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January Conference 1996

THE RECEPTION OF CLASSICAL TEXTS AND IMAGES

The ancient reception of Pheidias' Athena Parthenos:
the visual evidence in context

Kenneth D.S. Lapatin, Boston University

The Athenian sculptor, Pheidias, son of Charmides, was considered the greatest artist of classical antiquity. Greek and Latin authors lauded his skill as a maker of divine images, and, although a few sophisticated Romans of the second century after Christ might have claimed to prefer other of his works, there can be no doubt that his lasting fame rests upon the success of two in particular: the monumental chryselephantine images of Athena Parthenos and Zeus Olympios.[1] Neither of these magnificent gold and ivory temple statues survives (nor indeed do any of the works ascribed to the fifth-century master). In fact, the only unequivocal remains of these famed originals are workshop debris, fragmentary base blocks, and cuttings in temple floors.[2] Scholars, nonetheless, have long labored to recover these lost masterpieces from numerous descriptions and passing comments recorded in ancient texts.

So detailed, in fact, are some of these accounts, especially those of the Greek traveller Pausanias written in the second century after Christ, that antiquarians of the Renaissance and thereafter attempted reconstructions of Pheidias' statues.[3] Since the rise of archaeology in the nineteenth century, physical evidence consisting of reduced copies, adaptations, reflections, and echoes in divers media of both Greek and Roman date have furthered such efforts. None of this material, however, comes close to conveying the majesty of its Pheidian prototypes, and explanations for this are not difficult: divergent materials, diminutive scale, and unequal skill.

This paper aims to explore not the appearance of the lost originals, but their ancient reception. For ancient re-presentations of Pheidias' chryselephantine masterworks constitute interpretations of them no less than the comments of ancient orators and historians, poets and philosophers, travelers and antiquarians. They are the interpretations of craftsmen--who are usually denigrated as a "copyists," just as the objects themselves are called "copies," as if Pheidias' achievement was to be replicated; these objects were then interpreted by the patron, who obviously commissioned, or at least bought, the objects with some end in mind; and there is the reception of the ancient viewer.

Through a focus on the reception of the Athena Parthenos in particular, I seek to illuminate how this image, made powerful by its various connotations, came to be used flexibly for a multiplicity of meanings and aims, from shortly after its creation in the third quarter of the fifth century B.C., through to later antiquity. If, moreover, we examine together the surviving physical re-presentations of both the Athena Parthenos and Zeus Olympios there arises an intriguing disjunction: of these two most celebrated images, only the Parthenos can be said to have been reproduced by ancient artists with any frequency. She was fashioned in marble, bronze, and terra-cotta, both in free-standing sculptures and in relief; in vase- and wall-painting, as well as in mosaics; on coins, gems, and jewellery.[4] The equally, if not more celebrated Zeus Olympios, a statue lauded by ancient authors and ranked among the Seven Wonders of the World, seems, on the other hand, to have been reproduced relatively infrequently.[5]

Any explanation of the ancient reception of the Parthenos and the Zeus must take into account the divergent aims of ancient piety, state ideology, literary genres, and artistic replication. The Parthenos, unlike Pheidias' Zeus, did not preside over a panhellenic religious sanctuary, but rather was created as the symbol of Athenian piety, wealth, and power following victory in the Persian Wars. The composite gold and ivory figure, which stood an immense 11.5 meters tall,[6] was the culmination of the Parthenon. The small-scale plaster figurine in Toronto is, perhaps, the best-known modern replica, but the full-size version of steel-reinforced fiberglass, yet to be fully gilded, recently erected inside the Parthenon in Nashville Tennessee, alone approaches the magnificence of Pheidias' original.[7] That statue is estimated to have cost the equivalent of Athens' military budget for two years. It, rather than the Parthenon frieze--a glorified, if glorious, architectural molding, not mentioned at all in ancient literature--was the building's raison d'être. By my rough and ever growing count, well over 200 ancient representations of the Parthenos survive. Yet prior to the recognition of the type in the marble statuette found in Athens west of the Pnyx in 1859 by F. Lenormant,[8] no copies in the round of Pheidias' gold and ivory figure had been recognized. So inadequate, after all, were ancient authors' inventories of her attributes. The so-called "Varvakeion" statuette, found in Athens in 1880,[9] confirmed Lenormant's identification and remains the best known and best preserved representation of the type, clearly exhibiting its chief attributes: the goddess stands with her weight resting on the right foot, the left is withdrawn; she wears a helmet with cheek pieces upturned and three crests supported by a sphinx and two pegasoi; she wears a long, sleeveless peplos that partially covers her sandaled feet and whose overfold, tied at the waist, reaches her upper thighs; a short scaly aegis, fringed with curled snakes and adorned with central gorgoneion, covers her breast; her left hand holds the rim of her shield, in which is coiled a large snake; her right, arm bent at the elbow, supports a winged Nike.

