The Parthenon: Political, Artistic, and Cultural Legacy

Introduction

The Parthenon was an architectural achievement the likes of which ancient Greece had never seen before. Athens, by the time of its construction, had become a cultural hub — a place of affluence and learning. The Parthenon therefore represented more than a place of worship: it stood as an artistic, cultural, social, economic, political, and historical monument. This paper analyzes the Parthenon in each of those contexts and shows why this achievement of Greek antiquity still stands tall today.

Political and Cultural Context

The man behind the rise of the Golden Age of Greek Art in the fifth century BC was the great statesman Pericles. A patron from a family of aristocrats, Pericles rose to power following the wars against Persia, in which Athens proved itself a force to be reckoned with. Athens flourished in this period, and the reconstruction of the city — begun by Themistocles and Aristides — was now continued by Pericles, who oversaw the construction of several great architectural works, most notably the Parthenon: a white marble temple dedicated to the goddess Athena. Built atop the Acropolis, "it was one of the most beautiful buildings in the world" (Haaren, Poland 85).

The Parthenon was, for Pericles, one of his crowning achievements as statesman. Unfortunately, it would also prove to be his undoing. Because the Parthenon required such a vast amount of funds, Pericles' political enemies were quick to seize on any evidence that he was squandering public money. They threw the artist Phidias into prison and accused both him and Pericles of theft. The accusations were not true, and both men suffered as a result — but the incident revealed the political unrest that existed just below the surface of Athenian society. It was an unrest that not even the greatest Athenian monument could quell, and Athens would soon find itself at war with Sparta.

Culturally speaking, Pericles set the bar for Athens' reconstruction when he declared, "All kinds of enterprises should be created which will provide an inspiration for every art, find employment for every hand… we must devote ourselves to acquiring things that will be the source of everlasting fame" (The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization). It is no wonder, then, that Pericles — with the help of Phidias, the great artist — would oversee Athens' mightiest construction effort: a symbol of Greek piety before its goddess protector. The Parthenon was majestic on every level: "Costing 5,000 talents in the first year alone — a figure equivalent to some $3 billion in today's money — the building was completed in less than 15 years" (The Greeks). The white marble temple required 20,000 tons of stone from Mount Pentelicus, and "in front of it stood a bronze statue of Athena, so large that it could be seen far out at sea" (Haaren, Poland 85). Contained within the temple was another statue of the Greek goddess, constructed of ivory and gold, which towered over the Athenians at a height of nearly thirty feet.

Artistic and Economic Context

Artistically speaking, perhaps the most impressive feature of all is that the Parthenon is "generally cited as the perfect expression of the Doric temple form" — despite its variations on the Doric tradition (Johnson 56). As Paul Johnson notes, "It has eight columns at each end instead of the normative six, and seventeen on the sides instead of thirteen. This gives it a measurement of 101 by 228 feet, a size enabling it to dominate not only the Acropolis itself but the entire Athens skyline" (56). The Parthenon also featured a number of resplendent carvings, which centuries later elicited the admiration of the British diplomat Lord Elgin, who removed "many of these [carvings] from the ruins in 1801" (The Greeks).

Many questions remain concerning the design of the Parthenon. For example, "Was the Parthenon a temple or a treasury?" (Neils 5). Such a practical inquiry reveals much about the building's function: was it a repository of piety, or a safe house of wealth?

Economically speaking, Athens was financially well off at this time, but that did not place it beyond the threat of fiscal instability. As James Fergusson observes, the temples of the Greeks served as both places of piety and repositories of riches: "Their statues were the most elaborate and most beautiful the world has yet seen, and the ornaments of the temples the richest and the most varied that could be conceived" (6). What caused Pericles' enemies to harass him and his artist may not have been a lack of religious zeal so much as a concern over fiscal responsibility. Was it possible, after all, for a state to bankrupt itself through art? Perhaps — especially when the finest artists and architects in the land were being consulted.

What Greek architecture excelled at was achieving an illusory effect that was uniquely aesthetic. Greek designers thought carefully about perspective in order to keep their temples from looking mechanistic. Greek architecture favored an organic feel, and architects strove "to put a bit of life into buildings to make them breathe [and] flex their sensuality" (Johnson 69). They accomplished this through any of five different tactics designed to convince the eye of depth, line, and curve. Each tactic required additional cost and labor, so not every temple employed them all — but the Parthenon used all five, which is one reason it was so expensive to build. The five tactics were:

(1) a small but regular convexity in the overall horizontal lines, from platform and stylobate to entablature and pediment; (2) the main vertical refinement, called entasis, which took the form of an outward swelling on the column shafts; (3) the axes of the columns were tilted toward the building's center by several degrees from the vertical; (4) corner columns were made thicker than the rest and tilted toward the diagonal axis of the building; (5) the walls of the interior parts of the temple were made thinner toward their top, lean inward, and their upper sections were set back (Johnson 68–9).

Such technique created a grand, eloquent illusion that helped make Greek architecture so impressive. Another remarkable feature was acoustics. The great Greek theatres could hold up to 2,000 people, "each of whom could hear perfectly what was said on stage" (Johnson 53). The Theatre of Epidaurus is a supreme example of this kind of design — a bowl-shaped half-stadium with the stage at the lower center.

Conclusion

Greek architecture has produced some of the world's finest marvels, and was especially brilliant during the rule of Pericles in the Golden Age of Greece. Greek architects employed a wide variety of techniques to keep their temples from appearing top-heavy and to make them aesthetically pleasing to the eye. They were also masters of acoustics, as evidenced by their amphitheaters, and of pragmatic design, as demonstrated by the Long Walls. Greek architecture has influenced centuries of design across the Western world — but it is the Parthenon that remains the supreme monument to the political, economic, social, artistic, and historical power that was ancient Athens in the era following the Persian Wars and preceding the Peloponnesian Wars.

Works Cited

Bruno, Vincent. The Parthenon. NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. Print.

Fergusson, James. The Parthenon. London: William Clowes and Sons, Limited, 1883. Print.

"The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization." PBS. Web. 28 Nov 2011.

Haaren, John, and A.B. Poland. Famous Men of Greece. Ed. C. Shearer and R. Shearer. Lebanon, TN: Greenleaf Press, 2000. Print.

Johnson, Paul. Art: A New History. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. Print.

Neils, Jenifer. The Parthenon: From Antiquity to the Present. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print.