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Conversions of the Parthenon 1 Conversions of the Parthenon The Parthenon in antiquity: a reassessment In the Introduction, I made a number of offhand claims comparing the Parthenon in antiquity and in Byzantium which may have startled the reader. Specifically, I said that we have more evidence for the Parthenon in Byzantium than we do for antiquity; that it is only in Byzantium that we find evidence for adoration of the building; and that it is in Byzantium that we first hear of the miracle of light that emanated from it. It is then that the Parthenon is first praised in terms of "light," a Byzantine (not ancient) rhetorical theme that was probably the ultimate source of the cliche employed by almost all modern travel writers. This comparison in favor of Byzantium can be extended in other directions as well. For example, it is only in Byzantium that we have evidence for people traveling to Athens for the purpose of worshiping at the Parthenon. In sum, to the best of our knowledge, the Parthenon was a more important monument in Byzantium than it ever had been in antiquity, though it must be granted that our knowledge is not perfect, especially regarding antiquity. Still, as historians we must respect the weight of the evidence and draw conclusions from it. This section will present what little evidence there is for the Parthenon in antiquity in order to situate its Byzantine history into a broader context. The Parthenon itself is hardly mentioned in the literature of the classical and Hellenistic periods. Its origins were troubled by controversy. Perikles was blasted by his enemies in Athens for spending the money of the Delian league on such precious works, though obviously he carried the day in that debate.' His master-sculptor Pheidias was prosecuted and convicted of embezzlement. The new Akropolis, and likely the Parthenon itelf, was used as a treasury for Athens' reserves, at least after the mid fifth century Be, which must have severely restricted access to it; this function seems to have continued during the fourth century, and armories are attested in 1 Plutarch, Perikles 12.1-2. See R. Meiggs in Bruno (1974a) 101-111. 2 Spivey (1996)c. 7; Hurwit (2004) 95-96, 122-124. 12 The Christian Parthenon times of crisis.3 After that, we hear little. In 304-303 BC, the west chamber of the temple was given to king Demetrios, the son of Antigonos, as his personal residence, and he filled it with courtesans, at least according to his enemies.4 What did the Parthenon mean in antiquity? Today it is hailed as a symbol of democracy, a triumph of classical architecture, and the sublimation of Greek religion through art. Yet little or no evidence can be produced that it was viewed in these ways in antiquity or even that it inspired particular admiration apart from the rest of Athens' many monuments- to say nothing of the extreme pitch of philosophical and national enthusiasm that has enveloped it in modern times. Iktinos, one of its architects, and a certain Karpion (who is otherwise unknown) co-authored a book on how it was built, which shows that at least one attempt was made to promote the temple's architectural virtues by those who knew them best. But nothing survives of this work except the bare mention of its existence in Vitruvius, in a catalogue of other such works.5 There can be no doubt that it was admired by those who saw it but so were many other temples and buildings in Athens, Greece, and around the Mediterranean. There does not appear to have been anything special about the Parthenon, the building, in partic- ular; the statue of the Parthenos inside generated much more interest (Fig. 1). Pausanias focuses on the chryselephantine (gold-and-ivory) statue of Athena and not on the architecture and the friezes; he barely mentions the building in fact. In this choice of emphasis he was not alone.6 Given that the statue does not survive today, all our attention is focused on the architecture and the friezes. Moreover, the temple's symbolic links to democratic ideology were loose and indirect. It was built when Athens was governed by a democracy, and some scholars have attempted to read democratic ideals into aspects of the Parthenon frieze iconography, but these connections are tenuous and could probably have been made only by a few people in the late fifth 3 Thucydides, History 2.13.3,2.24.1. In 324 ac, Harpalos' hoard was stored on the Akropolis; see Green (1991) 461-462. For the ancient sources for the Akropolis, see Jahn and Michaelis (1976) 10-19, and for the treasury 55-56; Lapatin (2005) 279-287. 4 Plutarch, Demetrios 23-24, 26. See Habicht (1997) 78. 5 Vitruvius, De architectura 7 pref. 12. 