Parthenon

The word "Parthenon" comes from the Greek parthénos (παρθένος) 'maiden, girl' as well as 'virgin, unmarried woman'. The Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon states that it may have referred to the "unmarried women's apartments" in a house, but that in the Parthenon it seems to have been used for a particular room of the temple. There is some debate as to which room that was. The lexicon states that this room was the western cella of the Parthenon. This has also been suggested by J.B. Bury. One theory is that the Parthenon was the room where the arrephoroi, a group of four young girls chosen to serve Athena each year, wove a peplos that was presented to Athena during Panathenaic Festivals. Christopher Pelling asserts that the name "Parthenon" means the "temple of the virgin goddess", referring to the cult of Athena Parthenos that was associated with the temple. It has also been suggested that the name of the temple alludes to the maidens (parthénoi), whose supreme sacrifice guaranteed the safety of the city. In that case, the room originally known as the Parthenon could have been a part of the temple known today as the Erechtheion.

In 5th-century BC accounts of the building, the structure is simply called ὁ νᾱός (ho naos; lit. "the temple"). Douglas Frame writes that the name "Parthenon" was a nickname related to the statue of Athena Parthenos, and only appeared a century after construction. He contends that "Athena's temple was never officially called the Parthenon and she herself most likely never had the cult title parthénos". The ancient architects Iktinos and Callicrates appear to have called the building Ἑκατόμπεδος (Hekatómpedos; lit. "the hundred footer") in their lost treatise on Athenian architecture. Harpocration wrote that some people used to call the Parthenon the "Hekatompedos", not due to its size but because of its beauty and fine proportions. The first instance in which Parthenon definitely refers to the entire building comes from the fourth century BC orator Demosthenes. In the 4th century BC and later, the building was referred to as the Hekatompedos or the Hekatompedon as well as the Parthenon. Plutarch referred to the building during the first century AD as the Hekatompedos Parthenon.

A 2020 study by Janric van Rookhuijzen supports the idea that the building known today as the Parthenon was originally called the Hekatompedon. …

Although the Parthenon is architecturally a temple and is usually called so, some scholars have argued that it is not really a temple in the conventional sense of the word. A small shrine has been excavated within the building, on the site of an older sanctuary probably dedicated to Athena as a way to get closer to the goddess, but the Parthenon apparently never hosted the official cult of Athena Polias, patron of Athens. The cult image of Athena Polias, which was bathed in the sea and to which was presented the peplos, was an olive-wood xoanon, located in another temple on the northern side of the Acropolis, more closely associated with the Great Altar of Athena. The High Priestess of Athena Polias supervised the city cult of Athena based in the Acropolis, and was the chief of the lesser officials, such as the plyntrides, arrephoroi and kanephoroi.

The colossal statue of Athena by Phidias was not specifically related to any cult attested by ancient authors and is not known to have inspired any religious fervour. Preserved ancient sources do not associate it with any priestess, altar or cult name.

According to Thucydides, during the Peloponnesian War when Sparta's forces were first preparing to invade Attica, Pericles, in an address to the Athenian people, said that the statue could be used as a gold reserve if that was necessary to preserve Athens, stressing that it "contained forty talents of pure gold and it was all removable", but adding that the gold would afterward have to be restored. The Athenian statesman thus implies that the metal, obtained from contemporary coinage, could be used again if absolutely necessary without any impiety. According to Aristotle, the building also contained golden figures that he described as "Victories". The classicist Harris Rackham noted that eight of those figures were melted down for coinage during the Peloponnesian War. Other Greek writers have claimed that treasures such as Persian swords were also stored inside the temple. …

The Parthenon is an octastyle peripteral Doric temple with an Ionic hexastyle amphiprostyle two-chambered cella. It was built on the euthynteria and krepis of its precursor building, the Older Parthenon. In common with other Greek temples, the Parthenon is built using the post and lintel construction, surrounded by columns ('peripteral') carrying an entablature. The gable-end of the Parthenon features eight columns instead of the traditional six found in typical Doric temples. Although octastyle temples were not entirely unknown, their presence in mainland Doric architecture, along with the wider inner masonry structure, the cella, makes the Parthenon unique in its design. There are seventeen columns on the sides. A ratio of 4:9 proportion is found in the elevation and the relationship of the columns to their spacing (the interaxial). There is a double row of columns at both the front and rear. The cella is divided into two compartments. The opisthodomos (the back room of the cella) contained the monetary contributions of the Delian League. The hexastyle pronaos replaced the typical distyle in antis porch to the naos. At either end of the building, the gable is finished with a triangular pediment originally occupied by sculpted figures.