This miniature figure, standing just over a meter high (including its base), approximately one-twelfth the height of the original, remains one of the most detailed re-presentations of the Parthenos, yet it lacks many of the attributes recorded by ancient authors, (as, inevitably, do all of the objects I shall consider here), notably the sculpted base depicting the Birth of Pandora (sketched out on the unfinished Lenormant), the interior and most of the exterior decoration of the shield, which consisted of the Gigantomachy and Amazonomachy, mythological battles echoed in the Parthenon's exterior metopes, just as the Goddess' sandals bore images of the Centauromachy. The second-century AD Greek scholar Julius Pollux, in fact, reports that these sandals were tyrrheniká, a heavy-soled Etruscan type: it seems that even Athena wore Italian shoes.[10]

The "Varvakeion" statuette is also one of the few surviving sculptural representations of Pheidias' Parthenos whose archaeological context is known, and this makes it potentially valuable to an exploration of reception. Found within the ancient walls of Athens, in the area of the modern "Varvakeion" gymnasium, it is unlikely to have served as a souvenir, as is commonly thought. It was discovered, face down, in the brick apse of a private house of Roman date.[11] We do not know if this was its original destination, and other finds, unfortunately, were not recorded. Was this apse a shrine or a vault? Was the statue set here for veneration, display, or safe keeping? But then, perhaps, we are getting ahead of ourselves. For the "Varvakeion" Athena was carved in the second, if not third, century after Christ, as was the "Lenormant."[12] Pheidias completed his Parthenos over half a millennium earlier.[13] Numerous re-presentations of the image were conceived in the interim.

This mass of material can be organized in various ways, although it has traditionally been arranged according to "good" vs. "bad" copies--the former valuable for reconstructing the original, the latter dismissed as useless to that purpose.[14] Classification by date, material, find spot, or otherwise, however, may aid our evaluation of ancient reception. Most surviving representations of the Parthenos unfortunately have no recorded context: exhibited today in museums, they are said vaguely to come from Rome or, even worse, German private collections.[15] Thus much is left to speculation. Here, however, I shall attempt to sketch possible lines of inquiry based on the formats in which images of the Athena Parthenos appear; for I believe that this can bring us closer to recovering lost contexts.

One class of representations, those on Athenian document reliefs, are perhaps the least ambiguous. Like Pheidias' monumental gold and ivory statue itself, they were commissioned by the Athenian state and displayed prominently, often on the Akropolis itself. A battered relief,[16] fragments of which were found in the mid-nineteenth century, is the earliest preserved example of what became a standard type: Athena crowns an honorand. Although the inscription is too fragmentary to admit certainty, an otherwise unknown Apollonophanes of Kolophon appears to be receiving honors in conjunction with the events of 430-27 BC, related in Thucydides III, 34, when Kolophonians loyal to Athens resisted a pro-Persian faction at Notion. Though damaged, the goddess is clearly identifiable: she stands in a long garment, weight on her right leg, left withdrawn; her large shield is to her left, while the coiled snake has migrated to her right, where it is more visible. Athena's Nike has been omitted so that the goddess might crown the smaller, human-scale Apollonophanes personally, but in numerous examples, such as another from the Akropolis, dated circa 340 BC,[17] the proffered Nike does the crowning.

These images are not exact "copies" of Pheidias' Parthenos: The Nike in the later relief necessarily faces outward to crown the honorand rather than inward to crown the goddess; in the earlier relief, Athena, sans Nike, conflates the Parthenos and another fifth-century Athena type that leans on her shield. Nonetheless, in these and similar reliefs the Athenian state is represented by its patron goddess, of whom, from its completion in 438 BC, the Parthenos was the most impressive visual image. Her physical presence in this context, a palpable manifestation of state authority, simultaneously gives divine sanction to whatever political act of the assembly or boule is to be commemorated. The fact that most representations of the Parthenos on such official Athenian documents appear to "cluster" chronologically in the third quarter of the fourth century BC calls for further comment. The reason for this phenomenon remains unclear, but the popularity of the great Pheidian image at the time of Athens' fading international influence may reflect a nostalgia for the period of the city's greatest power: the resurgence of the Parthenos type can, perhaps, be seen as an attempt to recapture the 'Golden Age of Perikles.'[18] Indeed, the Propylaia and Parthenon, and temples with the spoils of Asia were invoked by Demosthenes as great patriotic exempla from the past in his speech Against Androtion, in 355.[19]

The image of Parthenos also appears to have just such a patriotic meaning later, on Athenian coins of the second and first centuries B.C., when she comes to replace the venerable archaic Athena head emblematic of earlier Athenian issues; the obverse of these so-called "New-Style" silver tetradrachms feature the profile head of the goddess wearing jewellery as well as her characteristic highly decorated triple-crested helmet, complete with raised cheek pieces, Pegasos, and animal protomes. This coin type began to be minted in the wake of the defeat of the Macedonian King Philip V at Kynoskephalai in 197 B.C. and the subsequent declaration of the freedom of the Greek cities by the Roman general Quintus Titus Flamininus the following year. Such coins continued to be produced for 100 years, and over 8000 survive in 110 issues. One issue, of the early first century, even depicts the entire Parthenos as an emblem on the reverse.[20] The distribution of these coins was widespread; and through the image of the goddess they promulgated official ideology, declaring the regained prosperity, power, and influence of the Athenian state, even if the political reality might have been considerably more modest.

Such public, patriotic motivations for the use of the Parthenos (eventually also depicted on smaller denomination Athenian bronze coinage minted locally under the Romans and even on lead tokens[21]) might also have inspired the production of other re-presentations of the statue. Patriotism, some form of civic boosterism, or, perhaps, the tourist market may have inspired the production from the Hellenistic period on of hundreds, if not thousands of mold-made terra-cotta plaques and bowls that bore the image of the Goddess.[22] These imitated similar objects in precious metals that unfortunately have not survived, but some of the terra-cottas do retain traces of gilding. Many have been excavated in the Athenian Agora, where they were likely sold to visitors. Unlike the "Varvakeion" statuette, these small affordable objects did, perhaps, serve as souvenirs, but a better analogy might be today's paraphernalia of sports teams, which cater to a mixture of patriotism and tourism, to local inhabitants, as well as visitors from afar.

