What is a metope?
In a Doric temple, the band above the columns alternates triglyphs, grooved blocks, with square slabs called metopes. The Parthenon was the only ancient Greek temple with sculpted reliefs on all its metopes, ninety-two of them. They were carved in 445-440 BCE and were the first carved pieces to be set on the building. Several craftsmen worked on them, so the style varies slightly from panel to panel.
Each metope is a self-contained scene, usually of two figures, on a slab about 1.3 metres high.
East: gods against Giants
The fourteen metopes over the main entrance showed the Gigantomachy, the war of the Olympian gods against the Giants, in which Athena played a leading part. Most show two figures, a few three, and four show a single figure with a chariot. On the first, Hermes grabs a fallen Giant by the hair and raises his sword; the Giant, wrapped in an animal skin, fights back with one hand. The east metopes are badly damaged, mainly by deliberate hammering, perhaps when the temple was turned into a church, and the identification of many figures is uncertain. All fourteen are now in the Acropolis Museum, taken down in 1987-1989 to protect them from pollution.
West: Athenians against Amazons
The fourteen west metopes showed the Amazonomachy, the fight of the young Athenians and their king Theseus against the Amazons, a mythical tribe of women warriors from the Black Sea who invaded Athens after Theseus carried off their queen Antiope. The scenes alternate: a mounted Amazon over a fallen enemy, then two opponents on foot. The men are naked, the women dressed. On the first metope an Amazon charges on horseback with her spear, possibly Antiope herself, who in one version of the story died fighting beside Theseus. Four west metopes are now in the Acropolis Museum; the rest are still on the building.
South: Lapiths against Centaurs
The thirty-two south metopes showed the Centauromachy. At the wedding of King Peirithoos, a close friend of Theseus, the Centaurs, half man and half horse, got drunk and tried to carry off the Lapith women. Each metope shows either a Centaur fighting a Lapith or a Centaur seizing a woman. The nine in the middle show other subjects, still hard to interpret, perhaps scenes inside Peirithoos’ palace. The south side escaped the worst of the Christian hammering, but the explosion of 1687 broke fourteen of its metopes into fragments, and in the early nineteenth century Lord Elgin’s agents removed fifteen of the eighteen best preserved, now in the British Museum.
North: the fall of Troy
The thirty-two north metopes showed the capture of Troy by the Greek kings. There are no battle scenes, which suggests the episodes take place on the night after the city fell. On this side too the surfaces were hammered, and eighteen of its metopes were lost in 1687. Only the last one, metope 32, escaped the hammering, probably because Christians gave its goddesses a religious meaning of their own. Drawings attributed to the painter Jacques Carrey, made in 1674, help reconstruct what was lost on the long sides.
What did the four battles mean?
All four are mythical conflicts won by the Greek side, against Giants, Amazons, Centaurs and Trojans. The Parthenon was built on a site the Persians had burned in 480 BCE, and the Acropolis Museum reads the metopes as allusions to the Greeks’ recent real victories over the Persians, told in the language of myth. Inside the band of metopes, the frieze shows the Athenians in peaceful procession, so the building sets myth and war outside, the city and its festival within. The memory of the Persian sack runs through the meaning of the temple as a whole.
Where to see them
The Acropolis Museum in Athens shows the east metopes, several west, south and north metopes and many fragments, in its Parthenon Gallery; some west metopes are still on the temple. Most of the south metopes removed by Elgin are in the British Museum in London. Check opening times before you go.
Sources
- Acropolis Museum, Athens: “The metopes”; East metope 1 (Akr. 20000); West metope 1 (Akr. 20708); South metope 1 (Akr. 20707); North metope 5 (Akr. 704); “South metopes of the Parthenon” (conservation project).
- Acropolis Restoration Service (YSMA), “Parthenon”.
