The Parthenon essay
This paper is meant to discuss the effect Pericles had on the planning and development of Athens and the Parthenon and the characteristics of leadership and civic responsibility Pericles brought to his vision of Athens. This paper will comprise the architectural features of the Parthenon, a description of the work of Phideas and his designs for the frieze and the statue of Athena. The paper also touches upon the issue of the financing that went into the creation of Parthenon, the Delian league and its leader Aristides.
The Parthenon is the most significant surviving construction of Classical Greece, commonly considered to be the conclusion of the evolvement of the Doric order. The attractive sculptures are considered to be the highest points of art of Greece. And the Parthenon is regarded as a permanent symbol of Athenian democracy and ancient Greece, and it is one of the globe’s utmost cultural monuments.
In the middle of the fifth century B.C, when the Acropolis was the seat of the Delian League and Athens was the supreme cultural core of the time, Pericles started a grand construction plan that lasted the half of the 5th century B.C. The most significant constructions visible on the Acropolis nowadays – that is the Propylaia, the Erechtheion, the Parthenon, and a temple of Athena Nike, were created during this time period. Parthenon was created under the supervision of the sculptor Phidias, who had charge of the decoration.
Phidias is recognized for close connection with Pericles, as his friend and adviser. When Pericles took control in 449 B.C. he decided to redecorate Athens after the triumph over Persia. Phidias was put in charge of artistic actions as the supervisor of all works. He was hired to create the major monuments for the metropolis, and was salaried by Pericles with the cash from the Delian League. It is commonly believed Phidias supervised and directed the erection of the Parthenon and creating the sculptural decoration. It is interesting that the mathematical golden ratio is reproduced by a letter “phi,” taken from architect’s name. It is since Phidias employed the ratio in creating the Parthenon sculptures that ideally display the scope of a golden ratio. Phidias’ huge monument of Athena was placed in the Parthenon, recognized as the Athena Parthenos and known as a symbol of the city, dating from 447 – 439 BC.
Certain financial records for the Parthenon survived and demonstrate the huge solitary expense was conveying a stone from Mount Pentelicus, about sixteen km from Athens, to the Acropolis. The necessary funds were partially taken from a treasury of Delian League that was transported from Panhellenic sanctuary situated in Delos to Acropolis in 454 B.C.E.
Treasury or Temple?
From the architectural point of view, the Parthenon is evidently a temple, previously holding the well-known cult image of Athena by Phidias and the capital of votive offerings. Due to the fact that real ancient Greek sacrifices occurred at an altar consistently under an open sky the Parthenon doesn’t suit certain definitions of “temple,” as no proof of an altar has been founded. Therefore, scholars have asserted the Parthenon was merely utilized as the treasury. While this point of view was initially formed in the 19th century, it has obtained the strength recently.
So, the Parthenon is not a totally religious construction. The frieze is a political statement as well, inviting the populace to stay joint. However, it’s not the single message. Elsewhere, on metopes, people may notice a fight between Amazons in Persian clothing and Greeks that is often translated as a fabulous reference to the struggle between Persia and Athens, and a profound abuse to the Persians, who couldn’t be hurt more than by being called “females.” All this served to depict the local people as brave warriors, the equals of the gods and celebrated heroes.
The Parthenon also worked as treasury of the Delian League and the reserve fund. For instance, each tributary city was presupposed to send an ambassador to the Panathenaea and suggest a coat of arms and a cow. This was alike to the Persian example, since one of Persepolis’ key functions was a function of treasury. Both constructions, Parthenon and Apadana, were an empire’s focus points of religion, politics and finance, and it’s probable that Athenian artists had learned from the Ionian colleagues how the great king had invited the subjects to be his partners.
