The Parthenon at Athens, Greece and at Nashville, Tennessee

by Benjamin Franklin Wilson

Floor of Treasury or West Room Showing Arrangement of Ionic Columns and Figures from Elgin Marbles of Iris and Heracles

The Sculptures of the Parthenon

The sculptures of the Parthenon occur in four groups: the Ionic or inner frieze, the Doric or outer frieze, the east pediment, and the west pediment.

As the subtlety of the builders of the Parthenon emphasized their intellect, so the sculptures emphasized their religion. The Greeks were not idolaters in the sense that they bowed down to gold and ivory. They loved to chisel in marble the beautiful forms that represented to them their gods who dwelt on Mount Olympus. A characteristic of the Greeks of this period was that, in their art, they always presented their goddesses fully clothed and, almost always, their gods in the nude.

While the origin of the Parthenon has the most of its roots firmly fixed in Egypt, many of the sculptures were derived from the Assyrians. Particularly is this true of the smaller figures, winged mythical creatures, as well as lions and horses, typical of the Assyrian bas-reliefs. The heavier figures, notably those of the pediments, are essentially Greek.

In the life and times of Phidias, a love for the beautiful was so general that it was comparable to the air which they breathed. It was not difficult, therefore, for him to find men, almost as accomplished as himself, upon whose shoulders he could lay the greater part of the work.

It is a matter of keen regret that so few of the sculptures of the Parthenon have been preserved. For this reason, the most difficult problem in the task of the reproduction of the Parthenon at Nashville was the reproduction of the sculptures.

When the Parthenon was destroyed in 1687 the sculptures were blown off the temple and, to a great extent, broken up by the explosion. As already noted, only two of the pedimental groups remain on the ruin, one on each pediment. Plaster casts of these are now in the British Museum. A much larger proportion of the figures of the friezes remain on the ruin but they are so badly damaged that identification is practically impossible; this is especially true of the Doric frieze.