The Parthenon Enigma

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The Parthenon Enigma Page 46

by Joan Breton Connelly


  57. L. Haselberger, “Bending the Truth: Curvature and Other Refinements of the Parthenon,” in Neils, Parthenon, 101–57; Barletta, “Architecture and Architects of the Classical Parthenon,” 72–74.

  58. E. Flagg, The Parthenon Naos (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928), 5–9. Flagg maintained that Greek art had measure obtained by rules analogous to those used by the poet and the musician: “Harmony depends on measure as in music, poetry and dance, but the measure should be exact and the proportions of a kind which the eye grasps unconsciously, as it does those of any simple geometric figure.” Flagg, known for his design of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (1897) and the U.S. Naval Academy (1901–1908), was sent to study at the École des Beaux-Arts (1889–1891) by Cornelius Vanderbilt, his cousin through marriage to Alice Claypoole Gwynne. Ernest Flagg was the brother of Louisa Flagg Scribner, wife of Charles Scribner II, who commissioned him to design the two Scribner Buildings on Fifth Avenue in New York City, the book warehouse and printing plant on West Forty-Third Street, their town house at 9 East Sixty-Sixth Street, and the Princeton University Press building. I thank Charles Scribner III for sharing with me a copy of Flagg’s remarkable book, The Parthenon Naos.

  59. Korres and Bouras, Studies for the Restoration of the Parthenon, Chapter 3, “The Formation of the Building: Its Particular Stones,” 1:249, and specific treatment of this question in Chapter 4, “Elastic and Plastic Deformations?,” 1:279–85. See also the English summary by D. Hardy and P. Ramp, 685–86. See also Korres, “Der Plan des Parthenon,” 55–59; W. S. Williams, B. Trautman, S. Findley, and H. Sobel, “Materials Analysis of Marble from the Parthenon,” Materials Characterization 29 (1992): 185–94. I thank Professor Korres for discussing this phenomenon with me and for providing many helpful bibliographical references.

  60. Korres, “Architecture of the Parthenon,” 62.

  61. Schwab, “New Evidence,” 81–84, argues for changes in Korres’s reconstruction of south metope 14. She removes the golden crown from Helios’s head and argues that the drill hole above it may have been for the attachment of a bronze sun.

  62. J. N. Bremmer, “Greek Demons of the Wilderness: The Case of the Centaurs,” in Wilderness in Mythology and Religion, ed. L. Feldt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 25–53.

  63. See F. Queyrel, Le Parthénon, 136–43. W. B. Dinsmoor wrote of the Nointel Artist; see “The Nointel Artist’s ‘Vente’ and Vernon’s Windows,” box 21, folder 4, subsection IIe, the Parthenon frieze, and box 21, folder 1, “The Panathenaic Frieze of the Parthenon: Its Content and Arrangement,” I. General introduction (November 25, 1948), Dinsmoor Papers in the Archives of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. On this page, Dinsmoor says he will use the name Carrey but later changes his mind. Dinsmoor explains (this page) that the drawings were first attributed to Jacques Carrey by Grosley (in L. Moréri, Grand dictionnaire historique [Paris: J. Vincent, 1732]). Cornelio Magni states that the drawings were by an anonymous Flemish painter (Quanto di più curioso, 1679), Relazione della città d’Athène (Parma: Rosati, 1688), 65–66. See T. R. Bowie and D. Thimme, Carrey Drawings of the Parthenon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), 3–4. See Palagia, Pediments, 40–45, 61; Castriota, Myth, Ethos, and Actuality, 145–50; Brommer, Die Skulpturen der Parthenon-Giebel, 6.

  64. I am indebted to Cornelia Hadjiaslani and S. Mavrommatis for kindly allowing me to reproduce images from their book Promenades at the Parthenon, this page, this page, and this page, this page, this page, this page, and this page.

  65. Carpenter, Architects of the Parthenon, 62–68.

  66. M. Robertson, “The South Metopes: Theseus and Daedalus,” in Berger, Parthenon-Kongreß Basel, 206–8; A. Mantis, “Parthenon Central South Metopes: New Evidence,” in Buitron-Oliver, Interpretation of Architectural Sculpture, 67–81.

  67. Korres, “Der Plan des Parthenon.”

  68. Barletta, “Architecture and Architects of the Classical Parthenon,” 88–95.

  69. See the discussion of the Parthenon west metopes, with emphasis on the significance of victorious Amazons and dead Greeks, in N. Arrington’s forthcoming book Ashes, Images, and Memories: The Presence of the War Dead in Fifth-Century Athens.