History of the Parthenon
The erection of the Parthenon was the major political matter not merely for Athens, but for entire Greece. The initiating of the erection is related to an influential turning point in country’s politics: in 448 B.C. happened the passing away of Cimon, leader of the oligarchic party in the city, which stood for an accepting with Sparta and for a blessed union of all the citizens in a nationwide battle against Persia. This death gave an opportunity to Pericles, the leader of democratic party, to continue moving toward a turnaround of Athenian policy. Pericles’ goal was to alter the Delian league that had been evolved for the aim of rejecting Persian growth, into a tool of Athenian imperialism (Durant, 230-254). The main point of the imperialistic strategy was to make all Greek cities to give tribute to Athens. Money had been initially gathered by Athens on the basis of providing sheep for the Athenian navy that protected populace against Persia.
However, by evolving the Athenian fleet, the strategy of Cimon evolved the power of a local democratic party. According to local political ideas and practices, just those people who served in the army had a right to take part in the political decisions. The lower classes of populace could not possibly serve in the army that was open only to people capable to provide own body armor and those who had obtained the gymnastic education only the well-to-do could pay for. Also amid the offerings made by Pericles to the local democracy was also the payment of magistrates. It was the ground the local people under Pericles made a decision to restrict the roles of people entitled to hold office, only people born to 2 human beings of Athenian citizen position. Kids of foreign parents would be excluded.
And the policy of Pericles meant to collect tribute from all Greek cities for the aim of creating different types of financial subsidies for the democrats and the poor. This was the ground why imperialism and democracy came to be identified. In the chase of this policy Pericles, right after the passing away of his political opponent signed a peace treaty with Persia. This treaty presupposed the ending of the Delian League, made by Cimon, and the finale of the collection of money by Athens. Pericles, as an alternative, utilized the old mottoes of the nationalistic battle against Persia to rationalize the maintenance of Delian League as a naked tool of Athenian exploitation. The erection of the Parthenon was initiated as a representation of the right of the populace to collect tribute from all cities of Greece.
The temple of Athena, which had been destroyed by army from Persia was not reconstructed; as an alternative, there was started the construction close to it of the new temple planned to restore it. Due to the fact that the Parthenon was planned to be a substitute for the Old Temple, it had to replicate its major characteristics (Beard, 83-117). However, as the goddess was entitled not merely to a new house, but also to thanks for the release from Persian army, the novel temple had to be bigger. Thus, the question of dimensions became essential. Hence, it was determined the new temple should have standard dimensions of 100 feet (hekatompedon).
The general control of the work was provided to Phidias. As the structure rose to conclusion, workmen in all spheres of the arts came to Athens from all parts of Greece and were provided with total employment by Phidias in the furnishing and decoration of the temple. The experience of Phidias supervised the entire scheme of decoration applied to the construction, into which color entered to far greater degree than was previously presupposed. The monuments with which the temple was decorated by Phidias, and which were created under his direct superintendence, comprised 2 amazing groups that filled the western and eastern pediments (Palagia, 18-27); of groups of 2 figures each in the 92 panels or metopes above the external row of columns; and, lastly, the famed frieze, which ran totally round the temple, just below the ceiling, and at a height of about 39 feet from temple’s floor.
The Parthenon’s Design
Like practically all temples in Greece, the Parthenon was presupposed to be a house for the divinity, not as a meeting spot for worshippers. In its common design, the temple was the representation of the traditional architecture of temples in Greece: a rectangular box on a lifted platform, a sketch, which the Greeks probably borrowed from the temples of Egypt. The box, that had one comparatively small door, was fenced in columns all around. Usually just priests could enter the boxlike inside of the temple; public ceremonies occurred around the open-air altar, which was placed outside the east end of the Parthenon. Extremely high columns of the temple were created in the mere style called Doric, in contradiction of the ornately decorative Corinthian or even Ionic styles that have usually been utilized in existing constructions.
The Parthenon’s Special Architecture
The temple was unique in its great size and decoration. Erected from 20,000 tons of beautiful Attic marble, it stretched almost 230 feet in the length and 100 feet wide, with 8 columns across ends instead of the 6 traditionally utilized in Doric style, and 17 instead of 13 along the sides. The dimensions gave it an enormous appearance conveying an impression of supremacy. As ideally rectilinear architecture seems curved to the human eye, the temple’s architects cleverly created slight curves and inclines in the entire architecture to create a visual illusion of totally straight lines: columns were provided with a small bulge in the middles; the platform was made a little bit curved; the corner columns were installed at the incline. The technical modifications made the Parthenon seem regular and ordered in a way a construction built totally on straight lines would not. By conquering the deformations of the nature, the Parthenon’s complicated and stylish architecture made a positive announcement about human capability to erect order out of the turmoil of the nature.
