Photographs of the sculptures which decorate the Parthenon in Athens are accompanied by a discussion of the historical, social, and religious significance of the temple.

The Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum are unrivaled examples of classical Greek art, an inspiration to artists and writers since their creation in the fifth century bce. A superb visual introduction to these wonders of antiquity, this book offers a photographic tour of the most famous of the surviving sculptures from ancient Greece, viewed within their cultural and art-historical context. Ian Jenkins offers an account of the history of the Parthenon and its architectural refinements. He introduces the sculptures as architecture--pediments, metopes, Ionic frieze--and provides an overview of their subject matter and possible meaning for the people of ancient Athens. Accompanying photographs focus on the pediment sculptures that filled the triangular gables at each end of the temple; the metopes that crowned the architrave surmounting the outer columns; and the frieze that ran around the four sides of the building, inside the colonnade. Comparative images, showing the sculptures in full and fine detail, bring out particular features of design and help to contrast Greek ideas with those of other cultures. The book further reflects on how, over 2,500 years, the cultural identity of the Parthenon sculptures has changed. In particular, Jenkins expands on the irony of our intimate knowledge and appreciation of the sculptures--a relationship far more intense than that experienced by their ancient, intended spectators--as they have been transformed from architectural ornaments into objects of art.

Presenting the latest developments in research from an international group of scholars and scientists, this volume offers new interpretations of some of the most crucial aspects of the Parthenon. It considers such topics as the authorship of the frieze and the reconstruction of its missing sculpture, as well as the sociopolitical context in which the monument was created and the application of new technologies in Parthenon studies.

Few if any would dispute the Parthenon's position as the most important monument in Western civilization. In its art and architecture, it is the ultimate expression of the golden age of Pericles, when democracy was born.

Built in the fifth century b.c., the Parthenon has been venerated for more than two millennia as the West’s ultimate paragon of beauty and proportion. Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it? In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible. The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.

From Athens and Arcadia on one side of the Aegean Sea and from Ionia, Lycia, and Karia on the other, this book brings together some of the great monuments of classical antiquity--among them two of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the later temple of Artemis at Ephesos and the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos. With 250 photographs and specially commissioned line drawings, the book comprises a monumental narrative of the art and architecture that gave form, direction, and meaning to much of Western culture.

Provides an overview of a classical monument interjected with the discoveries of modern scholarship.