The Parthenon at Athens, Greece and at Nashville, Tennessee

by Benjamin Franklin Wilson

The age of Pericles has been known through the centuries as the “Golden Age of Greece,” but the judgment of time has forced us to the conclusion that it was also the golden age of the world as far as the beauty of architecture and sculptural art is concerned.

There is no more intriguing part of the whole narrative of the Parthenon than this story of the subtlety of the Greeks in overcoming optical illusions and neutralizing differences in distance.

Perhaps the most important, certainly the most prominent, of the refinements of the Parthenon is the curvature of the horizontal lines. It is not true, as some textbooks have it, that there is no straight line in the Parthenon. There are a number of them, but all of these straight lines are vertical. What should be said is that there are no straight horizontal lines in the Parthenon.

Another refinement used by the Greeks in adding to the beauty of the Parthenon relates to the columns. The visitor is certain to be impressed by the softness of the Doric columns. This is especially true of those of the Naos where their proximity to each other emphasizes their beauty as they are caught banked against each other. When thus seen all other columns fail by comparison and seem as stiff as pokers. This quality of softness is given them by the fact that all columns, both in the Naos and on the exterior of the building, are different in diameter from those beside them and all are also spaced differently.

Still another refinement pertaining to the columns is technically known as entasis, which is that quality which gives to them their beautiful symmetry.

In discussing the columns in relation to their softness it was suggested that they be seen banked against each other. In the discovery of their symmetrical beauty, however, they should be seen singly. The column apparently rises from the floor at its largest diameter and gradually diminishes in a beautifully fluted shaft, having the very breath of symmetry in every line to the top. That is the way it appears; but, as a matter of fact, if the column had been constructed as it actually looks, then, instead of seeming beautifully symmetrical, because of an optical illusion, it would have appeared concave at a point just below the center of the column. Knowing this from experience, the Greeks filled in just enough to correct the results of the optical illusion and the column in reality is bulged near the center.

It has been noted that the first sight of the Parthenon usually inspires the visitor with a sense of its strength and stability. This effect is produced by another of the subtleties of the Greeks in approaching perfection in the Parthenon. Only one with technical knowledge would ever suspect that its columns and walls are other than perpendicular; yet, with the exception of the transverse wall which divides the cella into its two rooms, all of them are inclined toward the center. If all were projected on their axes, they would meet in a cluster five thousand, eight hundred and fifty-six feet above the base of the temple.

One of the major problems that confronted the builders of the Parthenon at Nashville related to the arrangement of the columns of the Naos. Prior to the research work in connection with the Nashville reproduction, the preponderance of authority favored the theory that the Doric columns of the Naos were monoliths. This matter was settled definitely by the work done by Mr. William Bell Dinsmoor, of New York, who represented the builders in the archaeological end of the work.

As has been said, nothing remained of the interior of the original Parthenon after the explosion of 1687 except the floor and fragments of the walls. One of these fragments happened to be in the end of the building in the southeast corner of the Naos. Sticking in it, Mr. Dinsmoor discovered a small piece of the architrave and a discoloration of the wall revealing where the remainder had been. This discovery fixed the fact of an architrave and, following very closely, the further fact that there were columns superimposed on each other with an architrave between.

The architecture of the Parthenon will always carry with it elements of the mystical and the mysterious to modern minds, accustomed as they are to the solution of engineering problems by rule. The more the Parthenon is considered, the more interesting it seems.