Clearly a glorious manifestation of civic power, Pheidias' Athena Parthenos has often been perceived by scholars as an entirely secular monument, a view supported by the above-mentioned evidence of Athenian document reliefs, coins, and terra-cottas. But the statue was also an epiphany, the goddess made visible. A much overlooked cult table within the Parthenon recorded in Athenian inscriptions demonstrates that, although the venerable ancient olive-wood image of the Goddess remained a focus of cult, Athenian ritual was supplemented to accommodate the monumental new statue.[23]

The Parthenos type thus came to be venerated by inhabitants of other Greek poleis in their own Athena temples as well, and its adoption may reflect attempts to share in, or perhaps attract, the protection and good will of the goddess who had so greatly aided the city of Athens. By the second century BC monumental marble Parthenoi, up to 1/2 the size of the Athenian statue, had been erected in temples in Priene, Notion, and Pergamon in Asia Minor: these survive only in fragments.[24] The depiction of the Parthenos with a tree supporting her right hand on a fourth-century anepigraphic stater from Cilicia, one of the earliest surviving re-presentations of the image, has been taken as evidence for a support under the hand of Pheidias' original, but it is equally, if not more likely, that this image is derived from a local statue of the same type venerated by the inhabitants of Aphrodisias.[25] For on the late classical Athenian document reliefs and a newly discovered terra-cotta token from an early fourth-century BC context in the Athenian Agora,[26] as well as fourth-century staters of Side in Lykia in Asia Minor[27], the Parthenos appears without a column.[28] This image of Athena was especially popular in Asia Minor throughout antiquity: in addition to the fragmentary Hellenistic colossoi just mentioned, archaeologists in Asia Minor have recovered many marbles of Roman date, some at a scale appropriate for temple images,[29] and the religious implications of the type can also be seen on a round altar of imperial Roman date discovered in Cilicia in 1974.[30]

The adaptation of the Parthenos type for the use of individuals may be demonstrated by a pair of fourth-century BC terra-cotta plaques found in private houses at Olynthos. Their excavator has suggested that they were hung and venerated like icons[31]. While this possibility cannot be ruled out, no evidence for cult activity was recovered with these eight-inch-high images. It should also be recalled that prior to its destruction by Philip II in 348 BC, Olynthos was in the Athenian political orbit. A fragmentary terra-cotta statuette deposited in a fourth century tomb at Morgantina in the wilds of central Sicily[32] might somehow reflect personal piety, but this, too, is speculation.

A series of inscribed Greek statuettes of Roman date are less ambiguous. An unprepossessing figure from Skopelos (or northwest Euboia: its provenance is unfortunately unclear) did not serve as an object of worship, but rather, the inscription informs us, was dedicated by one Kleainete Diodorou upon completion of her service as priestesses of Athena.[33] Here the Parthenos type does not seem to have been chosen as a political image. Rather, the magnificent figure created by Pheidias may have been selected as the most emphatic divine epiphany, vividly conveying the presence of the goddess. Kleainete's statue, of course, does not rival Pheidias', but it should be remembered that in his representation of Zeus Olympios, Pheidias was credited with having added something to traditional religion, in as much as the statue's majesty was perceived to equal that of the god.[34]

More intriguing, perhaps, is a similar-looking figure from Epidauros, dedicated to Asklepios by a certain Genethlis of Askalon as a thank offering for deliverance from sickness in the second half of the second century after Christ.[35] The Parthenos type is here made appropriate to its context by an inscription that identifies Athena as the sister of Asklepios' father, Apollo. Why did Genethlis chose this figure to honor Asklepios? Was he particularly devoted to Athena, or was the statuette the only one available at the time, or at the right price? Just where this statuette was originally set up within the sanctuary is also unknown, but it was discovered at Epidauros in the Antonine Baths, where, grouped together with other marbles at a later date, it formed part of a veritable museum of classical sculpture. Among those statues, which appear to have been arranged according to subject, was another image of the Goddess, which might help us to clarify the significance of Genethlis' choice: here Athena, striding dynamically to her left, also wears the triple-crested helmet of the Parthenos. According to its inscription, dated to AD 304, this figure was dedicated explicitly to Athena-Hygieia.[36] The Parthenos type, almost since its creation, has had connections to Athena-Hygieia. Not only were sacrifices offered to the goddess in this guise in the celebration of the Panathenaia,[37] but in the late fifth century a bronze statue was dedicated to Athena-Hygieia just within the entrance to the Akropolis. Only its inscribed base, bearing the signature of the artist, the Athenian Pyrrhos, survives. It stands today in its original position at the southernmost column of the Propylaia's east façade. Cuttings on its upper surface indicate that the goddess' right leg, like the Parthenos', was straight and bore her weight, while her left was withdrawn, only her toes resting on the ground.[38] The bronze statue that once stood on this base is almost certainly the image of Athena-Hygieia mentioned in passing by Pausanias.[39] Plutarch provides more information, relating how the figure was dedicated by Perikles after he cured a badly-injured workman who had fallen from the roof of the Propylaia by applying a prescription that the goddess revealed to him in a dream. Pliny even names the medicinal herb, Parthenion.[40] Plutarch, moreover, segues neatly from this episode to an account of Pheidias' gold and ivory statue.[41] Archaeologists have pointed out how material remains such as this base can serve as correctives to ancient literary sources: for the above-mentioned accounts of the statue's erection and others dependent on the same tradition are likely to be fanciful: Pyrrhos' lost bronze Athena was not dedicated by Perikles--the inscription reads: "the Athenians to Athena-Hygieia" (Athenaioi tei Athenaiai tei hygieiai), and its letter forms indicate that the statue is more likely to have been offered in the 420's, perhaps in thanks for deliverance from the plague that devastated Athens and dispatched Perikles himself. The literary tradition does, however, reveal a strong link between the Athena Parthenos and Athena Hygieia, and, along with the Epidaurean figures, may even help to recover the iconography of Pyrrhos' lost bronze, a statue created only a decade or so after Pheidias' gold and ivory masterpiece.

