Parthenon, Athens
About
The temple of Athena Parthenos has stood on the Acropolis rock for five and a half centuries by 117 CE, and Rome has left it very nearly as it found it. Inside is Pheidias' Athena, twelve metres of gold and ivory, the gold plates made removable so they can be weighed as a reserve of the city's treasure. Around the top of the shrine wall runs a continuous carved procession of horsemen, girls and cattle. The one Roman mark on the building was a line of bronze letters fixed to the east front honouring Nero, taken down again after his fall; the holes are still there.
What happened here
The building itself is a house for the god, and most people never go inside. Everything public happens on the steps and at the altar in front: an animal led up, examined, killed cleanly, its organs read, the meat divided and eaten. The priest covers his head and a flute player keeps up a noise so no ill-omened word is heard. Worshippers leave what they can afford — a terracotta figure, a coin, a model of the body part they want healed — and the accumulated clutter is periodically cleared and buried on site. On festival days the doors are opened and the cult statue is dressed, garlanded, and sometimes carried out through the streets. The temple also holds money, which is why towns keep their treasury in one.
In ancient writing
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.5–7
Works through the pediments — Athena's birth, her contest with Poseidon — and the gold and ivory statue standing inside with a Victory in her hand.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →