coinage with changing obverse types” (5). See also Kroll and Waggoner, “Dating the Earliest Coins of Athens, Corinth, and Aegina,” 331–33; Lavelle, Fame, Money, and Power, 188.

  68. Peisistratos is also said to have set up the Altar of the Twelve Gods within the Agora, a monument regarded as the physical center of Athens from which all distances were measured. See Herodotos, Histories 2.7; Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 6.54; IG II2 2640. For discussion see Camp, Athenian Agora, 41–42; Camp, “Before Democracy,” 10–11; Camp, Archaeology of Athens, 32–35; Boersma, Athenian Building Policy, 15–16, 20–21; L. M. Gadberry, “The Sanctuary of the Twelve Gods in the Athenian Agora: A Revised View,” Hesperia 61 (1992): 447–89.

  69. Herodotos, Histories 1.60.2–5; W. R. Connor, “Tribes, Festivals, and Processions,” JHS 107 (1987): 40–50.

  70. Boardman, “Herakles, Peisistratos, and Sons,” 62; J. Boardman, “Herakles, Peisistratos, and the Unconvinced,” JHS 109 (1989): 158–59; G. Ferrari, “Heracles, Pisistratus, and the Panathenaea,” Métis 9–10 (1994–1995): 219–26.

  71. Herodotos, Histories 5.71; Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 1.126. See D. Harris-Cline, “Archaic Athens and the Topography of the Kylon Affair,” BSA 94 (1999): 309–20; D. Nakassis, “Athens, Kylon, and the Dipolieia,” in GRBS 51 (2011): 527–36.

  72. Plutarch, Life of Solon 12, embellishes the story with a wonderful twist which has Kylon and his men tying a yellow string around the cult statue to keep themselves attached to Athena’s protective powers as they make their way down the Acropolis. The thread snaps just as they pass the altars of the “Accursed Goddesses,” and so the archons feel free to kill the escaped hostages on the spot.

  73. Shapiro, Art and Cult Under the Tyrants, 14–15.

  74. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 6.54, says that “they greatly improved the appearance of their city.” See Lavelle, Fame, Money, and Power.

  75. Korres has recently shown that work might have recommenced on the temple at the time of the orator Lykourgos. M. Korres and C. Bouras, eds., Athens: From the Classical Period to the Present Day (New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2003), 153. In 174 B.C., King Antiochos IV Epiphanes commissioned the Roman architect Cossutius to complete the giant dipteral temple in the Corinthian order, but the project was later abandoned. During his siege of Athens in 86 B.C., Sulla looted some of the Olympieon’s columns. Work did not resume on the temple until the reign of Hadrian when it was completed and a gold and ivory statue of Zeus was installed within. See Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.18.6. R. Tölle-Kastenbein, Das Olympieion in Athen (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994); Camp, Archaeology of Athens, 173–76, 199–201; R. E. Wycherley, Stones of Athens (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978).

  76. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.20.2; Aristotle, Politics 1311a; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.23.1–2. When Harmodios’s sister was invited, then rejected, as basket-bearer at the festival, the lovers decided to kill the Peisistratids, succeeding only in the murder of Harmodios.

  77. Ober, Democracy and Knowledge, 138–39.

  78. Ibid., 12, defines demokratia as “the capacity [of the people, or demos] to act in order to effect change.”

  79. See J. Ober, Athenian Legacies: Essays on the Politics of Going on Together (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 36–42, for a helpful summary.

  80. Scholia on Aristophanes, Knights 566a (II), repeated by Suda, s.v. πέπλος. For Gigantomachy in Attic vase painting, see Shapiro, Art and Cult Under the Tyrants, 28, 38–40, 42; Shear, “Polis and Panathenaia,” 35–38; T. H. Carpenter, Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 74; Vian, La guerre des géants, 246; M. B. Moore, “Lydos and the Gigantomachy,” AJA 83 (1979): 79–99.

  81. Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.47.1.

  82. Suda, s.v. Γιγαντιαί.

  83. Apollodoros, Library 1.35; Euripides, Ion 209–11; Euripides, Herakles 908; Euripides, Cyklops 5–8; Kallimachos, Fragmenta 382 (from Choerobus, ca. third century B.C.).

  84. Scholars had long dated the temple to around 520 B.C. under the regime of the Peisistratids, but the building has now been persuasively down dated to the early years of Kleisthenes’s leadership, certainly after 508 B.C. See Childs, “Date of the Old Temple of Athena on the Athenian Acropolis”; Korres, “History of the Acropolis Monuments,” 38–39; K. Stähler, “Zur Rekonstruktion und Datierung des Gigantomachiegiebels von der Akropolis,” in Antike und Universalgeschichte: Festschrift Hans Erich Stier (Münster, 1972), 88–91; Stewart, “Persian and Carthaginian Invasions of 480 B.C.E.,” 377–412 and 581–615; Kissas, Archaische Architektur der Athener Akropolis. Against this view, see Croissant, “Observations sur la date et le style du fronton de la gigantomachie”; Ridgway, Archaic Style, 291–95; Santi, I frontoni arcaici dell’Acropoli di Atene, reviewed by Stewart, AJA 116 (2012), www.ajaonline.org/sites/default/files/1162_Stewart.pdf.

