Reconfiguring the gods on the Parthenon frieze

single of the greatest enigmas of classical art is the low-relief frieze execut for the Parthenon upon the Athenian Acropolis sometime between 447 and 432 BCE In spite of above two hundred years of scholarship extending as far back as the next to the first volume of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett's famous Antiquities of Athens published in 1787(1) many of the issues pertaining to the Parthenon frieze are as at the same time unresolved. New interpretations of the overall program and diverse identifications of individual figures or collections appear regularly in the scholarly literature dealing with the frieze.(2) Applications of newer methodologies from semiotics to unusual theory have led to alternative readings of the relief and its iconography.(3) And however today art historians are still confuseed by what has been called the best-known on the other hand least understood monument of grecian art.

The reasons for the frieze's obscurity and the attendant proliferation of interpretations are not hard to find. First, no ancient literary or epigraphic source specifically cites the frieze. Although in his second-century CE Guide to Greece the periegete Pausanias mentioned the bring under rule matter of the Parthenon pediments, he ignored one as well as the other the metopes and the frieze.(4) Plutarch's Life of Pericles (134-9 and 312-5) informs us that Pheidias supervised the sculptural program of the Parthenon and its team of artists, on the other hand the only work of art actually attributed to his hand is the colossal gold and ivory Athena Parthenos, which dominated the cella.(5) Secondly sections of the frieze are missing, and those that have survived are not in profitable condition.(6) The heads in particular were badly damaged, reputedly at the extreme point of the Ottoman occupation of Greece The drawings of the frieze made in 1674 (thirteen years before the explosion of the temple) and attributed to the Flemish artist Jacques Carrey, although not entirely accurate, help somewhat in filling in the gaps, on the other hand many obscure areas remain.(7) Thirdly, all of the original paint as well as the additions made in metal (indicated by means of drill holes), which might aid in identifying individual figures, are missing. Unlike the earlier frieze of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi or the a great deal of later one on the Pergamon Altar, this individual has no inscriptions, painted or carved, labeling the participants. Finally, there is no antecedent in Greek art for an Ionic frieze of this longitudinal dimensions and complexity on a Doric temple(8) Comparanda for the metopes and pediments are readily available, as, for example, the fane of Zeus at Olympia (ca. 470-456 BCE) on the other hand the Parthenon frieze is unique in the history of hellenic architectural sculpture.

single particularly important but problematic section of the frieze is the collection of seated figures above the pronaos at the east extreme point of the Parthenon, now unanimously identified as twelve Olympian deities with sum of two units attendants [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1 2 OMITTED]. These, the single seated figures on the frieze, are configured into sum of two units groups of six and exhibit the earliest extant depiction of what later became the canonical Twelve the fathers of Greek and Roman art.(9) quite through the years these figures have been variously identified and then interpreted in relation to the overall subdue of the frieze, to the deity worshiped in the fane (Athena), and to religion as practiced in the worships of ancient Attica.(10) Problems that have the appearance to trouble scholars are the nearness of twelve gods on a fane of Athena alone, the intended location of this conclave (Mt Olympo Acropolis, or Agora?), the positioning of the the eternal and infinite spirits vis-a-vis each other (why, for instance, are of that kind antithetical goddesses as Artemis and Aphrodite linked arm in arm?), and the fact that they are seated with their backs to the central, and presumably greatest in quantity important, scene. There is the level more basic issue of whether any viewer could have seen them, positioned as they are directly behind the sum of two units central columns of the east facade [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 18 OMITTED]. This paper will address the gods' identification, the possible meanings that can be attributed to their positions upon the frieze, their peculiar spatial arrangement, the temporal setting, and their influence upon later art.

Iconography

The hellenic gods are clearly the predominant theme of the eastern extremity of the Parthenon [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1 2 OMITTED]; this makes faculty of perception because the entrance to the Parthenon is here, the homage statue faced in this direction, and the altar would have been at this extremity of the temple.(11) From the statuarys of the pediment to the relief upon the base of the worship statue the gods appear in various clusters witnessing or taking part in climactic circumstances Seventeen of them react to the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus in the east pediment; sixteen strive with the giants in the east metopes; fourteen gather upon the frieze to await a religious procession; and twenty, according to Pliny (Natural History 3618) witnessed the adorning of the newly born Pandora upon the no-longer-extant base of the Athena Parthenos.(12) The number of divinities depicted in each area varies, and greatest in quantity identifications are largely conjectural. It is solitary on the frieze, where the the eternal and infinite spirits are sufficiently well preserved, that there is a certain quantity of consensus about their identifications.