West frieze of the Parthenon. The most famous temple in Greece is the Parthenon, dedicated to the goddess Athena the Virgin.

Predecessors of the Parthenon

Main articles: Hecatompedon (temple), Opisthodomos (temple)

The interior (59 m long and 21.7 m wide) has two more steps (total height 0.7 m) and is amphiprostyle. The facades have porticoes with columns that are just below the columns of the peristyle. The eastern portico was a pronaos, the western one a posticum.

Plan of the Parthenon sculptural decoration (north right). Antiquity period.

Material and technology

The temple was built entirely from Pentelic marble, mined nearby. During production, it is white in color, but when exposed to the sun's rays it turns yellow. The northern side of the building is exposed to less radiation - and therefore the stone there has a grayish-ashy tint, while the southern blocks have a golden-yellowish color. The tiles and stylobate are also made of this marble. The columns are made of drums fastened together with wooden plugs and pins.

Metopes

Main article: Doric frieze of the Parthenon

Metopes were part of the traditional Doric order triglyph-metope frieze that surrounded the outer colonnade of the temple. There were a total of 92 metopes on the Parthenon, containing various high reliefs. They were connected thematically along the sides of the building. In the east the battle of the centaurs with the Lapiths was depicted, in the south - the Amazonomachy, in the west - probably scenes from the Trojan War, in the north - the Gigantomachy.

64 metopes survive: 42 in Athens and 15 in the British Museum. Most of them are on the eastern side.

Bas-relief frieze

East side. Plates 36-37. Seated gods.

Main article: Ionic frieze of the Parthenon

The outer side of the cella and opisthodome was surrounded at the top (at a height of 11 m from the floor) by another frieze, Ionic. It was 160 m long and 1 m high and contained about 350 foot and 150 mounted figures. On the bas-relief, which is one of the most famous works This genre in ancient art that has come down to us depicts a procession on the last day of Panathenaia. On the north and south sides horsemen and chariots, just citizens, are depicted. On the south side there are also musicians, people with various gifts and sacrificial animals. The western part of the frieze contains many young men with horses, mounting or already mounted. In the east (above the entrance to the temple) the end of the procession is represented: the priest, surrounded by gods, accepts the peplos woven for the goddess by the Athenians. The most important people of the city are standing nearby.

96 frieze plates have survived. 56 of them are in the British Museum, 40 (mostly West Side frieze) - in Athens.

Pediments

Main article: Pediments of the Parthenon

Pediment fragment.

Giant sculptural groups were placed in the tympanums of the pediments (0.9 m deep) above the western and eastern entrances. They have survived very poorly to this day. Central figures almost didn't get there. In the center of the eastern pediment in the Middle Ages, a window was barbarically cut through, which completely destroyed the composition located there. Ancient authors usually avoid this part of the temple. Pausanias, the main source on such matters, mentions them only in passing, paying much more attention to the statue of Athena. Sketches by J. Kerry dating back to 1674 have been preserved, which provide quite a lot of information about the western pediment. The Eastern one was already in a deplorable state at that time. Therefore, the reconstruction of the gables is mostly just guesswork.

The eastern group depicted the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus. Only the side parts of the composition have been preserved. A chariot driven, presumably, by Helios, enters from the south side. Dionysus sits in front of him, then Demeter and Kore. Behind them stands another goddess, perhaps Artemis. Three sitting people reached us from the north female figures s - the so-called "three veils" - who are sometimes seen as Hestia, Dione and Aphrodite. In the very corner there is another figure, apparently driving a chariot, since in front of it is the head of a horse. This is probably Nyux or Selena. Regarding the center of the pediment (or rather, most of it), we can only say that there, definitely, due to the theme of the composition, there were the figures of Zeus, Hephaestus and Athena. Most likely, the rest of the Olympians and, perhaps, some other gods were there. A torso survives, attributed in most cases to Poseidon.

The western pediment represents the dispute between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica. They stood in the center and were located diagonally to each other. On both sides of them there were chariots, probably in the north - Nike with Hermes, in the south - Iris with Amphitryon. There were figures around legendary characters Athenian history, but their exact attribution is almost impossible.

28 statues have reached us: 19 in the British Museum and 11 in Athens.

Athena Parthenos statue

The statue of Athena Parthenos, standing in the center of the temple and being its sacred center, was made by Phidias himself. It was upright and about 11 m high, made in the chrysoelephantine technique (that is, from gold and ivory on a wooden base). The sculpture has not survived and is known from various copies and numerous images on coins. In one hand the goddess holds Nike, and with the other she leans on the shield. The shield depicts Amazonomachy. There is a legend that Phidias depicted himself (in the image of Daedalus) and Pericles (in the image of Theseus) on it, for which (as well as on charges of stealing gold for the statue) he went to prison. The peculiarity of the relief on the shield is that the second and third plans are shown not from behind, but one above the other. In addition, its subject matter allows us to say that this is already a historical relief. Another relief was on Athena's sandals. A centauromachy was depicted there.

The birth of Pandora, the first woman, was carved on the pedestal of the statue.

Other finishing details

None of the ancient sources recalls the fire in the Parthenon, but archaeological excavations have proven that it occurred in the middle of the 3rd century. BC BC, most likely during the invasion of the barbarian tribe of the Heruli, who sacked Athens in 267 BC. e. As a result of the fire, the roof of the Parthenon was destroyed, as well as almost all the internal fittings and ceilings. The marble is cracked. In the eastern extension, the colonnade, both main doors of the temple and the second frieze collapsed. If dedicatory inscriptions were kept in the temple, they are irretrievably lost. Reconstruction after the fire did not aim to completely restore the appearance of the temple. The terracotta roof was installed only over the internal premises, and the external colonnade was unprotected. Two rows of columns in the eastern hall were replaced with similar ones. Based on the architectural style of the restored elements, it was possible to establish that the blocks in an earlier period belonged to various buildings of the Acropolis of Athens. In particular, 6 blocks of the western doors formed the basis of a massive sculptural group depicting a chariot drawn by horses (scratches are still visible on these blocks in the places where the horses' hooves and chariot wheels were attached), as well as groups bronze statues warriors described by Pausanias. The other three blocks of the western doors are marble tablets with financial statements, which establish the main stages of the construction of the Parthenon.

Christian temple

Story

The Parthenon remained a temple to the goddess Athena for a thousand years. It is not known exactly when it became a Christian church. In the 4th century, Athens fell into disrepair and became provincial town Roman Empire. In the 5th century, the temple was robbed by one of the emperors, and all its treasures were transported to Constantinople. There is information that under Patriarch Paul III of Constantinople the Parthenon was rebuilt into the Church of St. Sophia.

In the early 13th century, the statue of Athena Promachos was damaged and destroyed during the Fourth Crusade. The Athena Parthenos statue probably disappeared as early as the 3rd century BC. e. during a fire or earlier. Roman and Byzantine emperors repeatedly issued decrees banning pagan cults, however pagan tradition in Hellas was too strong. On modern stage It is generally accepted that the Parthenon became a Christian temple around the 6th century AD.

Probably, under the predecessor of Choniates, the building of the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Athens suffered more significant changes. The apse in the eastern part was destroyed and rebuilt. The new apse was closely adjacent to the ancient columns, so the central slab of the frieze was dismantled. This slab depicting the "peplos scene", later used to build fortifications on the Acropolis, was found by agents of Lord Elgin and is now on display in the British Museum. Under Michael Choniates himself, the interior decoration of the temple was restored, including the paintings Judgment Day on the wall of the portico where the entrance was located, there are paintings depicting the Passion of Christ in the narthex, a number of paintings that depict saints and previous Athenian metropolitans. All the Parthenon paintings from the Christian era were covered with a thick layer of whitewash in the 1880s, but in the early 19th century the Marquis of Bute commissioned watercolors from them. It was from these watercolors that researchers established the plot motifs of the paintings and the approximate time of creation - the end of the 12th century. Around the same time, the apse ceiling was decorated with mosaics, which collapsed within a few decades. Glass fragments of it are also on display in the British Museum.

