for abbreviated copies of famous statues. The herm is inscribed
“Pericles, son of Xanthippos, the Athenian,” leaving no doubt as to
the identification. Pericles wears the helmet of a strategos (general),
the position he was elected to 15 times. The Athenian leader was said
to have had an abnormally elongated skull, and Kresilas recorded
this feature (while also concealing it) by providing a glimpse
through the helmet’s eye slots of the hair at the top of the head. This,
together with the unblemished features of Pericles’ Classically aloof
face and, no doubt, his body’s perfect physique, led Pliny to assert
that Kresilas had the ability to make noble men appear even more
noble in their portraits. This praise was apt because the Pericles
herm is not a portrait at all in the modern sense of a record of actual
features. Pliny referred to Kresilas’s “portrait” as “the Olympian Per-
icles,” for in this image Pericles appeared almost godlike.^2
PERICLEAN ACROPOLISThe centerpiece of the Periclean
building program on the Acropolis (FIG. 5-42) was the Parthenon
(FIG. 5-43,no. 1), or the Temple of Athena Parthenos, erected in the
remarkably short period between 447 and 438BCE. (Work on the
great temple’s ambitious sculptural ornamentation continued until
432 BCE.) As soon as the Parthenon was completed, construction
commenced on a grand new gateway to the Acropolis from the west
(the only accessible side of the natural plateau), the Propylaia (FIG.
5-43,no. 2). Begun in 437BCE, it was left unfinished in 431 at the
outbreak of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Two
later temples, the Erechtheion (FIG. 5-43,no. 4) and the Temple of
Athena Nike (FIG. 5-43,no. 5), built after Pericles died, were proba-
bly also part of the original design. The greatest Athenian architects
and sculptors of the Classical period focused their attention on the
construction and decoration of these four buildings.
That these fifth-centuryBCEbuildings exist at all today is some-
thing of a miracle. In the Middle Ages, the Parthenon, for example,
was converted into a Byzantine and later a Roman Catholic church
and then, after the Ottoman conquest of Greece, into a mosque. Each
time the building was remodeled for a different religion, it was mod-
ified structurally. The Christians early on removed the colossal statue
of Athena inside. The churches had a great curved apse at the east end
housing the altar, and the mosque had a minaret (tower used to call
Muslims to prayer). In 1687 the Venetians besieged the Acropolis,
which at that time was in Turkish hands. Venetian weaponry scored a
direct hit on the ammunition depot the Turks had installed in part of
the Parthenon. The resultant explosion blew out the building’s center.
To make matters worse, the Venetians subsequently tried to remove
some of the statues from the Parthenon’s pediments. In more than
one case, they dropped statues, which then smashed on the ground.
From 1801 to 1803, Lord Elgin brought most of the surviving sculp-
tures to England. For the past two centuries they have been on exhibit
in the British Museum (FIGS. 5-47to 5-50), although Greece has ap-
pealed many times for the return of the “Elgin Marbles.” Today, a
uniquely modern blight threatens the Parthenon and the other build-
ings of the Periclean age. The corrosive emissions of factories and au-
tomobiles are decomposing the ancient marbles. A major campaign
has been under way for decades to protect the columns and walls
from further deterioration. What little original sculpture remained in
place when modern restoration began, the Greeks transferred to the
Acropolis Museum’s climate-controlled rooms.
PARTHENON: ARCHITECTURE Despite the ravages of
time and humanity, most of the Parthenon’s peripteral colonnade
(FIG. 5-44) is still standing (or has been reerected), and art histori-
ans know a great deal about the building and its sculptural program.
The architects were Iktinosand Kallikrates.The statue of Athena
(FIG. 5-46) in the cella was the work ofPhidias,who was also the
overseer of the temple’s sculptural decoration. In fact, Plutarch
claimed that Phidias was in charge of the entire Acropolis project.
Just as the contemporary Doryphoros (FIG. 5-40) may be seen as
the culmination of nearly two centuries of searching for the ideal
proportions of the various human body parts, so, too, the Parthenon
may be viewed as the ideal solution to the Greek architect’s quest for
perfect proportions in Doric temple design. Its well-spaced columns,
with their slender shafts, and the capitals, with their straight-sided
conical echinuses, are the ultimate refinement of the bulging and
squat Doric columns and compressed capitals of the Archaic Hera
temple at Paestum (FIG. 5-15). The Parthenon architects and Poly-5-42Aerial view of the Acropolis looking southeast, Athens, Greece.
Under the leadership of Pericles, the Athenians undertook the costly
project of reconstructing the Acropolis after the Persian sack of 480BCE.
The funds came from the Delian League treasury.
126 Chapter 5 ANCIENT GREECE
5-43Restored view of the Acropolis, Athens, Greece (John Burge).
(1) Parthenon, (2) Propylaia, (3) pinakotheke, (4) Erechtheion,
(5) Temple of Athena Nike.
Of the four main fifth-centuryBCEbuildings on the Acropolis, the first
to be erected was the Parthenon, followed by the Propylaia, the
Erechtheion, and the Temple of Athena Nike.