Apart from the ravages of time, the building suffered two particular disasters.
The first occurred when it was converted into a Christian church in the fifth or sixth
century of the Christian era, resulting in the loss of the centre of the east pediment.
After the Turkish conquest of Greece in the fifteenth century ADit became a mosque,
but the second and greatest disaster occurred in AD1687 when it was used as an
arsenal by the Turks in their war with the Venetians and a large part of the centre of
the building was blown out.
Despite its incomplete state, much of the design of the original sculptures can
be reconstructed. A late Greek writer, Pausanias, who wrote a Description of Greece in
the second century ADwhen the building was still intact, records that the pediment
above the entrance represented the birth of Athena, while the other showed a contest
between Athena and Poseidon, god of the sea, for the land of Attica. Drawings by a
visiting artist made before AD1687 help to complete the picture of the pediments,
the sculptures of which were carved completely in the round with reclining figures at
the narrow end, then seated figures ascending to the principal standing figures at the
centre.
Many of the individual metopes, carved in relief, survive. The main subjects
appear to have been the battle between the gods and the giants on the east side, the
battle between the Greeks and the Amazons (female warriors) on the west, the battle
between the Lapiths and Centaurs (creatures who were half man and half horse) on
the south, with scenes from the sack of Troy on the north. None of these subjects has
any special connection with Athena, and these dramatic battle scenes, which were
also popular on other temples, evidently gave the craftsmen maximum scope in the
exercise of their art. It has also been argued that in the decorative sculptures as a
whole there are the recurrent themes of the triumph of reason over chaos and of
Hellenism over barbarism.
The subject of the inner frieze, where the upper part of the sculptures were
carved in higher relief to allow for the steep angle of view, is not from traditional myth,
and in this departure is an innovation. The frieze is wholly devoted to a representation
of the Pan-Athenaic procession, the annual festival held in honour of Athena in late
summer. Every four years came the Great Panathenaea, when the object of the even
more splendid ceremonial procession was to provide a new robe or peplos for the
goddess. Young Athenian horsemen dominate a large section of the frieze. There are
also groups of women representing celebrants. At a climactic point on the eastern
frieze over the main door the peplos is presented to a magistrate while the spectacle
is watched by the Olympian gods including Athena herself.
Only a little of the sculpture remains on the temple itself. In 1799 Lord Elgin, the
British ambassador to Turkey (still in control of Greece), and enthusiast for antiquities,
obtained permission from the Turkish authorities to work on the site. The removal of
a substantial portion of the remains to London, where they can now be seen in the
244 THE GREEKS