On February 24 and 25, 1395, the Italian traveler Nicolo de Martoni visited Athens, who left in his Pilgrim's Book (now in the National Library of France, Paris) the first systematic description of the Parthenon since Pausanias. Martoni presents the Parthenon as a landmark exclusively Christian history, however, his main wealth is not the numerous relics and the revered icon of the Mother of God, painted by the Evangelist Luke and decorated with pearls and precious stones, but a copy of the Gospel written in Greek on thin gilded parchment by Saint Helen Equal to the Apostles, mother of Constantine the Great, the first Byzantine emperor, which was officially accepted Christianity. Martoni also talks about the cross scratched on one of the columns of the Parthenon by Saint Dionysius the Areopagite.

Martoni's journey coincided with the beginning of the reign of the Acciaioli family, whose representatives proved themselves to be generous benefactors. Nerio I Acciaioli ordered the doors of the cathedral to be inlaid with silver; in addition, he bequeathed the entire city to the cathedral, giving Athens into the possession of the Parthenon. The most significant addition to the cathedral from the Latinocracy period is the tower near the right side of the portico, built after the city was captured by the Crusaders. For its construction, they used blocks taken from the back of the tomb of a Roman nobleman on the hill of Philopappou. The tower was supposed to serve as the bell tower of the cathedral, in addition, it was equipped with spiral staircases that rose to the roof. Since the tower blocked the small doors to the narthex, the central western entrance of the Parthenon of the ancient era began to be used again.

During the reign of Acciaioli in Athens, the first and earliest drawing of the Parthenon that has survived to this day was created. It was executed by Ciriaco di Pizzicoli, an Italian merchant, papal legate, traveler and lover of the classics, better known as Cyriacus of Ancona. He visited Athens in 1444 and stayed in the luxurious palace into which the Propylaea had been converted to pay his respects to Acciaioli. Chiriacus left detailed notes and a number of drawings, but they were destroyed by a fire in 1514 in the library of the city of Pesaro. One of the images of the Parthenon has survived. It depicts a temple with 8 Doric columns, the location of the metopes - epistilia - is accurately indicated, and the frieze with the missing central metope - listae parietum - is correctly depicted. The building is very elongated, and the sculptures on the pediment depict a scene that is not similar to the dispute between Athena and Poseidon. This is a 15th century lady with a pair of rearing horses, surrounded by Renaissance angels. The description of the Parthenon itself is quite accurate: the number of columns is 58, and on the metopes, which are better preserved, as Cyriacus correctly suggests, a scene of the struggle of the centaurs with the Lapita is depicted. Cyriacus of Ancona also owns the very first description of the sculptural frieze of the Parthenon, which, as he believed, depicts the Athenian victories of the era of Pericles.

Mosque

Story

Reconstructions and decoration

Most detailed description The Parthenon from the Ottoman period belongs to Evliya Çelebi, a Turkish diplomat and traveler. He visited Athens several times throughout the 1630s and 1640s. Evliya Celebi noted that the conversion of the Christian Parthenon into a mosque did not greatly affect its internal appearance. The main feature of the temple remained the canopy over the altar. He also described that the four columns of red marble that supported the canopy were polished to a shine. The floor of the Parthenon is made of polished marble slabs up to 3 m each. Each of the blocks that decorated the walls was masterfully combined with the other in such a way that the border between them is invisible to the eye. Celebi noted that the panels on the eastern wall of the temple are so thin that they are able to transmit sunlight. This feature was also mentioned by Spohn and J. Wehler, who suggested that in fact this stone is phengite, a transparent marble, which, according to Pliny, was the favorite stone of the Emperor Nero. Evliya recalls that the silver inlay of the main doors of the Christian temple was removed, and antique sculptures and the paintings are covered with white, although the layer of white is thin and the subject of the painting can be seen. Next, Evliya Celebi gives a list of characters, listing the heroes of pagan, Christian and Muslim religions: demons, Satan, wild animals, devils, sorceresses, angels, dragons, antichrists, cyclops, monsters, crocodiles, elephants, rhinoceroses, as well as Cherub, archangels Gabriel, Seraphim, Azrael, Michael, the ninth heaven, on which the throne of the Lord is located, the scales weighing sins and virtues.

Evliya does not describe the mosaics made of gold pieces and shards of multi-colored glass, which would later be found during excavations on the Acropolis of Athens. However, the mosaic is mentioned in passing by J. Spon and J. Wehler, describing in more detail the images of the Virgin Mary in the apse behind the altar, which survived from the previous Christian era. They also talk about a legend according to which the Turk who shot at the fresco of Mary lost his hand, so the Ottomans decided not to harm the temple anymore.

Although the Turks had no desire to protect the Parthenon from destruction, they also had no intention of completely distorting or destroying the temple. Since it is impossible to accurately determine the time of overwriting the Parthenon metopes, the Turks could continue this process. However, overall they carried out less destruction of the building than the Christians a thousand years before Ottoman rule, who transformed the majestic antique temple to the Christian Cathedral. As long as the Parthenon served as a mosque, Muslim worship took place surrounded by Christian paintings and images of Christian saints. The Parthenon was not subsequently rebuilt and its present appearance has remained unchanged since the 17th century.

Destruction

The peace between the Turks and the Venetians did not last long. A new Turkish-Venetian war began. In September 1687, the Parthenon suffered its most terrible blow: the Venetians, under the leadership of Doge Francesco Morosini, captured the Acropolis fortified by the Turks. On September 28, the Swedish general Koenigsmark, who was at the head of the Venetian army, gave the order to fire at the Acropolis from cannons on Philopappou Hill. When the cannons fired at the Parthenon, which served the Ottomans as a gunpowder storehouse, it exploded, and part of the temple instantly turned into ruins. In previous decades, Turkish gunpowder magazines were repeatedly blown up. In 1645, a warehouse built in the Propylaea of ​​the Acropolis was struck by lightning, killing Disdar and his family. In 1687, when Athens was attacked by the Venetians together with the army of the allied Holy League, the Turks decided to locate their ammunition, as well as hide children and women, in the Parthenon. They could rely on the thickness of the walls and ceilings or hope that the Christian enemy would not fire at the building, which had served as a Christian temple for several centuries.

Judging by the traces of shelling on the western pediment alone, about 700 cannonballs hit the Parthenon. At least 300 people died, their remains were found during excavations in the 19th century. The central part of the temple was destroyed, including 28 columns, a fragment of a sculptural frieze, and interior spaces that once served as a Christian church and mosque; the roof in the northern part has collapsed. The western pediment turned out to be almost undamaged, and Francesco Morosini wanted to take its central sculptures to Venice. However, the scaffolding used by the Venetians collapsed during the work, and the sculptures collapsed, falling to the ground. Several fragments of fragments were nevertheless taken to Italy, the rest remained on the Acropolis. From this time on, the history of the Parthenon becomes the history of ruins. The destruction of the Parthenon was witnessed by Anna Ocherjelm, lady-in-waiting of the Countess of Königsmarck. She described the temple and the moment of the explosion. Shortly after the final surrender of the Turks, while walking along the Acropolis, among the ruins of a mosque, she found an Arabic manuscript that was transferred by Anna Ocherjelm's brother to the library of the Swedish city of Uppsala. Therefore, after its two-thousand-year history, the Parthenon could no longer be used as a temple, since it was destroyed much more than one can imagine from its current appearance - the result of many years of reconstruction. John Pentland Magaffee, who visited the Parthenon several decades before restoration work began, noted:

From a political point of view, the destruction of the Parthenon had minimal consequences. A few months after the victory, the Venetians gave up power over Athens: they did not have enough forces to further defend the city, and the plague epidemic made Athens completely unattractive to invaders. The Turks again established a garrison on the Acropolis, albeit on a smaller scale, among the ruins of the Parthenon, and erected a new small mosque. It can be seen on the first of famous photographs temple, created in 1839.

From destruction to reconstruction

Early explorers of the Parthenon included the British archaeologist James Stewart and architect Nicholas Revett. Stuart first published drawings, descriptions and drawings with measurements of the Parthenon for the Society of Dilettantes in 1789. In addition, it is known that James Stewart collected a considerable collection of ancient antiquities from the Acropolis of Athens and the Parthenon. The cargo was sent by sea to Smyrna, after which the trace of the collection is lost. However, one of the fragments of the Parthenon frieze, removed by Stuart, was found in 1902 buried in the garden of the Colne Park estate in Essex, which was inherited by the son of Thomas Astle, an antiquarian and trustee of the British Museum.