  70. Homeric Hymn to Athena, 9–16. Translation: West, Homeric Hymns, 211.

  71. For Helios and Selene as shown on the Parthenon, on the base of the Athena Parthenos statue, and on the base of the cult statue of Zeus at Olympia (Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.11.8), see Ehrhardt, “Zu Darstellung und Deutung des Gestirngötterpaares am Parthenon.” See also Marcadé, “Hélios au Parthenon”; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 177–79; Palagia, Pediments, 18; Leipen, Athena Parthenos, 23–24. W. Dörpfeld, “Der Tempel von Sounion,” AM 9:336.

  72. Homeric Hymn to Athena, 1–8. Translation: West, Homeric Hymns, 211.

  73. See Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 177–79; Palagia, Pediments, 18–39. A Roman marble puteal (water wellhead) in the Madrid Archaeological Museum (2691) is decorated with a sculptured relief showing similar iconography, reproduced in Palagia, Pediments, 18, fig. 8. For iconography of the Birth of Athena, see LIMC 2, s.v. “Athena,” nos. 343–373.

  74. For a comprehensive summary of interpretations of these figures, see Palagia, Pediments, app., 60, 18–39.

  75. For sculptures showing women in the birthing position with midwives assisting from behind, see, among many Cypriot examples, a limestone sculpture (said to be from Golgoi) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art 74.51.2698; V. Karageorghis, Ancient Art from Cyprus: The Cesnola Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000), 262n424. Similar figures carved on Attic grave stelai include: Paris, Louvre Museum MA 7991; Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Art Museums, Sackler Art Museum 1905.8; Athens, Kerameikos Museum P 290; Athens, National Archaeological Museum 749; Athens, Piraeus Museum 21. Similar figures on marble funerary lekythoi include: Paris, Louvre Museum MA 3115; Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1055; Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek 2564. I am indebted to Viktoria Räuchle for these references and look forward to her forthcoming doctoral dissertation on motherhood: “Zwischen Norm und Natur: Bildliche und schriftliche Konzepte von Mutterschaft im Athen des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.”

  76. For Eileithyai, see LIMC 3, s.v. “Eileithyia,” nos. 1–49, in Birth of Athena scenes. For Metis see L. Raphals, Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Tradi- tions of China and Greece (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993); M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, trans. J. Lloyd (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978).

  77. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.5; Fuchs, “Zur Rekonstruktion des Poseidon im Parthenon-Westgiebel”; Spaeth, “Athenians and Eleusinians,” 333–36, 341–43; Palagia, Pediments, 40–59; Palagia, “Fire from Heaven,” 244–50; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 174–77.

  78. E. Simon, “Die Mittelgruppe im Westgiebel des Parthenon,” in Tainia: Festschrift für Roland Hampe, ed. H. Cahn and E. Simon (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1980), 239–55. A vase from Pella (Pella Archaeological Museum 80.514) shows a similar scene: the thunderbolt of Zeus is shown between Athena and Poseidon, signaling his intervention/arbitrations. See also an Attic hydria in St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, P 1872.130, from Kerch, ca. 360–350 B.C., which shows Athena and Poseidon on either side of an olive tree; B. Cohen, The Colors of Clay: Special Techniques in Athenian Vases (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008), 339–41.

  79. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.5; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 174–77; Palagia, Pediments, 40–59; Palagia, “Fire from Heaven,” 244, 250; Spaeth, “Athenians and Eleusinians,” 333–34; Fuchs, “Zur Rekonstruktion des Poseidon im Parthenon-Westgiebel.”

  80. St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, P 1872.130, see note 78, above.

  81. Herodotos, Histories 8.55, tells of Athena’s victory in the contest, a story retold in greater detail by Apollodoros, Library 3.14.1. See Parker, “Myths of Early Athens,” 198n49; Isokrates, Panathenaikos 193; scholia on
Aelius Aristides, Panathenaic Oration 140 (Lenz and Behr) = Dindorf, 3.58–59 = Jebb 106.

  82. Apollodoros, Library 3.14.1; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.27.2.

  83. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.26.6; Strabo, writing in the first century A.D., quotes the words of Hegesias: “I see the Acropolis and the mark of the huge trident there.” Geography 9.1.16. Translation: H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924), 261.

  84. Lesk, “Erechtheion and Its Reception,” 161.

  85. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.26.5. Translation: W. H. S. Jones, Pausanias, Description of Greece (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1918), 137.

  86. A. Murray, The Sculptures of the Parthenon (London: John Murray, 1903), 26–27.

  87. Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.10.7.

  88. Palagia gives a wonderfully helpful chart of all the various interpretations and a comprehensive overview of the scholarship in her Pediments, app., 61 and 40–59.