6 Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.5-7. See Papachatzis (1992-1993) 25; Beard (2002) 23-31, who calls ancient writers "reticent" about the Parthenon, a slightly misleading term; for interest in the statue, see ibid. 40-41, and below; Lesk (2004) 281-282 n. 131. For the statue itself, see Lapatin (2005). It was widely copied in antiquity, its type known throughout the empire and beyond; e.g., Williams (1977). 7 See Hurwit (2004) 231-232, for discussion. Conversions of the Parthenon 13 I Athena Parthenos, marble miniature copy of the Roman period (National Archaeological Museum, Athens). and early fourth century BC. For the majority of Athenians and visitors, the temple would have reflected the glory of Athena and her city more generally from its legendary beginnings rather than any particular regime. The mythological events of the pediments and metopes as well as the 14 The Christian Parthenon Panathenaic festival (if that is what the frieze depicts) all predated the democracy. Architecturally, the temple itself could just as well have been built by a tyrant like Polykrates of Samos, whose temple to Hera was equally if not more magnificent. In this respect, modern classicism and ancient practice are again misaligned. The Parthenon and Akropolis are often used today as emblems of the democracy, but the site of the Athenian democracy was in fact the Pnyx. It is less photogenic and mostly empty, but that was where the Assembly took place, and the Athenians of the classical age always associated the democracy with the Assembly, not the Akropolis. Classicism and antiquity are misaligned more generally in this case too. Classical ideals today are universal, and the Parthenon has been invested with plenty of them. But in the age of Perikles, the remodeled Akropolis was largely a grandiose victory monument, celebrating the Athenians' defeat of the Persians and hegemony over the Greek world and, simultaneously, a cultic center that promoted their special relationship to Athena.8 These ideals are too unsettling, historically limited, militaristic, or outdated for modern consumption. And the Parthenon in particular was only one element in the whole; there is no evidence that it was the most important. Religiously, among the monuments of Athens, it was not important. As far as we know, no one traveled to Athens specifically to pray or make a dedication there (as they would later in Byzantium). Religious travel in the ancient world was to oracles or for healing and initiation, and the Parthenon had none of these to offer. Pilgrimage to Athens was directed mostly to Eleusis.9 The grand procession of the Panathenaic festival culminated on the Akropolis, but as far as we know the Parthenon was only a backdrop and not its destination. That destination was what today we call the Erechtheion, i.e., the temple of Athena Polias, which housed the goddess' most important cult statue.1° It has even been argued that the Parthenon was not a temple at all, that it was a treasury built into a victory monument. This is a controversial thesis, and can be answered, but the fact that it can be plausibly put forth at all indicates how elusive our evidence is for the building's religious significance." The Parthenon likewise does not seem to have stood out among the many attractions of Athens; in fact, the Propylaia tend to come out ahead. 8 See Hurwit (2004),esp. c. 9. 9 For Athens identified with Eleusis in a Hellenistic inscription from Maroneia (Thrace) with an aretalogy of Isis, see Grandjean (1975) 18, 92,95-98; cf. Fowden (1986) 47-48; for pilgrimage in antiquity, Dillon (1997); Rutherford (2001). 10 Hurwit (2005) 15-16. For the Erechtheion, see Lesk (2004). Hurwit (1999) 27, 163-165; but see Korres (1996b) 98-100. Conversions of the Parthenon 15 Thucydides mentions the "Propylaia and the other buildings" in estimating the expenses of the Periklean building program. Demosthenes lists among Athens' glories the Propylaia, the Parthenon, the stoas, and the ship-sheds at the Peiraieus; he and Aischines sometimes mentioned only the Propylaia and not the Parthenon at all as signs of the glory of Perikles' era. A certain Herakleides, who wrote a brief description of Greece in the third century BC, lists the Parthenon among Athens' attractions, as well as the theater, the unfinished Olympieion, and the Academy. He says that the Parthenon makes an impression on the visitor, but adds similar comments about other monuments too. An anonymous comic poet praised the dockyards, the Parthenon, the Peiraieus, the forests, and the sky of Athens.12 When Aemilius Paulus toured Greece in 167 Bc after defeating Perseus of Makedonia, he visited Delphi, Lebadeia, the Euboian Euripos, Aulis and Oropos, Athens, Corinth and the Isthmos, Sikyon, Argos, Epidauros, Sparta, Pallantion, Megalopolis, and finally Olympia.
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