we know, there was no priestess of Athena Parthenos and there was no altar in front of
it where sacrifices could be performed as there normally is with a temple. Rather, the
Parthenon was itself an extravagant votive offering to Athena. Unlike most temples, it
had two rooms instead of one. The larger east room was purpose-built to house
Pheidias’ statue of Athena, and the west room served as a treasury where the wealth of
the Athenians was stored. As one scholar has recently written of it, ‘‘the Parthenon
should perhaps be considered not so much as a temple of Athena as a temple to
Athens, a storehouse of its wealth, a marble essay on its greatness’’ (Hurwit
1999:27).The ancient olive-wood statue continued to be the sacred image of Athena
on the Acropolis, though it was probably still housed in a makeshift setting when the
Parthenon was finished. Eventually it was moved to the Erechtheum, a temple
completed nearly three decades later.
Athena Parthenos was an extravagant showpiece, some 30 feet tall, made of plates
of ivory and gold attached to a wood formwork, the gold alone weighing nearly
2,500 pounds (Leipen 1971:19; Figure 26.4). Thus, in the latter part of the fifth
century we see an illustration of a notable disjunction between, on the one hand,
religious significance and, on the other, physical grandeur or what we might call
artistic merit. To see the giant statue shimmering with the light that came in through
the door and two windows in the east wall would have been a moving experience, yet
the message had more to do with pride and wealth and power than it did with religion
in the strict sense.
The Parthenon was richly decorated with sculpture. Freestanding figures filled the
triangular pediments at either end of the building. Ninety-two rectangular panels
(metopes) in high relief, separated one from the next by grooved panels called
triglyphs, went all the way around the building beneath the eves, and a continuous
frieze carved in low relief went around the outside of the inner rooms (cella). Not
surprisingly, much of the imagery associated with the Parthenon echoes themes from
the Panathenaic festival.
Had you participated in the Panathenaic procession in 430 BC, the year our
amphora was probably awarded, you would have entered the Acropolis through the
new monumental gateway, the Propylaia (Figure 26.5). As you emerged, you would
have seen the west pediment of the Parthenon rising up in front of you, with Athena
and Poseidon in a moment of tense conflict. Between them was an olive tree, Athena’s
gift that won her the patronage of Athens over Poseidon’s gift of a salt spring. That
tree, of course, was the one that was the ancestor of those that produced the oil to fill
the prize amphorae.
As you passed by the north side of the building on your way to the great altar where
the sacrifice of a hundred heifers would take place, you would have caught glimpses,
between the columns, of a procession of horsemen and youths and elders on foot and
even of animals that echoed the very procession of which you were a part. In fact,
the frieze of more than 524 feet that went around the cella of the building depicted
the Panathenaic procession, moving down the long north and south sides toward the
assembled gods on the east end, where a man and a child fold thepeplosfor Athena.
Later, had you gone to visit the spectacular new statue by Pheidias, you would have
approached the east end of the building. Facing you was a pediment depicting the
birth of Athena from the head of Zeus in the presence of many deities. Below the
frieze were fourteen metopes, in each one of which a deity fought a giant or giants. As
Greek Religion and Art 405