The subject of the group that filled the eastern pediment, the one above the entrance door of the temple, was the birth of Athena. Just how the event was represented we do not know because quite half the group, including the principal figures, disappeared very early in our era, and no description of them remains in any ancient or modern writer. The group in the western pediment represented the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the dominion over Attica. According to the legend, the strife between the two divinities took place in an assembly of the gods on the Acropolis, who were to determine which of the two contestants should be the protector of the city. To prove his power, Poseidon struck the rock with his trident, and a salt spring leaped forth, as if the sea itself had obeyed the call of its lord. Athena struck the ground, and an olive-tree sprang up, the emblem of peace and of the victories of commerce, and the assembly awarded the prize to her. The goddess having thus received the sovereignty of Athens, it was but natural that a day should be set apart for her special honor, and a festival instituted to commemorate the great event. This was the greater Panathenaia, or All Athenians Day, which was celebrated every fourth year in honor of the goddess, and which, as its name implies, was taken part in by all the people of the city. It occurred in the early summer and lasted five days. On the fifth day, it closed with a procession which went through all the chief streets of the city and wound its way up the Great Stairway to the Acropolis, bearing the peplos or embroidered robe woven by young virgin ladies of Athens, chosen from the highest families, and known for their skill in this kind of work. After the peplos had been consecrated in the temple it was placed with due solemnities upon the ancient and venerable figure of the goddess, made of olive-wood, and said to have descended from heaven. From its subject, which thus celebrates the Panathenaic procession, the frieze is often called the Panathenaic frieze.
It is carved from Pentelic marble, of which material the marble building is constructed. Its original length, running as it did around the entire building, was 522.80 feet, of which about 410 feet remain. Of this portion, 249 feet are in the British Museum in slabs and fragments; the remainder is chiefly in the Louvre, with scattered fragments in other places. As a connected subject this was the most extensive piece of sculpture ever made in Greece. From all that can be gathered from the study of the fragments that remain, the design of the frieze was of the utmost simplicity and characterized by the union of perfect taste and clear purpose that marks all the work of the great sculptor. The subject begins in the frieze at the western end of the temple, where we watch the assembling of the procession. It then proceeds along the northern and southern sides of the building, in what we are to suppose one continuous line, moving toward the east, since all the faces are turned that way; and at the eastern end, directly over the main entrance to the building, the two parts of the procession meet, in the presence of the magistrates and of the divinities who had places of worship in Athens.
Of the grace, the skill in arrangement, the variety of invention, the happy union of movement and repose shown in this work, not only artists—men best fitted to judge its merits from a technical point of view—but the cultivated portion of the public, and a large and ever-increasing circle of every-day people, have by common consent agreed in praise. By the multiplication of casts, to be found now in all our principal museums, we are enabled to study and to enjoy the long procession even better than it could have been enjoyed in its original place, where it must have been seen at a great disadvantage in spite of the skill shown by Phidias in adapting it to its site; for, as the frieze stood thirty-nine feet from the floor, and as the width of the portico between the wall and the columns was only nine feet, it was seen at a very sharp angle, and owing to the projection of the roof beyond the wall of the temple the frieze received only reflected light from the marble pavement below.
Apart from the marble sculptures on the exterior of the Parthenon, the two most famous works of Phidias were the statues of Athena, made for the interior of the Parthenon, and of Zeus for the temple of the god at Olympia in Elis. Both these statues were of the sort called Chryselephantine, from the Greek chrousous, golden, and elephantinos, of ivory; that is, they were constructed of plates of gold and ivory, laid upon a core of wood or stone. The style was not new, though its invention was at one time ascribed to Phidias. It came from the East, but it was now employed for the first time in Greece in a work of national importance.
In the Athena, the face, neck, arms, hands, and feet were made of ivory, and the drapery and ornaments, the helmet, the shield, and the sandals of gold, which as in the case of the statue made for Platæa, was removable at pleasure. The height of the statue, including the pedestal, was nearly forty feet. The goddess stood erect, clothed with a tunic reaching to the ankles, and showing her richly sandalled feet. She had the ægis on her breast, her head was covered with a helmet, and her shield, richly embossed with the Battle of the Amazons, rested on the ground at her side. In one hand she held a spear, and in the other, an image of Victory six feet high.
A still more splendid work, and one which raised the fame of Phidias to the highest point, was the statue of the Olympian Zeus, made for the Eleans. In this statue, Phidias essayed to embody the Homeric ideal of the supreme divinity of the people of Greece sitting on his throne as a monarch, and in an attitude of majestic repose. The throne, made of cedar-wood, was covered with plates of gold, and enriched with ivory, ebony, and precious stones. It rested on a platform twelve feet high, made of costly marble and carved with the images of the gods who formed the council of Zeus on Olympus. The feet of the god rested on a footstool supported by lions, and with the combat of Theseus and the Amazons in a bas-relief on the front and sides. In one hand Zeus held the sceptre, and in the other a winged Victory. His head was crowned with a laurel wreath; his mantle, falling from one shoulder, left his breast bare and covered the lower part of his person with its ample folds of pure gold enamelled with flowers. The whole height of the statue with the pedestal was about fifty feet; by its very disproportion to the size of the temple it was made to appear still larger than it really was. This statue was reckoned one of the wonders of the world. In it the Greeks seemed to behold Zeus face to face. To see it was a cure for all earthly woes, and to die without having seen it was reckoned a great calamity.
The downfall of Pericles, due to the jealousies of his rivals, carried with it the ruin of Phidias, his close friend, to whom he had entrusted such great undertakings. An indictment was brought against the sculptor, charging him with appropriating to himself a portion of the gold given him for the adornment of the statue of Athena; and according to some authorities Pericles himself was included in the charge. The gold had, however, been attached to the statue in such a manner that it could be taken off and weighed, and in the proof, the charge had to be abandoned. But Phidias did not escape so easily. He was accused of sacrilege in having introduced portraits of himself and Pericles on the shield of the goddess, where, says Plutarch, in the bas-relief of the Battle of the Amazons, he carved his own portrait as a bald old man lifting a stone with both hands, and also introduced an excellent likeness of Pericles fighting with an Amazon.
Phidias died in prison before the trial came off, and his name must be added to the long list of those whom an ungrateful world has rewarded for their services with ignominy and death.[Back to Contents]