If patriotism and religion played important roles in the diffusion and adaptation of the Parthenos type, so too did economic aspirations. For although some of the coins that feature the Parthenos may reflect local temple statues, this is unlikely to be true in every case. As early as the end of the fifth century BC, Syracuse, the goal of the disastrous Athenian expedition of 415, minted coins featuring what appears to be the head of the Pheidian image of Athena, wearing her distinctive triple-crested helmet. Like the traditional patron of the polis, Arethusa, on better-known Syracusan coins the goddess is surrounded by dolphins.[42] While this image is often explained as Syracusan appropriation of Athena, more plausible is the identification of the deity as Arethusa herself, wearing spoils taken from the Athenian goddess.[43] From the fourth century, however, poleis throughout the Greek world produced coins depicting the Parthenos herself: in Magna Graecia and Sicily: Velia, Heracleia, Taranto, Metaponton, and Morgantina; in Greece: Audoleon, Myrina, Pharsalos, Phaloria, Koroneia, Phocis, Kephalonia, Tegea; and Gortyn, Lemnos, and Mytilene on the islands; in Asia Minor: Assos, Ilion, Sigion, Kyzikos, Lampsakos, Miletopolis, Klazomenai, Lebedos, Priene, not to mention Lycia, Cilicia, Cappadocia, and, eventually, Seleucid Syria.[44] While religious and political considerations might explain some of this abundance of Parthenoi, the desire for Athenian economic prosperity might have been a factor as well. Athens, despite the loss of her fifth-century empire, remained a potent economic center. By appropriating her symbol on their own coins other poleis might have been striving to strengthen their coinage and gain similar prosperity. Thus, outside of Athens the Parthenos might have functioned to enhance the standing of poleis that represented her on their coinage as well as in their temples.

The intermingling of patriotism, politics, religion, and economics in re-presentations of the Parthenos is to be expected, as all were present in Pheidias' original, a statue that came into being as a complex interplay of myth, religion, power, wealth, and imperialism. Yet the Parthenos also carried connotations of identity, cultural as well as personal. The idea of high culture, of intelligence and decorum, was clearly present in images of the Parthenos placed in public libraries and private villas. Closely associated not just with Athens, the pre-eminent cultural capital of antiquity, but with its "Golden Age" under Perikles, this image of the Goddess of Wisdom also connoted civilization and learning. Hence the monumental, 3.5 m. tall version excavated in the main reading room of the Library at Pergamon.[45] Dated to the second century BC, it has been called a rather free adaptation, but certainly, when complete, few would have missed the message of the Pergamene Kings who in so many other monuments modeled their cultural achievements on those of fifth-century Athenians.[46] This practice was continued by sophisticated Romans who decorated their villas with figures of the goddess.[47] Numerous marbles survive, and I need not rehearse here the oft-quoted passages of Cicero's letters asking to be sent Greek statues for such purposes.[48]

The cultural connotations of the Parthenos are also evident in the case of jewellery. Such objects served as attributes of their wearers, and most surviving pieces were excavated in tombs, presumably of their owners.[49] Perhaps the most spectacular representations of the Parthenos, and among the earliest, are a pair of golden pendants found in 1830 on the breast of a female skeleton in a rich tomb of the fourth century BC at Kul Oba near Kerch in the Crimea.[50] The identical pendants are commonly ascribed to an Athenian goldsmith. The details of the Parthenos, depicted in three-quarter view, are unsurpassed: she wears her elaborate triple-crested helmet, with deer- and griffin-head protomes attached to the top of her diadem-like visor, itself decorated with dotted spirals; the upturned cheek-pieces are adorned with griffins, as per Pausanias' description,[51] and the neck piece is decorated with dotted spirals; the goddess also wears disc earrings with pendant pyramids as well as a three-tier necklace; from either shoulder rises a snake, presumably from her aegis, while above perches her owl. The remainder of the pendant is decorated with elaborate floral elements, some filled with green and blue enamel. What did these magnificent pendants, and the image of Athena they bore, mean to the woman who wore them, in life, perhaps, as in death? What messages did they carry for those who placed them in the tomb with her, let alone for the craftsman who produced them? Some of these questions, perhaps, can be addressed by another, similar pair of pendants found in the Great Bliznitza tumulus on the nearby Taman peninsula: these depict a Nereid mounted on a hippocamp carrying the armor of Achilles.[52] Within the form of the pendants, the divine images are almost interchangeable. The significance of the plethora of gold is, I think, clear; as for the Nereid, she is a beautiful, decorous woman, yet one with power over fantastic animals as well as dominion of arms. The Athena, armed with a wonderful helmet, surrounded by snakes and wild beasts, also symbolizes a powerful, yet virtuous female.