The legal side of the matter still remains unclear. The actions of Lord Elgin and his agents were regulated by the Sultan's firman. Whether they contradicted him is impossible to establish, since the original document has not been found, only its translation into Italian, made for Elgin at the Ottoman court, is known. In the Italian version, it is allowed to measure and sketch sculptures using ladders and scaffolding; create plaster casts, dig up fragments buried under the soil during the explosion. The translation does not say anything about permission or prohibition to remove sculptures from the facade or pick up those that have fallen. It is known for certain that already among Elgin’s contemporaries, the majority criticized at least the use of chisels, saws, ropes and blocks for removing sculptures, since in this way the surviving parts of the building were destroyed. The Irish traveler, author of several works on ancient architecture, Edward Dodwell wrote:

Independent Greece

Duveen Hall at the British Museum, which displays the Elgin Marbles

However, official archaeological policy remained unchanged until the 1950s, when a proposal to remove a staircase from a medieval tower at the western end of the Parthenon was abruptly rejected. At the same time, a program to restore the appearance of the temple was unfolding. Back in the 1840s, four columns of the northern facade and one column of the southern facade were partially restored. 150 blocks were returned to their place in the walls of the interior of the temple, the rest of the space was filled with modern red brick. The work was most intensified by the 1894 earthquake, which largely destroyed the temple. The first cycle of work was completed in 1902, its scale was quite modest, and it was carried out under the auspices of a committee of international consultants. Until the 1920s and for a long time Afterwards, chief engineer Nikolaos Balanos worked without external control. It was he who began the restoration program, designed for 10 years. It was planned to completely restore the internal walls, strengthen the gables and install plaster copies of the sculptures removed by Lord Elgin. In the end, the most significant change was the reproduction of the long sections of colonnades that connected the east and west facades.

Diagram showing blocks of individual columns from the ancient era, Manolis Korres

Thanks to the Balanos program, the destroyed Parthenon acquired its modern look. However, since the 1950s, after his death, his achievements have been repeatedly criticized. First, no attempt was made to return the blocks to their original location. Secondly, and most importantly, Balanos used iron rods and clamps to connect the antique marble blocks. Over time, they rusted and warped, causing the blocks to crack. In the late 1960s, in addition to the problem of the Balanos fastenings, the effects of environmental influences became clear: air pollution and acid rain damaged the sculptures and reliefs of the Parthenon. In 1970, a UNESCO report proposed a variety of ways to save the Parthenon, including confining the hill under glass cover. Eventually, in 1975, a committee was established to oversee the preservation of the entire complex of the Acropolis of Athens, and in 1986 work began to dismantle the iron fastenings used by Balanos and replace them with titanium ones. In the period -2012, the Greek authorities plan to restore the western facade of the Parthenon. Some elements of the frieze will be replaced with copies, the originals will be transported to the exhibition of the New Acropolis Museum. The chief engineer of the work, Manolis Korres, considers the first priority to be to patch up the holes left by bullets fired at the Parthenon in 1821 during the Greek Revolution. Also, restorers must assess the damage caused to the Parthenon by strong earthquakes in 1999. As a result of the consultations, it was decided that by the time the restoration work was completed, the remains of the apse from the Christian era could be seen inside the temple, as well as the pedestal of the statue of the goddess Athena Parthenos; Restorers will pay no less attention to the traces of Venetian cannonballs on the walls and medieval inscriptions on the columns.

In world culture

The Parthenon is one of the symbols not only of ancient culture, but also of beauty in general.

Modern copies

Nashville Parthenon

The creators of the Athenian Acropolis undoubtedly knew about the special purpose and existence of the Parthenon. Universal truths always break through from the heights of their existence and become reality in the actions of creators endowed with the Divine prophetic gift. Moreover, the meaning of secret knowledge may even be unknown to them. It is enough that they are creators acting in accordance with the intentions of the Higher Powers.

The creators of the Athenian Acropolis could not help but belong to people for whom secret knowledge was revealed, because otherwise the path of appearance into the world would have been prohibited for the divinely beautiful buildings. At the same time, the authors had to be in a free search - to independently choose what they should or should not do.

Cicero wrote about Phidias: “When he created Athena and Zeus, he had no earthly original in front of him that he could use. But in his soul lived that prototype of beauty, which he embodied in matter. It is not without reason that they say about Phidias that he worked in a fit of inspiration, which lifts the spirit above everything earthly, in which the divine spirit is directly visible - this heavenly guest, as Plato puts it.”

Phidias possessed a lot of knowledge, for example, from the field of optics. A story has been preserved about his rivalry with Alcamenes: both were ordered statues of Athena, which were supposed to be erected on high columns. Phidias made his statue in accordance with the height of the column - on the ground it seemed ugly and disproportionate. The people almost stoned him. When both statues were erected on high pedestals, the correctness of Phidias became obvious, and Alkamen was ridiculed.

Many people believe that " Golden ratio“was designated in algebra by the Greek letter φ precisely in honor of Phidias, the master who embodied this relationship in his works.

Phidias's fame was colossal, but most of his works have not survived, and we can judge them only from copies and descriptions of ancient authors.

The current study of the Parthenon using a kind of “drawing drawing board”, which designers used in the pre-computer era, allows us to be irrefutably strictly and accurately convinced of the different sizes of ALL columns and ALL intercolumnia (intercolumn spaces), which only seem the same and are placed perpendicularly. There is not a single figure in this poem of numbers, which would be identical in comparison with others and would be in an identical position. All columns have a common slope towards the center of the colonnade and this slope varies depending on the space occupied in general series. The slope is very small - from 6.5 cm to 8.3 cm, but it is concentric in nature, and this construction of columnar rows involves the colonnades in a common "force converging at one point." Where is this point? Somewhere where the Gods reign. We draw conclusions from the general curvature discovered by research preceding the latest restoration of the temple...

IN THE PARTHENON - A SYMBOL OF THE IMMACURABILITY OF COMMON FOUNDATIONS -
THERE IS NOTHING THAT IS NOT VARIABLE AND PERMANENT.
OF COURSE, ETERNITY IS SEALED IN THE PARTHENON, BUT SPECIAL:
NOT AN ABSTRACT ABSOLUTE, BUT LIVING LIFE.

THIS ENDOWS THE PARTHENON WITH THAT PERFECTION
WHAT MAKES HIM INTO A SPIRITUAL BEING—
THE EARTHLY AND THE DIVINE ARE INSEPARATELY.

ACCORDINGLY, THE PARTHENON BECOMES THE POWER THAT
WHAT LINKES TWO WORLDS: GODS AND PEOPLE,
OR EXISTENTIAL AND CO-EXISTENTIAL, HEAVENLY AND EARTHLY,
PERFECT AND RELATIVE, ETERNAL AND CURRENT...

THE EXISTENCE OF THE PARTHENON ITSELF IS TRAGICAL,
AND THIS TRAGEDY IS THAT HE FLOats.
BELONGING TO NEITHER THE REAL NOR THE UNREAL WORLDS.
IS THERE A PARTHENON, IS IT HERE? HE IS NO LONGER, HE IS THERE...
WITH THE LOSS OF THE PARTHENON AT THE EPICENTER OF WORLD CULTURE
A VOID IS FORMED, WHICH ASPIRATION WILL DO
TO ACHIEVE TRUTH AND GOOD IS EMPTY - VAIN.

WE ALL COME FROM HELLAS -
WE ARE GENETICALLY CONNECTED WITH HER FOREVER.

All structural elements of the Parthenon, including the roof of the roof and the steps of the stylobate, were hewn from local Pentelic marble, almost white immediately after extraction, but over time acquiring a warm yellowish tint. No mortar or cement was used and the masonry was done dry. The blocks were carefully adjusted to each other, the horizontal connection between them was maintained with the help of I-beam iron fasteners, and the vertical connection with the help of iron pins.

All this is very interesting, but does not help much in understanding the artistic content of the Parthenon. This method of construction made it possible to achieve mathematical and geometric precision of the temple, which captivates the mind as an elegant solution to a theorem.

This is how it should be, because it cannot be otherwise. All the straight lines that make up the Parthenon are only relative straight lines, like all straight lines in life. The same can be said about circles and proportions. The mathematics of the material Parthenon is nothing more than the desire for mathematical perfection: there is no other accuracy in it than the accuracy of the real world, known by man and reproduced by art - it is always relative and moving.

Recent studies of the Parthenon bring us closer to understanding the mystery that raises the method of its construction above I-beams and iron pins...