Sculpture on the Parthenon
The sculptural beautification of the temple declared Athenian assurance concerning their city-state’s relations with the gods, whom the local populace regarded as the supporters and helpers. The Parthenon had decorated panels along the outer part above the columns. These beautifications were a part of the Doric architectural approach; however the temple also presented an exceptional sculptural characteristic. Created in relief around the top of all walls inside the portico created by the columns along edges of the construction’s platform was an unbroken line of figures. This type of unbroken frieze was often put solely on Ionic-style constructions. Adding an Ionic frieze to the Doric temple was a remarkable alteration meant to attract notice to the subject. The temple’s frieze represented the Athenian spiritual ceremony in which a procession of local populace paraded to Acropolis to present to Athena in the olive-tree sanctuary a novel robe woven by selected Athenian young girls. Representing the procession in motion, the frieze demonstrated men riding horses, ladies walking along carrying holy implements, and the gods gathering to look at the worshippers. As usual in a monumental decoration on temples in Greece, the temple frieze sparkled with brilliantly colored paint refreshing the figures. Shiny metal attachments brightened the images, serving, for instance, as the horsemen’s reins.
By the 438 year, the sculptural beautification of Doric metopes on the frieze above the external colonnade, and of Ionic frieze around the higher part of the walls, had been finished. The richness of the Parthenon’s metope and frieze adornment is in agreement with the function of the temple as a treasury. In an opisthodomus were accumulated the financial contributions of Delian League of which Athens was the most important member.
Athena Parthenos
This huge chryselephantine sculpture is today lost and recognized only from vase painting, copies, gems, literary descriptions, and coins. As a patron goddess of Athens, Athena had long had the other sanctuary on an acropolis. Its concentration was an olive tree considered as the holy symbol of Athena, who was believed to present the economic wellbeing of the local citizens. Athena’s temple in the previous sanctuary had mainly been damaged by the Persians (Beard, 83-117). When Pericles initiated the reconstruction of the Acropolis’ temples, the meeting turned not to rebuilding of the olive tree shelter, but rather to erection of the Parthenon. The Parthenon praised Athena not in her ability as the provider of economic wealth but as a soldier serving as the godly champion of Athenian armed forces.
As the temple of Athena, the defending goddess of Athens, the Parthenon was the spot par excellence where the local citizens could demonstrate what they thought of themselves, their city and goddess, and how they were proud. They had grounds for that. Their fathers had beaten the Persians, and the place was rightly famous for this triumph. In addition, the economy was working well, and Athens was a powerful leader of Delian League, a status that it utilized to impose tribute.
The local leader Aristides had arranged the League as a union of equivalent states with identical rights, but soon Athens had grabbed the initiative and had began to regard all other towns as subjects. The Athenians had grounds to erect a large temple worthy of the commanding goddess that had helped them. Thus, the Parthenon was the finest spot to demonstrate the globe why the local populace and Athena were the finest rulers of a Greek globe. An ambitious project by extremely ambitious city.
The Significance of the Parthenon Frieze
No other place had ever before gone further than the customary function of temples in glorifying the special deities by decorating, as the citizens did on the Parthenon, a place with representations of its local populace. Before, the closets places of worship had come to a reference of this local meaning had been to put sculptures in the pediments, which demonstrated mythological scenes with a certain meaning for the human beings of the environment in which the sanctuary had been created. The Parthenon, certainly, had such scenes in the pediments. The monuments of the eastern pediment depicted the birth of Athena, while the west pediment depicted Athena and Poseidon, god of the sea, engaged in a fight to see who would become the patron divinity of the populace by giving them their blessing.
