battle, the last challenge to the authority of the Olympians, held particular signifi-
cance for the Athenians as we shall see, and it is likely that a principal purpose of
the Panathenaic festival itself, at least in the fifth century, was to thank Athena for
her central role in the defeat of the giants, and thus to encourage her continued
support.
Our knowledge of the Gigantomachy comes largely from images since the earliest
surviving narrative account of it is in a first- or second-century AD summary
(Apollodorus,Library1.6.1–2), but even in the fifth century BC images were an
important means of transmitting the story. There are few references to the
Gigantomachy in fifth-century literature; neither Aeschylus nor Sophocles mentions
it in extant works, and Euripides and Aristophanes mention it only in passing, mainly
as it relates to thepeplos. On the other hand, there is a substantial body of Attic images
depicting the battle from both the sixth and fifth centuries on vases and in sculpture.
Though depictions of the battle occasionally appear in images from other places,
the Gigantomachy clearly had special meaning for the Athenians.
From before the middle of the sixth century large black-figure vases were dedicated
on the Acropolis with depictions of the many gods in combat with the giants. Then,
during the fifth century, on red-figure vases, duels between a god and a giant were
more often shown, though the depictions of the gods usually followed the conven-
tions established on earlier vases. The Athena who appears in these scenes is almost
always precisely the Athena who appears on the Panathenaic amphoras, called
Promachos (Champion). This is the Athena who fights a giant on the remains of
the pediment from an archaic temple on the Acropolis, and it is the Athena of small
fifth-century bronze votive statuette found on the Acropolis (Figure 26.3). This, in
all likelihood, is the way Athena appeared on thepeplos.
The cult statue of Athena Polias, which was dressed each year in the newpeplos,
was very ancient. We have no reliable description of it; however, we know it was
made of olive wood, was probably no larger than life-size, and was only vaguely
anthropomorphic. In any case, the statue was small enough for the Athenians to carry
it with them when they fled the invading Persians in 480 BC. Pausanias (1.26.6) was
told that it fell from heaven; thus it was not seen to be the work of a mortal artisan,
and in that way it stands in sharp contrast to the more famous image of Athena,
Pheidias’ huge gold and ivory Athena Parthenos, dedicated in 438 BC, less than a
decade before our Panathenaic amphora was made.
Before turning to Pheidias’ statue we need to set the stage. In 480 BC and again in
479 BC the invading Persians sacked the Acropolis, the religious center of Athens.
They destroyed the temples including an earlier ‘‘Parthenon’’ that was under
construction, a thank-offering to Athena for defeat of the Persians at Marathon in
490 BC. In addition, they smashed or looted thousands of votive offerings, large and
small. Before the battle at Plataia, where the Persians were finally defeated, the Greeks
are said to have sworn an oath that they would not rebuild the temples destroyed by
the Persians but would leave the ruins as memorials to the impiety of the barbarians
(Diodorus Siculus 11.29.3) The cult statue of Athena Polias was returned to the
Acropolis, probably to a makeshift building, but the site as a whole does seem to have
remained desolate for thirty years until the Athenian statesman Pericles convinced the
Assembly to fund a building program that would be commensurate with the new-
found greatness of the city. Construction of the Parthenon, the great temple that
Greek Religion and Art 403