Ancient sources call Phidias the leader of the work on creating the large and varied sculptural decoration of the Parthenon. That was the time when the Acropolis lay in ruins, built up before the Greco-Persian wars with religious buildings, decorated with many dedicatory statues. Speaking at the National Assembly, Pericles proposed to the Athenians: “The city is sufficiently supplied with what is necessary for war, so the surplus in funds should be used for buildings , which, after their completion, will bring immortal glory to the citizens, and during the work will improve their financial situation.”

For the Acropolis, Phidias made a colossal bronze statue of the goddess Athena-Promachos, the patroness and defender of the city. Phidias created directly for the Parthenon...

A twelve-meter statue of the goddess Athena Parthenos in an extremely expensive and complex chrysoelephantine technique: the base is wood, the coating is gold and ivory.

Multi-figure compositions from round sculpture that filled deep (0.9 meters) triangular pediments: the eastern one - “The Birth of Athena from the Head of Zeus”, the western one - “The dispute between Athena and Poseidon for primacy in Attica.”

High reliefs for the 92 metopes, or square panels, located between the triglyphs of the frieze above the outer colonnade.

A bas-relief strip or frieze of the cella, which depicted the “Panathenaic procession” presenting Athena with a new robe - peplos. The total length of the frieze is 160 meters, height is 1 meter, the elevation from the stylobate is 11 meters, in total there were about 350 foot and 150 horse figures in the frieze.

Phidias created works that were perfect in their artistic form, majestic and at the same time simple and understandable to everyone. The creations of Phidias are highest peak in the history of the development of sculpture. The influence of the work of the ancient Greek master is noticeable in European sculpture from ancient times to the present day.

The friezes running along the northern and southern sides of the cella show horsemen, chariots, and citizens of Athens moving from west to east, and closer to the head of the procession - musicians, people with gifts, sacrificial sheep and bulls.

Despite the fact that not a single movement motif is ever repeated exactly, the entire frieze as a whole is characterized by rhythmic and plastic unity. The movement either speeds up or slows down, the figures come closer, almost merging with each other, or the space between them expands. The undulating rhythm of movement permeates the entire frieze.

The three fragments that have survived from the multi-figure composition of the eastern pediment are undoubted masterpieces. Both the lying youth (God Dionysus?) and the Goddess Iris are characterized by naturalness and majesty of poses. The young man reclines like God. The Virgin runs like a Goddess. The male figures are naked, the female figures are dressed in tunics with these breathtaking folds, which make it possible to reproduce the play of light and shadow, the lightness of the airy, freely playing fabric, which coincides with the movement, or manifests it, or determines it.

Undoubtedly, the sculpture of the Parthenon, combined with the architecture of the temple, is one of the highest examples ancient synthesis arts

Time has not preserved all the sculptures - Time has spared us,
for whom the contemplation of such works of art,
as a transition to the World where Perfection reigns supreme.

In the triglyph-metope frieze of the Parthenon, four themes were presented: gigantomachy - the battle of the Olympian gods with the giants, centauromachy - the battle of the Greek Lapiths with the centaurs, Amazonomachy - the battle of the Greeks with the Amazons, the fourth - the battle between participants in the Trojan War. According to the theme, the heavenly hierarchy is first established; then people enter into battle with wild creatures - centaurs: half-human, half-animal; then the Greeks fight the barbarians; Finally, they enter into battle with their equal heroes.

Into one semantic series gods, Lapiths and Greeks are placed, in the other - giants, centaurs and Trojans. A single idea runs through all the plots: the struggle of light, goodness and civilization with the forces of darkness, savagery and backwardness. At the same time, all these myths contained an allegory of the struggle and victory of the Greeks over the Persians, clearly understood by contemporaries.

The Greeks did not always win. In the metope on display, a triumphant centaur rushes over a defeated enemy. How is it possible? The Greeks dramatize everything. Without dramatization, life for them is devoid of tension, which means
and interest.

The Lapiths were a Thessalian tribe that lived in the mountains and forests of Ossa and Pelion. They trace their origins to Peneus (the god of the river of the same name in Thessaly), whose daughter Stilba gave birth to a son, Lapith, from Apollo.

The battle, depicted in the surviving metopes, began during the wedding of the king of the Lapith tribe, Pirithous. Centaurs were invited to the wedding. Having drunk, they rushed at the women. And a battle began in which no one wanted to give in to the other. This is at the event level. In the existential sense they fought ideal heroes and wild creatures...

Another relief depicts a middle-aged centaur hugging a Greek woman and trying to gallop away with her. Most often, centaurs and lapiths are depicted in the midst of a struggle.

And here is an even more furious scene: the centaur swings, and the lapith stops his hand and pushes him away with his foot. The advantage of the Greeks is undeniable: be that as it may, in most compositions, victory is on their side.

The surviving metopes are two-figure compositions characterized by a variety of movements and motifs. They are done by different masters, since in some of the metopes there is a sharp angularity of movement and emphasized transmission of individual details, in others there is a natural and free reproduction of real action and a sense of proportion, preserving the harmony of the image of a perfect person.

The frieze (zophorus) of the Parthenon gives a clear idea of ​​the features of the construction of the classical relief: all the plans into which the relief is divided run parallel to the plane of the wall and to each other. The parallelization of numerous figures does not cause a feeling of monotony, since it is removed by changing plans and the rhythmic construction of the whole - wave-like. The beginning of the movement - peak - decline before the next start.

If only one could see the frieze as a whole. Its approximate reconstructions are created.

Please note, the portrait of the sacrificial bull is incredibly beautiful. The animal is beautiful in its mature state. The animal knows about the fate ahead of it. And he does not resist what is about to happen to him. The animal is just looking for participation. This request sounds in the bend of his powerful neck (neck), in his gaze, but... People are indifferent to such requests, because...

The main event of the Panathenaia was a mass sacrifice, during which up to a hundred bulls were slaughtered. That is why this bloody ritual was called “hecatomb” (literally “a hundred bulls”). In honor of the hecatomb, the month of the Panathenaia was called Hecatombeon - and it was with it that the year began in Athens. The beginning of the month was taken to be the first new moon after the summer solstice.

Due to the discrepancy between the solar and lunar cycles, the beginning of the “Hecatombeon” occurred at different times in different years, but in most cases it fell in August.

A hundred bulls in the procession change its contents -
Phidias does not divert attention to this side of Panathenaia.

No less beautiful is the strict procession of Athenian girls, whose long clothes form measured folds, reminiscent of the flutes of the columns of the Parthenon. The girls, who left their gyneceae for such a holiday and are bashfully wrapped in clothes, are adorned with their chastity, which is manifested in their restrained gait.

Above the entrance to the Temple on its eastern facade are the gods looking at the procession. People and gods are depicted as equally beautiful. The spirit of citizenship made it possible for the Athenians to proudly assert the aesthetic equality of the image of man with the images of the divine Olympians.

The central group of the procession, consisting of the priest and priestess of Athena with young servants. The priest accepts the folded peplos. The priestess also takes something. The external purpose of the process of ascent to the Athena Parthenos took place.

The sculptural decoration of the Parthenon is completed by a relief frieze, the so-called zophorus. It shows the solemn procession during the feast of the Great Panathenaia, in which both the citizens of Athens and the Athenian metics and allied delegations took part.

The Parthenon frieze is considered one of the pinnacles of classical art. It amazes with its diversity: out of five hundred figures of young men - on foot and on horseback, elders, girls, sacrificial animals, not one repeats the other. With all the variety of plastic movements, the frieze is distinguished by compositional unity.

We can distinguish four meaningfully defined parts in the frieze... First: preparation for movement in the western part of the frieze - above the end portico of the cella. The second and third parts: the actual movement in the friezes stretching along the northern and southern sides of the cella. The fourth - final - part: the scene of the transfer of peplos to the priest and priestess of Athena in the presence of the gods and official representatives from Athenian citizens.

In the scene of preparation for the procession, the movements of the young men, tying straps on sandals, cleaning horses, or simply standing in anticipation, are calm. Only occasionally is this calm shaded sudden movement a rearing horse or some swift gesture of a young man. When the preparations are over and the procession itself begins, the movement develops faster and faster...

The holes in the frieze make us remember that all the figures were painted, and the harness of the horses was copper. In our time, the procession has turned into a wondrous vision, woven from light and shadow.