The Parthenon frieze is the most distinguishing characteristic in the decoration and architecture of the temple. One explanation to the frieze is that it reflects an idealized variant of the Panathenaic parade from the Dipylon Gate in Kerameikos to Acropolis. In the procession held annually, with a special procession occurring each 4 years, local populace and foreigners were taking part to honor. Another interpretation of the Frieze is concentrated on Greek Mythology. This explanation asserts the scenes reflect the sacrifice of Pandora, the daughter of Erechtheus to Athena. This human casualty was demanded by the goddess to save the town from king of Eleusis who had collected the armed forces to assault Athens.
The Parthenon frieze, nevertheless, obtained a new degree of local reference. It made an exclusive declaration concerning the relations between populace and the gods by demonstrating its populace in a company of gods, even if the gathered divinities carved in the frieze at the eastern end were acknowledged to be divided from and probably invisible to the human beings in the procession demonstrated in a frieze. A temple decorated with images of the local populace, although idealized people of ideal beauty and physique, amounted to the claim of certain intimacy between the city and the gods, a declaration of assurance that the honored deities favored the populace. Most probably this statement reflected the Athenian translation of the success in helping to turn back the invaders, in obtaining leadership of a powerful marine coalition, and in controlling, from the silver mines and the associates’ dues, an amount of income which made Athens richer than all neighbors in Greece. The temple, like the rest of the building program of Pericles, paid honor to the gods with whom the metropolis was identified and articulated that local populace thought the gods looked satisfactorily on this empire. The success, the local populace would have said, showed the gods were on their side.
Conclusion
This paper was meant to discuss the effect Pericles had on the planning and development of Athens and the Parthenon and the characteristics of leadership and civic responsibility Pericles brought to his vision of Athens. This paper comprises the architectural features of the Parthenon, a description of the work of Phideas and his designs for the frieze and the statue of Athena. The paper also touched upon the issue of the financing that went into the creation of Parthenon, the Delian league and its leader Aristides.
Pericles is called the finest ruler of Athens during the ancient times. He is the person who assisted the city of Athens in the time of need after the Peloponnesian Wars. Pericles developed some of the landmarks people hear of today. One of the most celebrated one is the Parthenon. Yes, the Parthenon is an amazing temple devoted to the wise goddess, Athena. And this construction was to comprise the ivory and golden statue of Athena and many temples to other goddesses, like Victory.
Under the ruler Pericles, a golden time period in Athens started in the 5th century B.C.E. Athens was clanged into the most spectacular city in the globe. Taxes from all city states of Ancient Greece evolved a monumental home of the gods, counting beautiful marble temples that were embellished with the help of the usage of precious jewels, rich paintings, statues, and elaborate friezes. The main part was the wonderful Parthenon, the sanctuary of a virgin Athena who, according to the legend, won the metropolis in a fight against Poseidon, gave name to Athens, and was later revered by the populace of ancient Greece.
The majority of the main temples were reconstructed under the control of Pericles during the Golden Age of Athens. Phidias, a well-known Greek sculptor and architect, and also Callicrates and Ictinus, 2 prominent architects, were accountable for the reconstruction. During the 5th century B.C.E., the Acropolis achieved its ultimate shape. Phidias’s finest construction – the Parthenon – had 8 fluted columns at either corner and 17 on every side. Temple’s ceiling was tinted blue and ornamented with stars and a stunning monument of the goddess, dressed in gold and adorned with jewels, was created on a pedestal in the internal shelter. Unfortunately, the statue vanished after being transported to Constantinople in the year 426 C.E.
And the most distinguishing characteristic in the decoration and architecture of the temple is the Ionic frieze going around the external walls of a cella. Made in bas-relief, the frieze was carved in the situ and it’s dated in 442-438 B.C.E. The temple, its frieze and the rest of the building program of Pericles, paid honor to gods with whom the metropolis was identified and declared that the Athenian point of view was that the gods looked kindly on this empire. The success, the local populace would have said, demonstrated the gods were on their side.