  89. Advanced by Barbette Spaeth, “Athenians and Eleusinians,” 338–60. See also L. Weidauer, “Eumolpos und Athen,” AA 100 (1985): 209–10; L. Weidauer and I. Krauskopf, “Urkönige in Athen und Eleusis: Neues zur ‘Kekrops’—Gruppe des Parthenonwestgiebels,” JdI 107 (1992): 1–16.

  90. Spaeth, “Athenians and Eleusinians,” 339–41, 351–54.

  91. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.38.3.

  92. These identifications are all laid out by Spaeth, “Athenians and Eleusinians,” 339ff.

  93. Plutarch, Life of Perikles 12. Translation: R. Waterfield, Plutarch: Greek Lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 155.

  94. Plutarch, Life of Perikles 12.2. Translation: B. Perrin, Plutarch’s Lives (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1916), 3:37.

  95. Translation: Waterfield, Life of Perikles, 156.

  96. Translation: Jowett, Thucydides, 6.

  97. On the self-assuredness of classical Athenian citizens, see M. R. Christ, The Bad Citizen in Classical Athens (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2006); M. R. Christ, The Limits of Altruism in Democratic Athens (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2012), with overview, 1–9; R. Balot, Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001); J. Hesk, Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

  98. Translation: Jowett, Thucydides, 47–48.

  99. Sanders, “Beyond the Usual Suspects,” 152–53.

  100. Translation: Jowett, Thucydides, 127.

  101. Ibid., 128.

  102. Ibid., 129.

  103. Ibid., 127, 130.

  104. M. Faraguna, G. Oliver, and S. D. Lambert in Clisthène et Lycurgue d’Athènes, ed. V. Azoulay and P. Ismar (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012), 67–86, 119–31, and 175–90; Habicht, Athens from Alexander to Antony, 22–27; Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 253–60; F. W. Mitchel, Lycourgan Athens, 338–322 B.C. (Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati, 1970); F. W. Mitchel, “Athens in the Age of Alexander,” Greece and Rome 12 (1965): 189–204.

  105. Meineck, “Embodied Space.”

  106. Hintzen-Bohlen, Die Kulturpolitik des Euboulos und des Lykurg.

  107. See Humphreys, Strangeness of Gods, 77.

  108. Pseudo-Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators, Lykourgos 843e–f.

  109. Ibid., 843c; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.8.2. Hintzen-Bohlen, Die Kulturpolitik des Euboulos und des Lykurg.

  110. For Perikles’s vision, see Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.34–46; Humphreys, Strangeness of Gods, 120; N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 144–45; S. Yoshitake, “Arete¯ and the Achievements of the War Dead: The Logic of Praise in the Athenian Funeral Oration,” in Pritchard, War, Democracy, and Culture, 359–77.

  111. Siewert, “Ephebic Oath,” 102–11.

  112. Humphreys, Strangeness of Gods, 103, 104; Steinbock, “A Lesson in Patriotism,” 294–99.

  113. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 9–10. For compelling discussion of the case and its meaning, see Steinbock, “A Lesson in Patriotism”; Allen, Why Plato Wrote, 93; Ober, Democracy and Knowledge, 186.

  114. Habicht, Athens from Alexander to Antony, 27; Ober, Democracy and Knowledge, 186–90.

  115. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 77. Translation: Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, II, 69, 71.

  116. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 79. Translation: Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, II, 71, 73. For the importance of oaths in Greek antiquity, see A. Sommerstein and A. J. Bayliss, eds., Oath and State in Ancient Greece (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013); D. Lateiner, “Oaths: Theory and Practice in the Histories of Herodotus and Thucydides,” in Thucydides and Herodotus, ed. E. Foster and D. Lateiner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 154–84; A. Sommerstein and J. Fletcher, eds., Horkos: The Oath in Greek Society (Exeter: Bristol Phoenix Press, 2007); S. G. Cole, “Oath Ritual and the Male Community at Athens,” in Demokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern, ed. J. Ober and C. Hedrick (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 233–65; J. Plescia, The Oath and Perjury in Ancient Greece (Tallahassee: University of Florida Press, 1970).

  117. P. Siewert, “Der Eid von Plataiai,” CR, n.s., 25 (1975): 263–65. The authenticity of the oath has been questioned. See discussion in chapter 5.

  118. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 81. Translation: Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, II, 73.

  119. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 83. Translation: Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, II, 75.

  120. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 84, 86. Translation: Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, II, 75, 77. See Steinbock, “A Lesson in Patriotism,” 282–90.

  121. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 98–101. Translation of section 100: Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, II, 87.

  122. Translation is my own, based on passages quoted in Lykourgos, Against Leocrates, and the fragments of Euripides’s Erechtheus, as given in the editon by R. Kannicht, 2004, which will be used throughout this book unless otherwise noted. The “F” appearing before line citations stands for “fragment” throughout.

