Three places for sculpture
A Doric temple offers sculpture three places, and the Parthenon used them all. Above the outer columns runs the frieze of metopes, square slabs alternating with grooved triglyphs. Around the outer walls of the inner building, behind the columns, the Parthenon added a continuous Ionic frieze, an unusual extra for a Doric temple. And at each end, under the sloping roof, stands a pediment, the triangular field whose Greek name recalls an eagle spreading its wings.
Who designed it all? The sculptor Pheidias, whom Perikles put in charge of the whole building programme on the Acropolis, designed the frieze and was the chief creator of the pediments; many hands carried them out. Read together, the three parts tell one story about Athena and her city.
The metopes: four battles on the outside
The Parthenon was the only Greek temple to have sculpted reliefs on all ninety-two of its metopes. Carved between 445 and 440 BCE, they were the first sculptures to be installed on the building, and since different craftsmen worked on them their style varies slightly. Each metope is a self-contained scene, usually of two figures, but each side of the temple told one story:
- East: the Gigantomachy, the gods fighting the Giants.
- West: the Amazonomachy, the Athenians fighting the Amazons.
- South: the Centauromachy, the Lapiths fighting the Centaurs.
- North: the fall of Troy to the Greeks.
All four are wars won by the side of order, and they were displayed as allusions to the Greeks’ recent victories over the Persians, who had burned the Acropolis in 480 BCE.
The frieze: Athena’s procession on the walls
The frieze wrapped around the upper walls of the inner building in 115 blocks, 160 metres in all, about one and a half football pitches. Its reliefs show 378 human and divine figures and more than 220 animals, mostly horses. It was carved between 443 and 438 BCE to a design by Pheidias, by some of his best pupils, and its subject is believed to be the procession of the Greater Panathenaia, the most important festival of Athena.
The procession starts at the south-west corner and splits in two: one stream moves along the west end and the long north side, the other along the south side. They meet again at the centre of the east end, the main front, where the new peplos, the dress to be offered to the statue of Athena Polias, is shown. The frieze walks with you round the temple and brings you to its entrance.
The pediments: Athena’s birth and her victory
Fifty statues once stood in the pediments, carved in the round even on their hidden backs. Above the entrance, in the east, Athena was born from the head of her father Zeus. In the west, she won her contest with Poseidon for the role of protector of Attica. The figures were carved in Pentelic marble and originally finished with colour and metal accessories; Pheidias led the work, with pupils such as Agorakritos, Alkamenes, Kolotes and Kresilas.
The missing centre: Athena Parthenos
Everything pointed inwards, to the room where the statue stood. Pheidias’s Athena Parthenos was made of gold and ivory and, in the description of the traveller Pausanias, stood upright in a long tunic, with the head of Medusa in ivory on her breast, a Victory in one hand, a spear in the other, a shield at her feet and a serpent beside her. The statue is lost, and with it the key to the programme: the battles outside, the procession on the walls and the birth over the door all led to her.
How should you read it?
Not all at once, and not from close up. The metopes were seen from below, high above the columns; the frieze ran along the walls behind the colonnade, so it appeared in glimpses between the columns as you walked; the pediments were read from a distance. The Acropolis Museum lets you see the surviving pieces at eye level, which no Athenian ever could, and many others are in the British Museum in London. The best way to read the programme is to follow the order of the building: the battles on the outside, the procession around the walls, the birth of the goddess over the door, and the goddess herself, now lost, inside.
Where to see it
The Parthenon Gallery on the top floor of the Acropolis Museum in Athens shows the frieze, metopes and pediment figures that remain in Athens, with casts filling the gaps. Many of the sculptures removed by Lord Elgin’s agents in the early nineteenth century are in the British Museum. Check opening times before you go.
Sources
- Acropolis Museum, Athens, Parthenon Gallery: “The metopes”, “The frieze”, “The pediments”.
- C. Hemingway and S. Hemingway, “The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480-323 B.C.)”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2008).
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.5-7; Plutarch, Life of Pericles 13 (Perseus; LacusCurtius).
- Acropolis Restoration Service (YSMA), “Parthenon”; British Museum, “Parthenon Sculptures”.