The same, perhaps, is the import of the two rings depicting the bust of the Parthenos worn by another female buried in the late fourth-century at Pantikapaion.[53] Excavated in 1878, this woman, had gold rings on eight of her fingers, similar to the occupant of a more recently excavated burial in the region, also dating to the fourth century BC, who also wore gold bracelets and some 250 gold plaques, as well as a sumptuous golden crown.[54] In these last cases, however, the appearance of the Parthenos seems to have less to do with Pheidias' statue than with the process of Hellenization. For images of more Greek deities appeared on the other rings of the Pantikapaion female, and she was surrounded by silver symposium vessels emblazoned with Dionysian imagery.

The Parthenos adorned jewellery for hundreds of years, and not just in semi-hellenized barbarian contexts: gold plaques and buttons were worn by Greeks as well as barbarians. Such images, perhaps worn to invoke divine protection, whether expensive gold like those from a female tomb in Homolion in Thessaly, or merely of gilded terra-cotta, like others excavated at Agia Irini on Keos[55] not far from Athens, might betoken the chaste and enlightened woman. The placement of the Goddess' image on the back of a Corinthian bronze mirror cover dated to ca. 300 BC,[56] might well also have denoted its owner's beauty. Or might the substitution of the Parthenos for the more commonly depicted Aphrodite here carry a more playful meaning: that wisdom is more beautiful than mere female charms?

Although hundreds of items have gone unaddressed here, I shall treat just one more class of object: seals, which, given their size and function, were well suited to adaptation for personal reasons. Numerous gemstones depict the Parthenos, but the reason for the choice of subject is not always clear.[57] Why, for example, should the citizens of Roman Aquileia be so keen for such images?[58] The choice might lie with the workshop that produced a series of rather crude intaglios, but the Parthenos' connotations of victory over invading barbarians may well have appealed to the patrons who purchased them: for Aquileia was founded for military reasons and long remained a staging point for Rome's border campaigns.[59] In other cases we can, perhaps, speculate further. On a cornelian scaraboid from a tomb at Kourion in Cyprus, Athena stands holding an aphlaston instead of her Nike.[60] The substitution of a ship's stern ornament is syndagmatic--it is a more specific allusion to naval victory, a personalization of the goddess for the owner's own ends.

Like Praxiteles' Knidian Aphrodite at a later date, Pheidias' Athena Parthenos became a favorite means for depicting an important goddess, appropriate to numerous contexts. She is admitted into narrative scenes, such as a sacrifice on a Roman gem.[61] Such narrative usage also appears early, as on a late fifth-century Athenian red-figure column crater from Gela in Sicily, attributed to the Hephaistos Painter and dated to the 420s BC,[62] on which the familiar scene of Ajax and Achilles playing a game is overseen by the goddess, as in some earlier versions if not the best known by Exekias.[63] But here Athena is given the stance and attributes of the Pheidian statue. Not a copy--there is no shield, the left arm is raised--but nonetheless, in this generation after the completion of Pheidias' statue, the proffered Nike serves a double function, both narrative--to crown the victor, as on the Athenian document reliefs--and iconographical--to recall the most spectacular epiphany of Athena ever visualized.

Pheidias' Zeus, meanwhile, seems not to have lent itself to a multiplicity of secondary contexts. The seeming paradox of the statue's overabundant literary fame and meager visual reproduction is, perhaps, inherent in the statue's technical as well as religious properties: so skillful was Pheidias in conveying the sublimity of his celestial model that he was repeatedly imagined as having visited Olympos itself.[64] New techniques of gold-glass and ivory-bending rendered that statue still more numinous.[65] Perhaps this visual perfection precluded replication of the image much beyond the miniature images on coins and gems. Not adapted to multiple functions and contexts, the enthroned god rarely served as other than a potent model for the depiction of figures of supreme authority: from the fifth century BC we see him "re-incarnated" in representations of other divinities, such as his wife Hera, son Dionysos, and grandson Asklepios. Thereafter terrestrial rulers adopted his pose and attributes, and so, too, Christ Pantokrator, and, eventually, even American presidents. But this is another story.[66]

Contents     Abstract

Notes

[1] The ancient literary evidence for Pheidias' career and these two statues in general is conveniently collected in J. Overbeck, Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen (Leipzig 1868, reprinted Hildesheim 1959) nos. 618-807; see also A. F. Stewart, Greek sculpture: an exploration (New Haven 1990) 257-263; and B. Conticello, et al., Alla ricerca di Fidia (Padua 1987). The attraction of Pheidias' Athena Lemnia in the mid second century after Christ is discussed by E. B. Harrison, "Lemnia and Lemnos: sidelights on a Pheidian Athena," in M. Schmidt (ed.), Kanon. Festschrift für Ernst Berger (=Antike Kunst Beiheft 15, Basel 1988) 101-107. [return to text]

[2] A. Mallwitz and W. Schiering, Die Werkstatt des Pheidias in Olympia I (=Olympische Forschungen 5, Berlin 1964); W. Schiering, Die Werkstatt des Pheidias in Olympia II: Werkstattfunde (=Olympische Forschungen 18, Berlin 1991); G. P. Stevens, "Remarks upon the chryselephantine statue of Athena in the Parthenon," Hesperia 24 (1955) 240-276; W. Dörpfeld, Olympia II (1892) 11-16; and F. Forbath, "Der Fußboden im Inneren des Zeus Temples und seine Veränderungen bei Aufstellung des gold-elfenbein-Bildes," in W. Dörpfeld, Alt-Olympia (Berlin 1935) 226-247. [return to text]