Particularly remarkable is the line of galloping horsemen, in which the movement, powerful in its unity, is made up of an infinite variety of similar, but not repeating movements of individual figures. This is the first time that not only gods or heroes are depicted on the frieze of the temple, but also ordinary citizens. Both Pericles and Phidias wanted it that way!

And here’s what’s characteristic: the faces of the riders are impassive - there are no smiles or glimpses of joy on them. This means that people, approaching the Gods (who are waiting for them at the end of the frieze), take on such a detached expression. They cannot help but accept, because they have to experience the moment of transition from their own - co-existential world - to another - the Existential world. And this detachment shows a lot...

DETACHMENT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS:
SOUL CLEANSING AND STRENGTHENING POWER OF SPIRIT.
PEOPLE CAN'T GET CLOSER TO GODS
WITHOUT BECOME IDEAL CREATURES LIKE THEM.

THIS IS EXACTLY THE MAIN MEANING OF THE “CELEBRATIONS” AS OPENLY EXPRESSED BY FIDIA FRIZE.

Researchers have come to the conclusion that Phidias carved most of the sculptures and reliefs of the Parthenon with his own hands. It was he who created, or at least according to his design, a frieze running in a continuous belt along the cella of the Temple. His chisel depicted here with a simplicity that makes the heart skip a beat, how much the participants in the procession, as they ascend to the Gods, approach the Ideal, cleansing themselves of everything vain, rising above the ordinary.

The Phidias Frieze is a story about the highest purpose and meaning of the “Panathenaic Celebrations”, irrefutable for those who do not take Architecture at its word...

Among the mythological subjects there were also scenes that directly reflected modern life in Athens.
This is how Phidias depicted the chariots of riders competing in dexterity. Already contemporaries spoke about the inexhaustible imagination of Phidias.

To the right and left of central plot with the donation, four male figures are depicted leaning on staves (thick wooden sticks). They are awaiting the arrival of the procession. Most likely, these are the persons responsible for holding the Panathenaia and acting as intermediaries between the participants in the procession and the Gods.

On the sides of the end frieze are figures of the most important gods of the Greek pantheon. They are divided into two groups and turned to face outward, towards the corners of the building, to make it easier to observe the approach of the procession. Researchers name the names of the Gods. I do not give their attributions, because they do not add anything to the essence...

Gods and people are depicted as equally beautiful.
That spirit of citizenship gave the Athenians the right to proudly assert the aesthetic equality of Man and Olympian.

The differences between Gods and people make themselves felt in one thing: the Gods sit, people stand before them. Did the author of the frieze believe in his contemporaries because he was a friend of Pericles, the most perfect of Athenian citizens?

Phidias conveyed in mythical figures his own living sense of faith in the triumph of the human mind, due to the inherent beauty of people.

The ideal beauty and deep humanity of the Gods and Goddesses he depicted not only pleased the eye, but also inspired confidence that contemporaries were able to rise above everyday life. This was the enormous educational significance of Phidias’s art.

Are contemporaries capable of becoming equal to Gods? This is a utopia that must be paid for. Such retribution was the end of the life of the great Phidias.

Plutarch writes in his “Life of Pericles”... Phidias was accused of concealing the gold from which the cloak of Athena Parthenos was made. The artist’s justification was very simple: the gold was removed from the base and weighed, no shortage was found (Phidias attached the removable gold plates on the advice of Pericles so that they could be weighed at any time).

The next accusation caused much more trouble. The sculptor was accused of insulting the deity: on the shield of Athena, among other sculptures, Phidias placed his profile and Pericles. The sculptor was thrown into prison, where he committed suicide, either from poison or from deprivation and grief. Plutarch writes: “The glory of his works loomed over Phidias.” Let us add - unbearable for contemporaries.

A crater on Mercury is named after Phidias.

A large multi-figure group placed in the tympanum of the eastern pediment was dedicated to the myth of the miraculous birth of the Goddess of Wisdom Athena from the head of Zeus.
The goddess, fully armed, jumped out of Zeus's head after the blacksmith god Hephaestus cut his head with an ax.

How Phidias saw this moment is unknown: in the center of the tympanum, during the Christianization of Athens, a window was broken through, also with an ax, apparently. Fragments remained from the entire group, allowing us to judge only the highest artistic level of the sculptures that filled the tympanum.

The pediment, dedicated to the theme of the miraculous birth of the Goddess - the patroness of Athens - and the solemn image of Olympus, was the main one, for it ended the procession and the transfer of peplos to the priest of Athena took place.

In the pediments, the principle of unity of architecture with sculpture is observed: the arrangement of the figures is natural, but at the same time they are included in a composition strictly defined by the architectural form. This makes itself felt in the presence of two compositional “triangles” - left and right.

In the “triangles” the theme of the presence of the Gods in Heaven and Earth is developed... It would seem that on Olympus there is a dispute over the possession of the Earth, but no sharp gesture can be found among the participants in the showdown. On the contrary, the sitting and lying divine figures are characterized by apathy: their perfect muscles are in a state of complete rest. And this is where Phidias’s insight makes itself felt: the power of the Gods, expressed in any action, would testify to its limitations; in the absolute peace of unused power, the limitlessness of the possibilities of the Gods and Goddesses is revealed. They don't make any effort because they can do anything. The gods contemplate what is happening and that is enough.

A different perspective and a picture telling about the internal state of the Gods changes. Again these folds of chitons on divine bodies... The folds are like the turbulence of waters: they pour, overthrow in streams, turn into a lace of sea foam. They testify: if necessary, even here - on Olympus - a storm can break out, as in the Ocean, which will turn the Universal peace into the whirling of the Deep, the Abyss.

No need…
May the limitless possibilities of the Gods
will remain unused...

The group on the western pediment of the Parthenon depicted the dispute between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attic land. According to the myth, the dispute was resolved by comparing the miracles that Poseidon and Athena could perform. Poseidon, striking a rock with his trident, brought out salty healing water from it. Athena created the olive tree - the basis of the agricultural prosperity of Attica. The gods recognized Athena's miraculous gift as more useful to people, and dominion over Attica was transferred to Athena.

The western pediment was the first to meet the solemn festive procession heading towards the Parthenon, reminding the Athenians of why Athena became the patroness of the country.

Phidias himself sculpted the figures of both pediments. Much has been lost forever. What remains testifies: it is difficult to imagine anything more beautiful than these female figures in free - natural - movement, emphasized by the folds of chitons flowing over their bodies.

Is the dispute taking place in Heaven? But there is no wind there, for where Eternity reigns there is no change. This means that the dispute is taking place on Earth. The gods descended to people so that here, being among them, they could solve earthly problems.

THE GODS DECEND TO PEOPLE. PEOPLE ASCEND TO THE GODS.
THE HARMONY OF THEIR COEXISTENCE TRIUMPHES.

It is very interesting that the sculpture, perceived by viewers only from the façade side, is made round, as if there were points of all-round viewing. What does it mean?

The image of the Gods is made not only for people,
but, above all, for the Gods themselves.
Phidias believes that the Gods, descending to Earth,
retain their inherent properties, for example - Omniscience...

This is a very consistent line of thought.
about the Divine essence, not subject to limitations
in any conditions: heavenly, earthly.
This is a manifestation of the limitations of human capabilities,
which can be overcome, but only in art.

Try to say that this horse is simple, earthly, and not a manifestation of the Divine essence of the creature closest to people of that time, in which all perfections are embodied? Is he telling us something? But we don’t hear or understand anything he says. thereby depriving oneself of communication with divinely beautiful creatures...

The current Parthenon may seem to some to be very dilapidated, very destroyed. It seems infinitely beautiful to me, because “the ruins reveal the truth.” The truth affirmed by the Parthenon boils down to a miracle thesis: true Beauty is the “beauty of simplicity.” But, the simplicity that represents final result extreme complexity, not captured by superficial vision - only by sense. The greatest work of human art cannot be anything else.

This feeling forced researchers of the art of Ancient Greece to search and find what the “complex simplicity” of the Parthenon was. As a result, the concept of “curvatura” arose - a change in the geometry and size of a building under the influence of their visual perception. An entire library, opened through the works of Vitruvius, is dedicated to the Parthenon curvatures.