  85. Acropolis nos. 631 A–C (Giants and Athena) and Acropolis nos. 6454 and 15244 (horses). This pediment has been reconstructed by M. Moore, “The Central Group in the Gigantomachy of the Old Athena Temple on the Acropolis,” AJA 99 (1995): 633–69, with a full chariot at its center, transporting Zeus and, possibly, Herakles into battle while Athena and other gods fight Giants at either side, a reconstruction rejected by Santi, I frontoni arcaici dell’Acropoli di Atene, and Croissant, “Observations sur la date et le style du fronton de la gigantomachie.” See Stewart, AJA 116 (2012), www.ajaonline.org/sites/default/files/1162_Stewart.pdf. For reconstructions of pedimental compositions see Beyer, “Die Reliefgiebel des alten Athena-Tempels der Akropolis”; H. Schrader, Die archaischen Marmorbildwerke der Akropolis (Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 1939), 345–86. For Athena in the Gigantomachy in Greek iconography, see LIMC 2, s.v. “Athena,” nos. 381–404.

  86. See Dörpfeld, “Parthenon I, II und III”; Childs, “Date of the Old Temple of Athena on the Athenian Acropolis,” 1; G. Gruben, “Die Tempel der Akropolis,” Boreas 1 (1978): 28–31.

  87. Lion’s-head waterspout, Acropolis nos. 69 and 70; Nike akroterion, Acropolis no. 694. See Ridgway, Archaic Style, 151–52, for discussion of akroterion; M. Brouskari, The Acropolis Museum (Athens: Commercial Bank of Greece, 1974), 58.

  88. Charioteer, Acropolis no. 1342; Hermes, Acropolis no. 1343. See Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 199; Ridgway, Archaic Style, 395–97.

  89. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.26.6; Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians 17.

  90. Mansfield, “Robe of Athena,” 138–39, 185–88.

  91. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.26.5; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 122–23.

  92. They were first identified as belonging to the megaron of the Mycenaean palace by S. Iakovidis, He Mykenaïke akropolis ton Athenon (Athens: Panepistemion Philosophike Schole, 1962), 63–65, but later down dated by C. Nylander to the seventh century B.C.; see Nylander, “Die sog. mykenischen Siulenbasen auf der Akropolis in Athens,” OpAth 4 (1962): 31–77. See also Korres, “Athenian Classical Architecture,” who points out that one of these column bases had been moved out of situ already in the late nineteenth century. See also Glowacki, “Acropolis of Athens Before 566 B.C.,” 82.

  93. Homer, Iliad 2.546–51.

  94. Mycenae: N. L. Klein, “Excavation of the Greek Temples at Mycenae by the British School at Athens,” BSA 92 (1997): 247–322; N. L. Klein, “A New Study of the Archaic and Hellenistic Temples at Mycenae,” AJA 97 (1993): 336–37 (abstract); B. E. French, Mycenae: Agamemnon’s Capital (Gloucestershire: Tempus, 2002), 135–38. Tiryns: E.-L. Schwandner, “Archaische Spolien aus Tiryns 1982/83,” AA 103 (1987): 268–84; Antonaccio, Archaeology of Ancestors, 147–97. Athens: Glowacki, “Acropolis of Athens Before 566 B.C.,” 80.

  95. National Archaeological Museum 13050, now in the Acropolis Museum. See Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 97–98; E. Touloupa, “Une Gorgone en bronze de l’Acropole,” BCH 93 (1969): 862–64; Ridgway, Arch
aic Style, 305. For a discussion of a painted metope fragment that might also belong to this shrine, as well as associated terra-cotta members, see Glowacki, “Acropolis of Athens Before 566 B.C.,” 80.

  96. Korres, “Athenian Classical Architecture,” 9; Korres, “Die Athena-Tempel auf der Akropolis,”; Dörpfeld, “Parthenon I, II und III”; Dinsmoor, “Older Parthenon, Additional Notes.”

  97. Dinsmoor, “Date of the Older Parthenon”; Miles, “Lapis Primus and the Older Parthenon,” 663; for an overview, see Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 105–35; Kissas, Archaische Architektur der Athener Akropolis, 99–110.

  98. Plutarch, Life of Theseus 35.

  99. Herodotos, Histories 6.117; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.32.3. The Plataian allies lost just eleven soldiers; see S. Marinatos, “From the Silent Earth,” Archaiologika Analekta ex Athenon 3 (1970): 61–68.

  100. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.32.3; E. Vanderpool, “A Monument to the Battle of Marathon,” Hesperia 35 (1966): 93–105; P. Valavanis, “Σκέψεις ως προς τις ταφικές πρακτικές για τους νεκρούς της μάχης του Μαραθώνος,” in Μαραθών η μάχη και ο αρχαίος Δήμος (Marathon: The Battle and the Ancient Deme), ed. K. Buraselis and K. Meidani (Athens: Institut du livre–A. Kardamitsa, 2010), 73–98; N. G. L. Hammond, “The Campaign and the Battle of Marathon,” JHS 88 (1968): 14–17.

  101. Korres, “Architecture of the Parthenon,” 56; Korres, “History of the Acropolis Monuments,” 41; Dinsmoor, “Date of the Older Parthenon”; W. Kolbe, “Die Neugestaltung der Akropolis nach den Perserkriegen,” JdI (1936): 1–64. Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 133.

  102. Korres, Stones of the Parthenon; Korres, From Pentelicon to the Parthenon. The foundation pedestal measures 31.4 by 76 meters (103 by 249 feet).

  103. The hypothetical visualization shown on this page is not a scientific reconstruction. Korres, “History of the Acropolis Monuments,” 42, notes that only the lowest blocks of the inner walls were in place at that time.

 

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