[3] See, e.g., A. C. Quatremère de Quincy, Le Jupiter Olympien, ou l'art de la sculpture antique considéré sous un nouveau point de vue (Paris 1815). [return to text]

[4] Much of this material is collected by N. Leipen, Athena Parthenos: a reconstruction (Toronto 1972) with previous bibliography. More recent are A. J. N. W. Prag, "New Copies of the Athena Parthenos from the east," in E. Berger (ed.), Parthenon-Kongreß Basel. Referate und Berichte 4. bis 8. April 1982 (Mainz 1984) 182-187; P. Karanastassis, "Untersuchungen zur kaierzeitlichen Plastik in Griechenland II: Kopien, Varianten und Umbildungen nach Athena-Typen des 5. Jhs. v. Chr.," Mitteilungen des deutchen archäologishen Instituts, athenische Abteilung 102 (1987) 323-428; C.C. Vermeule III, "Athena of the Parthenon by Pheidias: a Graeco-Roman replica of the Roman imperial period,"Journal of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 1 (1989) 41-60; and M. Weber, "Zur Überlieferung der Goldelfenbeinstatue des Phidias im Parthenon," Jahrbuch des deutchen archäologischen Instituts 108 (1993) 83-122. [return to text]

[5] See, e.g., P. A. Clayton and M. J. Price, The seven wonders of the ancient world (London 1988). [return to text]

[6] Pliny the Elder (HN 36.18) reports the height of the statue to have been 26 cubits. A. Segrè, "Cubito" Enciclopedia Italiana 12 (1931) 71 calculates the length of a Roman cubit to be 0.444 m. [return to text]

[7] For Toronto see Leipen, Athena Parthenos; for Nashville, B. S. Ridgway, "Parthenon and Parthenos," in N. Basgelen and M. Lugal (eds.), Festschrift für Jale Inan (Istanbul 1989) 295-305; and B. Tsakirgis and S. F. Wiltshire, (eds.), The Nashville Athena. A symposium. The Parthenon: Nashville, Tennessee May 21 1990 (Nashville 1990). [return to text]

[8] Athens, National Museum 128: Leipen, Athena Parthenos, no. 1 with bibliography. [return to text]

[9] Athens, National Museum 129: Leipen, Athena Parthenos, no. 2 with bibliography. [return to text]

[10] Onomastikon 7.92=Overbeck, Schriftquellen, 666. For the figural decoration of base, shield, and sandals see Leipen, Athena Parthenos, 24-27, 29, and 41-40, to which add recent bibliography collected by A. Delivorrias in P. Torunikiotis (ed.), The Parthenon and its impact in modern times (Athens 1994) 135 and, most recently, J. Hurwit, "Beautiful evil: Pandora and the Athena Parthenos," American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995) 171-186. [return to text]

[11] See W.-H. Schuchhardt, "Athena Parthenos," Antike Plastik 2 (Berlin 1963) 31-53, especially 31-32 with earlier references. [return to text][12] [return to text]

[12] See Karanastassis, "Untersuchungen," 408-411 (nos. BI12-BI13). [return to text]

[13]Athenian building accounts (Inscriptiones Graecae I3 453-460) and the third-century BC historian Philochoros (F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 328, F121=Scholion to Aristophanes' Peace 605=Overbeck, Schriftquellen, 647) indicate that Pheidias completed the Parthenos in time for the Panathenaia of 438 BC. This traditional view was recently challenged by C. Treibel-Schubert, "Zur Datierung des Phidiasprozesses," Mitteilungen des deutchen archäologishen Instituts, athenische Abteilung 98 (1983) 101-112, arguing for a completion date of 435/4, but her arguments have been answered by B. Wesenberg, "Parthenosgold für den Parthenonbau? Zum Formular der Baurechnungen des Parthenon," Archäologishes Anzeiger 1985 49-53. [return to text]

[14]So Leipen, Athena Parthenos, e.g. 15: "Several bronzes in the British Museum are reminiscent of the Parthenos but add little of importance to the study of the original." [return to text]

[15]See, e.g., C. C. Vermeule et al., Sculpture in stone and bronze: additions to the collections of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman art, 1971-1988, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, (1988) 29 (no. 19). [return to text]

[16] Athens, Epigraphical Museum 6615-6593: M. Meyer, Die griechischen Urkundenreliefs (=Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, athenische Abteilung, Beiheft 13, Berlin 1989) 265 (no. A2) pl. 1,2; now see C. Lawton, Attic document reliefs: art and politics in ancient Athens (Oxford 1995) 113-114 (no. 65) pl. 34. [return to text]

[17] Athens, Akropolis Museum 2497-3001: Meyer, Urkundenreliefs 292 (no. A93) pl. 25,2; Lawton, Document reliefs 161 classifies this example as a votive; other reliefs that clearly reflect the Parthenos include Meyer nos. A70; A75; A92; A109; A129; and A169; Lawton, nos. 16, 30, 106, 132, and 164. [return to text]

[18] I owe this idea to a conversation with C. Lawton in July, 1994. [return to text]

[19] Against Androtion 13. [return to text]

[20] M. Thompson, The new style silver coinage of Athens (New York 1966); for the entire Parthenos on the reverse see 391, no. 1271, pl. 142; L. Lacroix, Les reproductions de statues sur les monnaies grecques. La statuaire archaïque et classique (=Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l' Université de Liège 116, Paris 1949) 277, pl. XXIV.2 [return to text]