According to them, the stylobate of the Temple rises slightly towards the center: the rise along the northern and southern facades is about 12 cm, along the eastern and western - 6.5 mm. The corner columns of the end facades are slightly inclined towards the middle, and the two middle ones, on the contrary, are inclined towards the corners. The extreme intercolumnia (the distance between the last and penultimate columns) are smaller than the ordinary ones. The diameter of the corner columns, visible against the sky, is slightly larger than the others, and in addition, in cross section they represent a complex figure, different from a circle. The trunks of all columns have a slight swelling in the middle - entasis. The front surface of the entablature is slightly inclined outward, and that of the pediment inward. What is the result?

WHEN REMOVING THE ABSOLUTE ACCURACY OF GEOMETRY AND DIMENSIONS
THE TEMPLE COMES TO LIFE: IT BECOME AN ANIMATE BEING—
TO THE SUFFERING AND CO-SUFFERING OTHERS...

The Parthenon is a Doric peripterus that stands on a stylobate of three marble steps with a total height of about 1.5 meters. The dimensions of the temple in plan (according to the stylobate) are 30.9 by 69.5 meters. The plan is based on the ratio of length to width, which is determined by the diagonal of the quadrilateral. The peripterus has 46 columns (8 + 8 + 15 + 15) each 10.4 meters high, with a diameter at the base of 1.9 meters.

Behind the columned rows of the periptera there is a cella - the internal premises or the temple itself. The external size of the cella is 21.7 by 59 meters. According to the space-planning solution, this is an amphiprostyle: a temple with two columned porticos on both end sides. Porticoes of six columns form the pronaos - the vestibule of the temple: eastern and western.

The cella was divided by a transverse wall into two rooms: the opisthodome and the naos. Opisthodomo (which means located at the back of the house) - closed room at the western end of the Parthenon with four columns in the center to support the covering. Gifts to the Goddess Athena were kept in the opisthodome.

In the ritual room of the cella - the naos - there were two rows of nine Doric columns, forming three naves, the middle of which was much wider and higher than the other two - the side ones. It is assumed that a second tier of Doric columns was erected above the lower row, to ensure the required height of the ceilings. In the central nave stood the statue of Athena Parthenos by Phidias.

There are suggestions that the columns in the pronaos and opisthodomos were Ionic. Then the total count becomes as follows: in the peripter - 46 large Doric columns, in the naos - 18 and 18 smaller Doric columns, in the pronaos - 12 Ionic columns (6 + 6), in the opisthodom - 4 Ionic columns. Conclusion…

WHETHER IONIC COLUMNS WERE USED OR NOT,
DORICA - IN THE FIGURATIVE SENSE, A MALE ORDER -
KEEPS A PRIORITY IN THE PARTHENON...

Relatively future fate temple it is known that around 298 BC. The Athenian tyrant Lacharus removed gold plates from the cult statue of Athena Parthenos to cover the cost of maintaining the army.

After the conquest of Greece by the Romans - in 146 BC. e. - Most of the sculptures of the Acropolis were taken to Rome.

In 426 AD. The Parthenon was converted into a Christian church, originally St. Sofia. Apparently, at the same time the statue of Athena Promachos was transported to Constantinople, where it subsequently died in a fire.

With the establishment of Orthodoxy in 666, the temple was re-dedicated in honor of the Most Holy Theotokos - “Panagia Athiniotissa”. Accordingly, its layout was changed. The eastern entrance, which once led to the ancient naos, was closed with an apse to build an altar there, and a window was cut in the center of the pediment with the sculpture. The western entrance became the only one. Since it led to the opisthodome, separated from the naos by a blank wall, it was necessary to cut through this wall as well. A bell tower was built on the southwestern corner of the temple.

After the Turkish conquest, around 1460, the building was converted into a mosque. In 1687, when the Venetian military leader F. Morosini was besieging Athens, the Turks used the Parthenon as a gunpowder warehouse, which led to disastrous consequences for the building: a red-hot cannonball flying into it caused an explosion that destroyed the entire middle part ancient temple. No repairs were carried out then; on the contrary, local residents They began to take away marble blocks to burn lime from them.

Appointed in 1799 British Ambassador to Ottoman Empire Lord Thomas Elgin received permission from the Sultan to export the sculptures. During 1802–1812, most of the surviving decoration of the Parthenon was transported to Great Britain, with great difficulty and loss, and later acquired by the British Museum.

In 1928, after Greece gained independence, a foundation was created with the goal of replacing the fallen columns and entablature blocks. On May 15, 1930, the northern colonnade was inaugurated.

I will specify the content of the two curvatures...

The three corner columns form an independent ensemble. The outermost column (the middle of the three), in reality tilted inward, visually appears completely vertical. This illusion makes it possible to more clearly reveal the main load-bearing function of the columns, instilling in viewers confidence in the strength and durability of the temple.

The trunk of the corner column itself (the middle one of the three) is more massive so that it can overcome the brightness of the lighting, which mainly falls on it and makes it thinner against the sky. This is particular. There is also the main thing...

PERIPTERAL PARTHENON WITH 46 COLUMNS
OF THE HEIGHTS AND ARCHITECTS FOUND,
KEEPS THE SPACE ABOVE THE CITY RELATIVE
YOURSELF - YOUR OWN CENTER.
THE SPACE ABOVE THE ACROPOLIS IS FREEZING...
THE SPACE ABOVE THE ACROPOLIS FLOWS...
THE SPACE ABOVE THE ACROPOLIS CONNECTS
THE PEACE OF THE ATHENIANS WITH THE PEACE OF THE GODS WHOM THEY REVERENCE...

THE PARTHENON, ACROPOLIS, ATHENS BECOME A PHENOMENON
NOT ONLY UNIQUE FOR ATTICA.
THEY ARE THE EPICENTER OF THAT ARTISTIC POWER,
WHAT WORKS IN THE EARTH'S COORDINATE SYSTEM...

THE RUIN DOES NOT HIDE THIS TRUTH, ON THE OPPOSITE—
SHE REVEALS IT LIKE A PREVIOUSLY HIDDEN SECRET.

Do I justify Time's neglect of the Past?
I prove the inability of Time to destroy Perfection...

The curvature, the content of which I want to demonstrate now, is more obvious than in other cases...

Judging by the arrangement of triglyphs and metopes on the frieze of the entablature, the last corner column is significantly moved closer to the previous one. Reason: an intercolumnium of the same size as the distance between all other columns would create a luminous void or rarefaction at the end of the row where there should be the greatest tension.

Perhaps now we can understand the meaning of another curvature... The four rows of slabs of the temple's stylobate are not of the same height: the first row, laid on the rock, is the lowest. The top one is the highest. The difference is minimal, more noticeable with your feet than with your eyes. But from a distance, all three steps seem equal and the top one does not give the impression that it was crushed under the weight of the building.

On the other hand, the surface of each step is not strictly horizontal, but slightly convex. A horizontal surface, when viewed from its edge, always appears exactly slightly concave in the middle. In order to dispel this optical illusion, a slight convexity was made. These are the subtleties at work when building a Temple so powerful in its materialized power...

Once again I will reproduce the graphic reconstruction of the Temple so that some statements can be made clearer...

Judging by the information just received, the Parthenon was a purely geometric creation. The temple was built from figures that arose as a result of the centuries-old experience of Hellenic architects, who for a long time searched for the best proportions between the length, width and height of the building, between the diameter of the column and its height, between the sizes of the columns and the distances between them (intercolumnia), between the diameter of the column at the base and diameter at its top...

And all this was done as if to deduce and confirm general rule: “A Greek temple has no dimensions, it has proportions.” And again: “Whether it is small or large, you never think about its size.” And what? A word from the biographer of Pericles, Plutarch, who lived in the 1st century AD. e., that is, five centuries after the “grandiose in size and inimitable in beauty” buildings of the Acropolis were created. Plutarch writes that they are “imbued with the breath of eternal youth, have an ageless soul.”

What do we think about when we look at the graphic reconstruction of the Temple, which presents everything that it was endowed with in the time of Plutarch? Geometry is not capable of creating Living being— it can only give an abstract idea of ​​a work of great art.

And yet, the coloring of the friezes and sculptures in the tympanums of the porticos, so difficult to perceive in our opinion, testifies that the love of philosophical beauty arose during the youth of the Hellenes, who thirsted in abundance creative forces not only simplicity, but also joy.

Please note that the coloring is four colors: blue - glorifies the beauty of the Sky, green - the beauty of the Earth, yellow - the power of the Sun, red - simply beautiful. Come to terms with the cancer... I can’t...