The choice to design the Parthenon as an octostyle temple likely stemmed from the challenge of scale: creating a larger naos required a proportionally larger overall structure. Maintaining the traditional hexastyle layout would have necessitated wider spacing between columns, which could have compromised structural stability. Moreover, expanding the temple while adhering to the established Doric proportions would have disrupted their harmony. Consequently, the architects made a series of design decisions that ultimately broke with mainland Doric conventions to achieve both the desired size and aesthetic integrity.

The Parthenon's interior displays several unusual and innovative features. The northern peristyle contained an archaic naiskos and altar, preserved to maintain religious continuity on the site. The Parthenon's porticos are unusually shallow, and the naos includes a second step. The rear room (opisthodomos) was wider, a Cycladic trait, and held four columns, likely Ionic or Corinthian. …

The cella of the Parthenon housed the chryselephantine statue of Athena Parthenos sculpted by Phidias and dedicated in 439 or 438 BC. The appearance of this is known from other images. The decorative stonework was originally coloured. The temple was dedicated to Athena at that time, though construction continued until almost the beginning of the Peloponnesian War in 432. By the year 438, the Doric metopes on the frieze above the exterior colonnade and the Ionic frieze around the upper portion of the walls of the cella had been completed.

Only a small number of the original sculptures remain in situ. Most of the surviving sculptures are at the Acropolis Museum in Athens and at the British Museum in London (see Elgin Marbles). Additional pieces are at the Louvre, the National Museum of Denmark, and the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna.

In March 2022, the Acropolis Museum launched a new website with "photographs of all the frieze blocks preserved today in the Acropolis Museum, the British Museum and the Louvre".

The frieze of the Parthenon's entablature contained 92 metopes, 14 each on the east and west sides, 32 each on the north and south sides. They were carved in high relief, a practice employed until then only in treasuries (buildings used to keep votive gifts to the gods). According to the building records, the metope sculptures date to the years 446–440. The metopes of the east side of the Parthenon, above the main entrance, depict the Gigantomachy (the mythical battle between the Olympian gods and the Giants). The metopes of the west end show the Amazonomachy (the mythical battle of the Athenians against the Amazons). The metopes of the south side show the Thessalian Centauromachy (battle of the Lapiths aided by Theseus against the half-man, half-horse Centaurs). Metopes 13–21 are missing, but drawings from 1674 attributed to Jaques Carrey indicate a series of humans; these have been variously interpreted as scenes from the Lapith wedding, scenes from the early history of Athens, and various myths. …

A major fire broke out in the Parthenon shortly after the middle of the third century AD. which destroyed the roof and much of the sanctuary's interior. Heruli pirates sacked Athens in 276, and destroyed most of the public buildings there, including the Parthenon. Repairs were made in the fourth century AD, possibly during the reign of Julian the Apostate. A new wooden roof overlaid with clay tiles was installed to cover the sanctuary. It sloped at a greater angle than the original roof and left the building's wings exposed.

The Parthenon survived as a temple dedicated to Athena for nearly 1,000 years until Theodosius II, during the Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire, decreed in 435 that all pagan temples in the Eastern Roman Empire be closed. It is debated exactly when during the 5th century that the closure of the Parthenon as a temple was put into practice. It is suggested to have occurred in c. 481–484, on the order of Emperor Zeno, because the temple had been the focus of Pagan Hellenic opposition against Zeno in Athens in support of Illus, who had promised to restore Hellenic rites to the temples that were still standing.

At some point in the fifth century, Athena's great cult image was looted by one of the emperors and taken to Constantinople, where it was later destroyed, possibly during the siege and sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 AD.

The Parthenon was converted into a Christian church in the final decades of the fifth century to become the Church of the Parthenos Maria (Virgin Mary) or the Church of the Theotokos (Mother of God). The orientation of the building was changed to face towards the east; the main entrance was placed at the building's western end, and the Christian altar and iconostasis were situated towards the building's eastern side adjacent to an apse built where the temple's pronaos was formerly located. A large central portal with surrounding side-doors was made in the wall dividing the cella, which became the church's nave, and from the rear chamber, the church's narthex. The spaces between the columns of the opisthodomos and the peristyle were walled up, though a number of doorways still permitted access. Icons were painted on the walls, and many Christian inscriptions were carved into the Parthenon's columns. …