[21] Lacroix, Reproductions 277, pls. XXIV.3-4; Agora IL 612=Leipen, Athena Parthenos, 10. [return to text]

[22] Leipen, Athena Parthenos, nos. 49-58, 62-67. [return to text]

[23] Inscriptiones Graecae II/III2, 1413 lines 14-15; 1425, lines 134-135, Addenda p. 805; Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 15 [1958] 120, line 6. See J. M. Mansfield, The robe of Athena and the Panathenaic peplos (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley 1985) 232 n. 19. In late antiquity the Athena Parthenos, or rather its replacement, appears to have been main object of worship on the Akropolis, Mansfield 203. Whether or not the Athena Parthenos was created as a "true cult statue" has long been debated, see, e.g., B. S. Ridgway, Fifth century styles in Greek sculpture (Princeton 1981) 163, whence the quote; and Leipen, Athena Parthenos 17, with further bibliography at 21 n. 2. The term "cult statue," however, has no equivalent in ancient Greek. In any event, the offering table leaves little doubt of the statue's religious function. For the "supplementation" of venerable temple statues with monumental chryselephantine figures throughout Greece in the late fifth century BC see the present author's "New statues for old gods: faith, renewal, and power in classical Greece," in D.W. Bailey (ed.), The archaeology of wealth, prestige, and value (forthcoming). [return to text]

[24] See, e.g., Leipen, Athena Parthenos, nos. 22-23; J. C. Carter, The sculpture of the sanctuary of Athena Polias at Priene (=Reports of the research committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London, No. 42, London 1983); and, most recently, Weber, "Überlieferung". [return to text]

[25] Lacroix 273-274; Leipen, Athena Parthenos, fig. 40; J. Neils et al., Goddess and polis: the Panathenaic Festival in ancient Athens (Hanover, N.H.-Princeton) 184 (no. 57). [return to text]

[26] Agora MC 1353. Unpublished. I am grateful to Dr. John McK. Camp, Director of the Agora Excavations, for information regarding this find and his kind permission to examine it in Athens and to mention it here. [return to text]

[27] Lacroix, Reproductions, 275-276, pl. XXIV.1. See also the comments of Prag in Berger, Parthenon-Kongreß, 184-185. [return to text]

[28] The debate over the column is on-going, see, e.g., G. M. A. Richter, "Was the Nike of the Athena Parthenos supported by a column?" Studi in onore di A. Calderini e R. Paribene 3 (1957) 147ff [against]; Leipen, Athena Parthenos, 36-40, and "Athena Parthenos: problems of reconstruction," in Berger, Parthenon-Kongreß, 177-181, especially 178-179 [for]; B. Fehr, "Zur religionspolitischen Function der Athena Parthenos im Rahmen des delisch-attischen Seebundes--Teil I," Hephaistos 1 (1979) 71-91 [for]; E. Kunze-Götte, "Akanthussäule und Grabmonument in der Darstellung eines Lekythosmaler," Mitteilungen des deutchen archäologischen Instituts, athenische Abteilung 99 (1984) 185-197, especially 191-194; Ridgway, "Parthenon and Parthenos" 297-298 [against]; and now, in a recent reconstruction drawing with no explanatory text, M. Korres in Tournikiotis, Parthenon and its impact, 92, fig. 41[apparently for]. [return to text]

[29] See Prag in Berger, Parthenon-Kongreß, especially 186-187 for the possible political connotations of these statues. [return to text]

[30] See Prag in Berger, Parthenon-Kongreß, 184-185, pl. 12, 1-4; and H. Williams, "An Athena Parthenos from Cilicia,"Anatolian Studies 27 (1977) 105-110. [return to text]

[31] D. M. Robinson, Excavations at Olynthus 4 terracottas found in 1928 (Baltimore 1931) 65-66 (nos. 358-359), pl. 37. [return to text]

[32] M. Bell, Morgantina studies I. the terracottas (Princeton 1981) 36, 157 (no. 217), pl. 55. [return to text]

[33] Athens, National Museum 682=Karanastassis, "Untersuchungen," 404-405 (no. BI6); the inscription (Inscriptiones Graecae XII 9, 1192) reads: Kleainete Diodo/rou hiereteusasa Ath/enai. [return to text]

[34] Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 12.10.9 (=Overbeck, Schriftquellen 721): Pheidias tamen diis quam hominibus efficiendis melior artifex creditur, in ebore vero longe citra aemulum, vel si nihil nisi Minervam Athenis aut Olympium in Elide Iovem fecisset, cuius pulchritudo adiecisse aliquid etiam receptae religioni videtur; adeo maiestas operis deum aequavit. [return to text]

[35] Athens, National Museum 276: V. Stais, "Agalmata ek Epidaurou." Archiologike Ephemeris 1886, 245ff.; Karanastassis, "Untersuchungen," 406 (no. BI8); the inscription (Inscriptiones Graecae IV2 483) reads:Patrokasigneten Asklepio eisat' / Athenen / Askalou ek gaies sostra pheron Ge/nethlis [epi hiere]os Aur. Nikerotos. [return to text]

[36] Athens, National Museum 274; Stais, "Agalmata": inscription (Inscriptiones Graecae IV2 428) reads: Athenai Hygieiai ho hiereus tou soteros Asklepiou / Mar[kos] Iou[oios] Dadouchos to... / ...rpa [return to text]

[37] W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, MA 1985) 232 with 440 n. 34. [return to text]

