The line between Athenian mortal and Olympian god is blurred throughout the decoration of the Parthenon, with the humans becoming more perfect and the gods becoming more natural than they had been in any previous art. The elevation of the mortal and the humanization of the divine were achieved through careful attention to anatomy and a rigorous application of mathematical proportion to the figures. There is compelling evidence that what later came to be called “divine proportion” or the “Golden Ratio” was used throughout the Parthenon. The principle, which Euclid would describe in his Elements, around 300 BC involves dividing a line so that the ratio of the larger segment to the smaller equals the ratio of the whole line to the larger segment. This ratio was considered especially pleasing to the eye, whether in the dimensions of a rectangle or the proportions of a human body. In the work that Phidias oversaw, all the figures, regardless of size, showed relative proportions consistent with the Golden Ratio, in everything from the size and shape of the head to the distance between the elbow and the tip of the middle finger. The same ratio governed the Parthenon’s architecture as well, from the overall dimensions to the proportions of columns and capitals. While the effect might be subtle in the individual elements, the use of consistent mathematical proportion in both figures and architecture produced an overwhelming impression of supernatural harmony.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Phidias Showing the Parthenon Frieze to His Friends, 1868.
Hector Leroux, Pericles and Aspasia Visiting Phidias’ Studio, c. 1870.
There are works predating the Persian sack of Athens that show attempts to create figures that seem to respond to the same external forces that affect humans, such as gravity, but are flawlessly beautiful at the same time. This trend was still tentative when the Persians arrived, and the first victory monuments generally reflect the more traditional manner known as the archaic style.
The so-called “Kritios Boy,” c. 480 BC. This figure was smashed by the Persians in the sack of the Acropolis in 479 bc. It is an early example of what came to be known as the classical style.
By comparison, when Pericles launched his building program for the Acropolis, the new style of Phidias must have seemed nothing short of revolutionary. Phidias crafted an image of man not as he was, but as he could aspire to be. This style of sculpture had its critics; Aeschylus, for example, regarded the old style as closer to the gods: “Those ancient statues, though simply made, are to be considered divine, while the new kind, though elaborately worked and inducing wonder, have a less divine aspect to them.”1919 But the idealized naturalism of Phidias was also widely admired. It has since become known as the classical style – the touchstone for excellence in Western art.
As quoted in Richard Neer, The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture (University of Chicago, 2010), 103.
The pediments, metopes and frieze were all more than forty feet above visitors’ heads, and were made more legible by bright paint and gilding that contrasted with the white marble – a contrast that continued into the interior of the temple. Here was Phidias’s masterpiece, the colossal Athena Parthenos, towering more than forty feet. Like the bronze Athena Promachos outside, she wore a peplos and carried a shield and a spear, but she was made of materials far more precious than bronze: her skin was fashioned from thin sheets of luminescent ivory molded over wood, while her helmet, peplos and shield were gold.2020
Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.24.5–7.
This technique of combining ivory with gold, known as chryselephantine, was a specialty of Phidias. Not only was it hugely expensive, it was also a technological marvel, as the ivory had to be imported and then carefully soaked to make it flexible. So much gold was required for this statue that it caused a scandal of its own. Pericles tamped down the criticism by pointing out that the gold elements were detachable and could be melted down to pay for the defense of Athens and the Delian League in future times of need, then recast from the original molds when the danger had passed.2121
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.13.5. According to some sources, this ingenious plan was put into action in 300 BC when the tyrant Lachares melted down the detachable gold plates to pay his mercenary army. They were replaced with bronze replicas, rather than with the gold as Pericles specified. Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.25.7. The Athena Parthenos disappeared without a trace in late antiquity.
Like the Parthenon, the chryselephantine figure of Athena was covered with symbolic sculptural ornament. The griffins on her helmet were the mythological guardians of gold. The head of Medusa on her breast warded off evil. The figure of Nike in her right hand represented victory. On the outside of her shield, the Greeks battled the invading Amazons. On the inside, the Olympians defeated the giants. On her sandals, the Lapiths fought the centaurs. On the base of the statue, the gods witnessed the birth of Pandora, the first woman.2222 From her head to her toes, the Athena Parthenos reprised the larger message of the temple, visibly conveying the wealth, power, ingenuity – in a word, the superiority – of the Athenians, from the ancient days of gods and heroes to the age of Pericles.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 36.4.5 (available at the Perseus Digital Library).
The Sacred Way: November 431 BC
The Athena Parthenos was dedicated during the Great Panathenaic Festival of 438 BC, although work on the temple’s exterior went on until 432 BC. Toward the end of the following year, the complex on the Acropolis formed the backdrop for Pericles as he climbed up on a specially constructed platform, artfully placed so his audience down on the ground would see him framed by the Parthenon and the Athena Promachos. Now in his sixties and completing his third decade as the leader of Athens, Pericles was in his thirteenth year as an elected general. He had been personally managing the conflict with Sparta, known as the Peloponnesian War, which had started in earnest that year. The early battles were going well for Athens.
Pericles remained undeniably the first citizen of Athens, but in a democracy that did not mean he was unopposed. His policies of broadening and strengthening the city’s democratic system ensured that he had enemies, who were perpetually on the watch for weakness. In recent years they had been attacking him through some of his unorthodox relationships, particularly those with Phidias and Aspasia. Accusations of immorality and graft had, perhaps with some basis, dogged the sculptor throughout the Acropolis building projects. He was also accused of including portraits of himself and Pericles among the mythological Greeks fighting the Amazons on the shield of the Athena Parthenos, and was imprisoned on a charge of impiety.2323 Phidias ended up leaving Athens for Olympia, where he created a huge chryselephantine sculpture of Zeus that would be accounted one of the wonders of the ancient world.
Plutarch, Pericles 31.
Aspasia turned out to be a greater vulnerability for Pericles. She was his most powerful confidante and was famous for her intellect as well as her beauty. He freely acknowledged her, making no effort to mask their relationship. Her house became a regular stop on his daily walk through the city, and he would kiss his hand to her when she appeared in her window at the appointed time.2424 Besides being a mistress and so essentially an independent woman, Aspasia was also, even more dangerously, a foreigner. She hailed from Miletus, one of the Ionian colonies that had been involved in the revolt against the Persians.
Plutarch,