Parthenon sculpture in the British Museum. Part three: Ionian frieze August 24th, 2010

The Ionian frieze depicting the Panathenaic procession occupies the huge hall of the British Museum. Only a few of his slabs are now in other collections. Procession of Athenian girls from the eastern wall - in the Louvre: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Egastinai_frieze_Louvre_MR825.jpg
Poseidon, Apollo and Artemis - in the Acropolis Museum: http://ancientrome.ru/art/artwork/img.htm?id=1643
There are also several more slabs there. But only in the British Museum can one get a complete picture of this part of the Parthenon’s sculptural decoration.
In front of us is the corner of the western and southern walls. Male figure looks very strange: the body is depicted from the front, the legs are turned in one direction, the head in the other. The movement is thus stopped:

The length of the frieze that ran along the walls of the temple cella, behind the columns, is 160 meters, its height is 1 meter.
Preparations for the procession were depicted on the western wall. Some characters are already driving, some are standing. The flow of the main movement is directed to the left, but some figures are directed to the right. In this part of the frieze we see only men:

Now on the Parthenon itself there are copies of the reliefs. This is what the western façade looks like:

The Panathenaic procession on the frieze is an image, not a detailed document. Sculptors depict the most important things without going into details. The procession of the Athenians bifurcates: along the southern and northern walls, mortal people move towards the gods.

The sculptors depict horsemen with special pleasure. The procession is multifaceted. On the frieze everything is flattened, sometimes, like knots, you have to untangle the legs of horses and riders. In the next room there is a special multimedia program that transforms the planar image on the frieze into a spatial one. Very exciting! By the way, when everything was painted, the plans were separated more clearly.

To the extent that the movement of the horses and the postures of the riders are individualized, all the young men are so similar. Just brothers! The ideal type dominates, nothing personal.
This is not the army of Qin Shi Huangdi.

What was the Panathenaic procession depicted on the frieze?
“The holiday was many days, solemn and magnificent; he demanded the presence of all Athenians (and from the time of Peisistratus, formally, all Hellenes). His main rite was to bring from lower city new fire. They took it from the Academus grove, planted under Cleisthenes at the end of the 6th century. BC e. Torches were lit on the altar of Eros or Prometheus, and young men assigned to each of the ten Athenian phyla (territorial units) carried it in a relay race to the Acropolis. The winner received a strange prize: hydria with water. However, in the ritual of cosmogony it is quite natural: after all, this “water” is the parent of “fire”. The act of bringing fire was at night - in accordance with the night ritual of the passions of the sun god in the underwater world.
Early in the morning, at sunrise, a procession was drawn up near the Athens cemetery Ceramics. It included all full-fledged citizens, except slaves - indigenous people and Meteca migrants, old men, boys and girls. At the head was a girl-priestess with a ritual basket-kanun, in which a knife was hidden among the barley intended to feed the victim animal. Next, at the beginning of the procession, came the tallophores - noble elders in white robes, with flowering branches in their hands. The indigenous Athenians carried two diphros - solemn thrones without backs - for the gods. They were followed by sacrificial animals, cows and sheep, accompanied by young men and musicians, followed by metics in purple robes - men carried heavy boat-shaped scaphoses with honeycombs and other gifts to the gods and hydrias with water on their shoulders, women carried umbrellas. The third part, the tail of the procession, was made up of ephebe youths on horseback in black cloaks.” /Akimova L.I. The Art of Ancient Greece: Classics. – St. Petersburg: ABC-classics, 2007, p.184/

“The procession, approaching the Acropolis, took a model of a ship in the Prytaneum, the building where the city magistrates met, where it was kept state seal and other symbols of the Athenian polis. On the mast of the ship, a newly woven saffron peplos was fixed, fluttering and shining like the sun. At the entrance to the Acropolis, the ship was left below and the peplos was carried on the stulis mast removed from it; the ephebes on horseback dismounted. The rest of the procession climbed up the steep slope. Having reached the Parthenon, the procession split into two branches - one went around the temple from the north, the other from the south, and they met at the far end of the temple, where the Great Altar was located and where sacrifices were made. After the sacrifices, the central event of the holiday, the goddess was given a new peplos. With sunrise, the doors of the temple dissolved, and in the naos an extraordinary sight was revealed to the participants: they were greeted in all its splendor, illuminated by the first rays of the sun, by the colossal (about 12 m high) statue of Athena Parthenos by Phidias, made of gold and ivory. Previously, in the temple of Polyada, peplos was placed on the knees of the seated goddess. In the Parthenon, where the statue was standing, after the ceremony it entered the temple treasury. Then the multi-day agony began.” /Akimova L.I. The Art of Ancient Greece: Classics. – St. Petersburg: ABC-classics, 2007, p.185/

So far we have looked at the reliefs of the northern side. On the southern wall we see the same set of characters, they are just grouped differently.

Horsemen alternate with chariots:

Men lead sacrificial animals:

The East Frieze looks completely different. Here people come closer to the gods. The movement becomes slower and gradually people stop.

4 Travelleague
Frieze - an endless relief strip covering the main mass of the Parthenon:
about 350 foot and 150 horse figures going to the goddess on the last day of the Panathenaia.

Now everyone agrees that the temples did not remain white stone,
and that Athens is not the “childhood of humanity”, and that Winckelmann is not completely objective,
not to mention Kun. An honest “we don’t know how it happened” is better anyway,
than another illusion of understanding. The same Panathenaea - what was it for the Greeks?
A civic ritual for community cohesion? An outburst of religious feelings?
A holiday of breaking the everyday order? Panathenaic demonstration of workers?

How did they imagine the goddess and their relationship with her? Yellow peplos,
which the Athenian women had been weaving and embroidering for nine months to bring to the goddess -
Did he warm Athena or did he just symbolize something? There, in the cella of the Parthenon,
was there a statue of Athena? Or did Athena herself live there?

The Panathenaic procession is precisely depicted on the friezes -
You can watch and try to guess.

The Greeks are a sea people. It is important. The horses' legs here are like running waves.
The eye does not have time to linger on one point, it immediately slides further:
from the toes of the rider on the right, to the knees of his horse, to the hooves, to the other leg,
to the other knees. You realize after about three meters - oh, I didn’t have time to see the faces.

And here the waves encountered an obstacle. They huddled together, crowded together, a pause formed ahead -
the wave went on horseback: the face of a young man - the head of a horse - another horse - the lost head of another young man.
And the waves moved on.

It is clear that the horses are small - not Arabian horses, not Akhal-Teke horses.
The Greeks no longer remembered the time when horses were wild, and for some reason stubbornly associated them with the sea
and Poseidon. But they didn’t have time to come up with stirrups: it’s clear that the young Athenians
they sit on the backs of horses just like the boy who bathes the red horse in the Russian painting.

Cows and bulls also take part in the procession - as gifts to Athena from the city residents.

The stone is different. You wouldn’t guess it from the reproductions - from the reproductions
Almost all works of art seem ready-made to appear out of nowhere.
Here it is clear that the carvers were dealing with marble, which did not at all imply
transform into figures of people and horses. Lying to myself for thousands of years, obeying all the laws
only chemical and gravity - and suddenly it became a mane, a hand, an ear.

It can be seen that in places it is dense, hard, and the master cut the stone,
fighting his stubborn resistance, taking this resistance into account and overcoming it.
And in other places the stone crumbles, flakes, some destructive processes are taking place...

Here is a stone that has not retained the shape given by the sculptor.
Marble, of course, is a stronger thing than the paint layer of the Trinity, but it also ages.

Reason to quote Sergei Averintsev: “Beautiful and calm “Olympic” nudity,
never perceived as nakedness “shame”, as nakedness and defenselessness,
magnificent insofar as it is the nakedness of a free and full-fledged person,
protected in advance from humiliating pain, from torture...”

And again: “The Athenian sage knows for sure that he can be killed, but cannot be humiliated
gross physical violence that his measured speech at the trial would last so long,
how much he is guaranteed the rights of the accused, and no one will silence him by hitting him in the face
or eloquent lips (as happens in the New Testament narrative with Jesus
or with the Apostle Paul)."

“Let everyone be Greek in his own way! But let him be” - this is said about them,
in the 18th century.

“Man is the measure of all things” - this is what they said about themselves, twenty-three centuries earlier.