[38] IG I2 395; see also J. Travlos, Pictorial dictionary of ancient Athens (London 1971) 124-126, especially fig. 170, s.v. "Artemis Brauronia" for plans, photographs, and previous bibliography; and, more recently, B. S. Ridgway, "Images of Athena on the Akropolis," in J. Neils et al., Goddess and polis: the Panathenaic Festival in ancient Athens (Hanover, N.H.-Princeton 1992) 119-142, especially 137-138. For a convenient summary of early scholarship, see J. G. Frazer, Pausanias's Description of Greece, (London 1898, reprint New York 1965) II, 277-282. [return to text]

[39] Pausanias 1.23.4. [return to text]

[40] Plutarch, Perikles 13.13; Pliny, HN 22.44. Further references are provided by P. A. Stadter, A commentary on Plutarch's Perikles (Chapel Hill 1989) 176-177. [return to text]

[41] Plutarch is taken to have confused Pyrrhos' bronze and Pheidias' chryselephantine statues by R. J. Hopper, The Acropolis (London 1971) 62, but careful reading of the ancient text reveals a connection between, rather than conflation of, the two late fifth-century statues of Athena. [return to text]

[42] Lacroix, Reproductions , 268-269, pl. XXIII, 2. [return to text]

[43] This attractive notion, suggested to me in Milton Keynes by Dr. Stanley Ireland, was previously explored by C. T. Seltman, Greek Coins (London 1933) 126. [return to text]

[44] Lacroix, Reproductions , 269-281. [return to text]

[45] Berlin Staatliche Museen P24: Leipen, Athena Parthenos, no. 21; and, most recently, M. Kunze et al., Die Antikensammlung im Pergamonmuseum und in Charlottenburg (Mainz 1992) no. 75. [return to text]

[46] For the artistic/cultural policy of the Pergamene Kings see, e.g., J. J. Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic age (Cambridge 1986) 79-110; for this statue see 167, fig. 171. [return to text]

[47] See, e.g., Leipen, Athena Parthenos, no. 7, for a torso from ruins of a Roman garden villa complex now in the Conservatori; or Vermeule, "Athena of the Parthenon," no. 16a for a head from a rich villa at Santa Marinella, now in Paris, that joins a body in the museum at Civita Vecchia. [return to text]

[48] See, e.g., the convenient selection of J. J. Pollitt, The art of Rome c. 753 B.C. - A.D. 337. Sources and documents (Cambridge 1966, reprinted 1983) 76-78. [return to text]

[49] Ancient temple inventories, moreover, indicate that that jewellery was also dedicated in sanctuaries, see, e.g., D. Williams and J. Ogden, Greek gold (New York 1984) 37. [return to text]

[50] Hermitage KO 5: Williams and Ogden, Greek gold, no. 87. [return to text]

[51] 1.24.5=Overbeck, Schriftquellen, 649. [return to text]

[52] Hermitage BB31, Williams and Ogden, Greek gold, no. 120. [return to text]

[53] O. J. Neverov, Antichny'e Kamei v sobranii Ermitazha [Ancient cameos in the Hermitage collection] (Leningrad 1988) 40-41 (nos. 11-12). [return to text]

[54] Metropolitan Museum of Art and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, From the lands of the Scythians: ancient treasures from the museums of the U.S.S.R., 3000 B.C.-100 B.C. (New York 1974)=Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin new series 32.5 Special Issue 1973/4, pl. 27. [return to text]

[55] Homolion=Volos Museum M51-53: S. G. Miller, Two groups of Thessalian gold (Berkeley 1979) 14-15, pl. 8a-c; D. Musti et al., L'Oro dei Greci (Novara 1992) 162, 264, fig. 125.4; Keos=Leipen, Athena Parthenos, no. 61. [return to text]

[56] Louvre Br 4349: LIMC, s.v. Athena 328. [return to text]

[57] See, e.g., A. Furtwängler, Die antike Gemmen (Leipzig-Berlin 1900) pl. XXXVIII, 38-46; F. H. Marshall, Catalogue of the Jewellery, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman, in the Departments of Antiquities of the British Museum (London 1907) no. 1347. [return to text]

[58] G. Sena Chiesa, Gemme del Museo Nazionale di Aquileia (Aquileia 1966) nos. 106-122, pls. VI-VII. [return to text]

[59] See L. Bertacchi in R. Stillwell et al. (eds.), The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (Princeton 1976) 79-80, s.v. "Aquileia". [return to text]

[60] British Museum 515=J. Boardman, Greek gems and finger rings (London 1970) pl. 486. [return to text]

[61] Furtwangler, Antike Gemmen, pl. LXV, 34. [return to text]

[62] Berlin, Staatliche Museen 3199: J. D. Beazley, Attic red-figure vase-painters2 (Oxford 1963) 1114,9; idem, Paralipomena (Oxford 1971) 452,9; Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae 1 (Zurich 1981), s.v. "Achilleus" 420. [return to text]

[63] See S. Woodford, "Ajax and Achilles playing a game on an olpe in Oxford," JHS 102 (1982) 173-183; Exekias=Vatican 344, from Vulci: J. D. Beazley, Attic black-figure vase-painters (Oxford 1956) 145, 13. [return to text]

[64] See, e.g., Dio Chrysostom, Oratio XII=Overbeck, Schriftquellen, 705-712. [return to text]

[65] See K. D. S. Lapatin, Chryselephantine statuary in the classical world (forthcoming). [return to text]

[66] ibid [return to text]

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