  123. The oath of the daughters of Erechtheus manifests the quintessential “one for all and all for one” principle at work, known to modern audiences as the motto of the Three Musketeers: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis of Alexandre Dumas’s classic. A. Dumas, Les trois mousquetaires, was first serialized in March–July 1844. Following inundations across the Alps in the autumn of 1868, the slogan was used to marshal solidarity among the Swiss cantons. The German (“einer für alle, alle für einen”), the French (“un pour tous, tous pour un”), and the Italian (“uno per tutti, tutti per uno”) versions of the oath came to be associated with the foundational myths of Switzerland, emphasizing unity in the face of adversity. In 1902, the motto was inscribed in Latin, “unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno,” upon the cupola of the Federal Palace of Switzerland in Bern. See S. Summermatter, “ ‘Ein Zoll der Sympathie’—die Bewältigung der Überschwemmungen von 1868 mit Hilfe der eidgenössischen Spendensammlung,” Blätter aus der Walliser Geschichte 37 (2005): 1–46, at 29, fig. 8.

  124. Isokrates, Demonikos 13. Translation: D. C. Mirhady and Y. L. Too, Isocrates I (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000).

  125. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 101. Translation: Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, II, 91.

  126. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 100 and Euripides, Erechtheus F 360.1 Kannicht. On the importance of not acting slowly, of responding without delay, see discussion by A. Chaniotis, “A Few Things Hellenistic Audiences Appreciated in Musical Performances,” in La musa dimenticata. Aspetti dell’esperienza musicale greca in età ellenistica, ed. M. C. Martinelli (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore 2009), 75–97 and especially 89–92 (on spontaneity).

  127. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 101. Translation: Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, II, 90–91.

  128. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 100. Translation: Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, II, 85, 87.

  129. Thucydides,
Peloponnesian War 2.37.2, where the verb used is mimoumetha, “we copy.” I am indebted to Nickolas Pappas for this observation and to James Diggle for help with the passage.

  4 THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE

  1. P. Jouguet, “Rapport sur les fouilles de Médinet-Madi et Médinet Ghoran,” BCH 25 (1901): 379–411.

  2. “Secrets Cooked from a Mummy,” Life (international ed.), November 15, 1963, 65–82.

  3. See C. Austin, “Back from the Dead with Posidippus,” in The New Posidippus: A Hellenistic Poetry Book, ed. K. Gutzwiller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 67–69, and C. Austin, Menander, Eleven Plays, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society Supplementary Volume 37 (2013), remarks in preface.

  4. Personal communication with Colin Austin.

  5. M. A. Schwartz, Erechtheus et Theseus apud Euripidem et Atthidographos (Leiden: S. C. van Doesburgh, 1917).

  6. The dating of the play is problematic. Kannicht (394) gives the time frame set by Cropp and Fick, that is, sometime after Euripides’s Elektra (422–417 B.C.) and before his Helen (412 B.C.). See M. Cropp and G. Fick, Resolutions and Chronology in Euripides (London: University of London, 1985), 79–80, who go on to suggest 416 B.C. as the statistically “most likely” date for the first performance of the play. Jouan and Van Looy, Fragments: Euripides, 98–99, and Sonnino, Euripidis Erechthei, 27–34, give helpful overviews of the various chronologies that have been proposed. Most argue that the Erechtheus was first performed around 423/422 B.C., during the one-year armistice between Athens and Sparta, the so-called Peace of Nikias. This is because Plutarch, Life of Nikias 9.5, quotes lines from the Erechtheus (F 369.2–3 Kannicht), and says these lines could be heard sung by choruses at Athens during this year of the truce. For a date in 423 B.C., see Austin, Nova fragmenta Euripidea, 22; M. Treu, “Der Euripideische Erechtheus als Zeugnis seiner Zeit,” Chiron 1 (1971): 115–31; Carrara, Euripide: Eretteo, 13–17; R. Simms, “Eumolpos and the Wars of Athens,” GRBS 24 (1983): 197–203. For a date in 422 B.C., see Calder, “Date of Euripides’ Erechtheus”; Clairmont, “Euripides’ Erechtheus and the Erechtheum”; Calder, “Prof. Calder’s Reply.” C. Austin, “De nouveaux fragments de l’Érechthée,” 17, proposes a date of 421 B.C. or before. Collard, Cropp, and Lee, Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays, 155, place the play near 420 or shortly thereafter. For dating of the play to ca. 412 B.C., see M. Vickers, “Persepolis, Vitruvius, and the Erechtheum Caryatids: The Iconography of Medism and Servitude,” RA 1 (1985): 18. It should be noted that Aristophanes quotes from the Erechtheus in his Lysistrata 1135 (performed in 411 B.C.) and in his Thesmophoriazusae 120 (performed in 410 B.C.).

 

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