The Parthenon in Athens
The beautiful sanctuary atop the Acropolis of Athens, known as the Parthenon, was built between 447 and 432 BCE during the Age of Pericles and was dedicated to the city’s benefactor god Athena. The sanctuary was intended to host Pheidias’ new faction statue of the goddess and to publicize Athens’ success as a pioneer in the alliance of Greek powers that defeated the attacking Persian hordes of Darius and Xerxes. The sanctuary would continue to be used for over a thousand years, and despite the assaults of time, blasts, plundering, and contamination damage, it still commands the modern city of Athens, a heavenly declaration to the transcendence and fame the city enjoyed throughout history.
The enormous task of constructing another sanctuary to replace the damaged structures of the acropolis following the Persian assault on the city in 480 BCE and restarting the prematurely ended sanctuary venture begun in 490 BCE was prompted by Pericles and funded by surplus from the Delian League’s war treasury, a political alliance of Greek city-states formed to repel the threat of Persian attack. After some time, the confederation became the Athenian Empire, and Pericles had no qualms about using the League’s resources to embark on a massive construction project to honor Athens.
The acropolis itself is exactly 300 by 150 meters and stands 70 meters tall at its highest point. The shrine, which would sit on the highest point of the acropolis, was designed by Iktinos and Kallikratis, and the project was overseen by the stone sculptor Phidias (Pheidias). The structure was constructed of Pentelic marble from nearby Mt. Pentelicus, and never before had so much marble (22,000 tons) been used in a Greek sanctuary. Pentelic marble was recognized for its pure white color and beautiful grain. It also contains traces of iron, which after some time has been seen to have oxidized, giving the marble a subtle honey hue, which is notably noticeable at dawn and twilight.
The name Parthenon comes from one of Athena’s numerous names: Athena Parthenos, which means Virgin. Parthenon means ‘place of Parthenos’, and it was the name given to the space inside the sanctuary that held the massive statue in the fifth century BCE. The sanctuary was known as the mega neos, or ‘big sanctuary’, or as Hekatompedos neos, referring to the inner cella’s length of 100 feet. From the fourth century BCE, the entire monument was known as the Parthenon.
Parthenon’s Design and Dimensions
No other Greek temple had been so ornately decorated with sculpture. The Parthenon would become the largest Doric Greek sanctuary, despite its revolutionary design that merged the two engineering types of Doric and Ionic. The sanctuary spanned 30.88 m by 69.5 m and included a 4:9 ratio at a few angles. The measures of the segments in proportion to the space between segments, the height of the working in relation to its width, and the width of the inward cella in relation to its length are all planned and computed using the 4:9 ratio. Other complex structural solutions were developed to address the issue that anything that massive, even when absolutely straight, appears bent from a distance. To give the appearance of genuine straight lines, the pieces lean slightly inwards, which also gives a lifting effect to the structure, making it appear lighter than its construction material would suggest. Similarly, the stylobate, or sanctuary floor, is not entirely level and rises slightly in the center. The pieces also include entasis, which is a slight stuffing in the center, and the four corner segments are much larger than the other parts. The combination of these enhancements makes the sanctuary appear magnificently straight and symmetrically aligned, giving the entire construction a special dynamic aspect.
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