Enormous sums were allocated for the construction of the temple in Athens. The expenses were not in vain. The Parthenon still remains a pearl of world architecture. Its greatness has inspired and beckoned for 2,500 years.

City of the Warrior Goddess

The amazing city of Athens is located in Greece. He set the direction for democracy, developed philosophy, and formed the foundations of theater. Another of his achievements is the ancient Parthenon: outstanding monument ancient architecture, preserved to this day.

The city was named after the goddess of war and wisdom - Athena.

According to legend, she and the ruler of the seas, Poseidon, started a dispute about which of them the inhabitants would worship. The god of the oceans, to show his strength, hit the rock with his trident. A waterfall began to play there. So he wanted to save the townspeople from droughts. But the water was salty and became poisonous to the plants. Athena grew it, which produced oil, fruits and firewood. The goddess was chosen as the winner. The city was named after her.

Subsequently, the Parthenon was built in honor of the defender of the city. The Temple of Athena is located on the Acropolis, that is, in the upper city.

Customer of the Goddess House

Ancient Athens is one of the twelve independent cities of Attica (middle Greece). Its golden age occurred in the 5th century BC. e. Its ruler, Pericles, did a lot for the polis. The man was born into a family of Athenian aristocrats, although later he ardently supported democracy. Together with the people, he expelled the current leader from the city and took his throne. New policy and the mass of reforms that Pericles introduced made Athens a center of culture. It was on his initiative that the Parthenon Temple was founded.

One of the traditions of the Greeks was that shrines were built in specially designated places and had the general name Acropolis. This was the upper part of the city. It was fortified in case of enemy attack.

Predecessor of the Parthenon

The first temple of Athena was built in the middle of the 6th century BC. e. and was called Hekatompedon. It was defeated by the Persians in 480 BC. e. Since then, several more attempts have been made to build the shrine, but constant wars have ruined the budget.

The next person who managed to thank the goddess was Pericles. In 447 BC. e. Construction of the Parthenon Temple began. Greece was relatively calm at that time, the Persians finally retreated, and the monument on the Acropolis became a symbol of success and peace. It is worth noting that the construction was part of the ruler’s plans for the restoration of Athens. It is interesting that the funds that were spent on construction were borrowed by the ruler from the money that was collected by the allies for the war with the Persians.

Start of construction

At that time, the Acropolis was essentially a dumping ground for what was left of the walls of previous temples. Therefore, first we had to clear the hill area. The main shrine was in gratitude to Athena for her help in defeating enemies during the war. Often the goddess of military affairs was called Athena the Virgin. This is another answer to the question of what the Parthenon is. After all, from ancient Greek the word “parthenos” is translated as “maiden” or “virginity”.

The foundation became the remains of the building, everything that collapsed. Were invited to work best artists, engineers and sculptors of the time. The architectural geniuses Iktin and Kallikrates were called in to design it. According to the documents that remain, it is known that the first one developed the plan, and the second architect supervised the work. Their team worked on the temple for sixteen years. In 438 BC. e. they handed in the work. The building was consecrated that same year. In fact, sculptors worked until 432 BC. e. The finishing process was supervised by Pericles' close friend and artistic genius Phidias.

Temple phenomenon

Pericles was often accused of wastefulness. The Parthenon required enormous expenses. cost 450 silver talents. For comparison, for one such coin you could make a warship.

When the dissatisfied people rebelled, the ruler cheated. He stated that he would return the expenses, but then he would become the sole sponsor of the temple, and through the centuries his descendants would thank only him. The common people also wished for glory, agreed that the expenses should be charged to the townspeople, and no longer protested. By the way, it was from financial checks (at that time they were marble tablets) that researchers established all the dates.

I had to visit the Parthenon and the Christian shrine. During the Byzantine period (5th century), the place of worship of Athena was transformed into the Church of St. Mary.

The Turks did not know what the Parthenon was and what its main purpose was. In the 1460s, Athens passed into their hands, and the Church of Our Lady (i.e., the temple of the goddess of warriors) was converted into a mosque.

The year 1687 was fatal for Athena the Virgin. The Venetian ship hit the building with a cannonball and almost completely destroyed its central part. Architecture also suffered from the inept hands of art guardians. Thus, dozens of statues were broken when vandals and cultural defenders tried to remove them from the walls.

Features, attractions

At the beginning of the 19th century, Lord Elgin obtained permission from the Ottoman Sultan to transport the statue and wall carvings, which were preserved, to England. Thus, tens of meters of valuable stone material were saved. The architectural structure of the Parthenon, or rather parts of it, is still preserved in the British Museum in London. The Louvre and the Acropolis Museum also boast such exhibits.

Partial restoration began after the restoration of the country's independence. This happened on late XIX century. Then for the first time they tried to restore the original face of the Acropolis.

Today this unique place is being restored.

Ensemble of the upper city

The temple became the crown and glorified the Acropolis of Athens. The Parthenon is a classic of Ancient Greece. The room is spacious, surrounded on all sides by columns. No cement was used for construction; the masonry was dry. Each block is a perfect square. The blocks, which clearly corresponded to each other, were attached to iron pins. All marble slabs were perfectly polished.

The territory was divided. A place was allocated for storing the treasury. There was a separate room for the statue of Athena.

The main material is marble. It tends to turn golden under light, so its sunny side is yellower, while the other part has a grayish tint.

The heyday of the temple occurred during the heyday of Greece. After the fall of the country, the house of Athena also collapsed.

Chief guest of the temple

All sculptural work was carried out under the direction of the Greek sculptor and architect Phidias. But the most main part He decorated the temple himself. The center of the shrine and the crown of his work was the statue of the goddess. The Parthenon in Greece was famous because of it. The height was 11 meters.

Wood was used as a basis, but the figure was framed in gold and ivory. 40 talents worth of precious metal was used (this was equal to the weight of about a ton of gold). The miracle that Phidias created has not survived to this day, but it was recreated in detail. The image of the sculpture was engraved on coins, and hundreds of small statues of Athena (copies from the Parthenon) were ordered from temples from neighboring cities. All this became material for restoring the most accurate reproduction.

Her head was in a helmet, which did not cover her beauty. In his hand is a shield depicting a battle with the Amazons. According to one legend, the author embossed his portrait and the portrait of the customer there. In her palm she holds a statue of the goddess of victory in Ancient Greece - Nike. Compared to the big Athena, she seems tiny, although in fact her height is more than two meters.

In order to better understand what the Parthenon is and how much it corresponded to the then understanding of reality, you can read the myths of Greece. Athena was the only deity who stood in armor. She was often represented with a spear in her hand.

In 438-437 BC. e. Phidias completed work on the statue of Athena. Further, her fate was not easy. The author was accused of stealing gold. Subsequently, some of the expensive plates were removed and replaced with bronze. And in the 5th century, according to some evidence, it finally died in a fire.

Birth of a goddess

Every Greek knows what the Parthenon is and in whose honor it was built. The main temple of the ancient city was erected to glorify the wisdom and justice of its patron, the beautiful Athena.

The appearance of the goddess on Olympus is unusual. She was not born, but came out of the head of her father Zeus. This scene is depicted in the eastern wing of the temple.

Zeus, main god, was married for some time to the lord of the ocean, a woman named Metis. When his wife became pregnant, God was predicted that he would have two children. A daughter who will not be inferior to him in courage and strength, and a son who will be able to throw his father off the throne. By cunning, Zeus made his beloved shrink. When Metis became tiny, her husband swallowed her. With this act, God decided to outsmart fate.

The Parthenon Temple would not have existed if Athena had not been born. After some time, Zeus began to feel ill. The pain in his head was so severe that he asked his son Hephaestus to split his skull. He hit his father with a hammer, and an adult beautiful woman in armor came out of his head - Athena.

Subsequently, she became the patroness of warrior heroes and household crafts.

Temple - book of myths

The main wealth of the building is for future generations. Thus, each particle tells its own unique story: the birth of the goddess, love for the city and its attitude towards the heroes.

Unlike war, Athena strived for fair battles. She was a protector of warriors, helped cities where there were places of worship, and often accompanied heroes on their adventures. So, with her help, Perseus defeated Jason and the Argonauts, Athena built a ship on which they sailed for the Golden Fleece. This character is also often found on the pages about The goddess did a lot to ensure that Odysseus returned home. Her favorite in the Trojan War was Achilles, so scenes of these battles are depicted in the western part of the temple.

The Parthenon statues have been role models for many generations of artists.