18^4.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL 



15 



An abuse of power and breach of trust, which may perhaps appear 

 venial in the eyes of the artist and antiquarian, who contemplate the 

 beautiful specimens of art produced thereby, farther facilitated the 

 execution of almost numberless monuments, which started up, as if by 

 magic, to make ancient Athens the most wonderful city in the world, 

 and a school for architects and sculptors through all succeeding ages. 



The various states, when freed from the Persian rule, had formed a 

 league to carry on the war against the great king; (he chiefs of Attica 

 were empowered to fix the contingent of each state ; and, as pro- 

 posed by Aristides, this contingent <popos, was at first very mode- 

 rate, the total amount not exceeding 4G0 talents, or 100,000/. Such 

 was the first contribution under the superintendence, 'nye/iofix of 

 Athens. This treasure was originally deposited in the isle of Delos, 

 inhabited by priests only, and secured from all danger of spoliation by 

 its sacred character. Subsequently, when the power and ambition of 

 Athens had increased, and a disposition to abuse them had sprung up, 

 the tributes were augmented, and Athens ultimately succeededin ob- 

 taining posession of the treasure, which, under Pericles, was raised to 

 1200 talenl-i, and was, as we shall show hereafter, deposited in the 

 opisthodome of the Temple of Minerva. This treasure was gradually 

 increased by usurpations, and its guardians devoted the greater part 

 of it, first to works of public utility, and afterwards to objects of art, 

 or merely of luxury; a fact which explains the possibility of the im- 

 mense works executed under the administrations of Cimon and Pe- 

 ricles. But, by thus flattering the national vanity in devoting the war 

 subsidies to the embellishment of Athens, Pericles aroused the enmity 

 of nearly all the other Grecian states, and prepared a reaction, which 

 ended in the ruin of his country. A profound philosopher, a skilful 

 orator, endowed with a mind bold in conception and fertile in expe- 

 dients, with a noble and majestic exterior which had procured him the 

 surname oi 'OKvfnrios, Pericles joined to these brilliant qualities an en- 

 lightened taste for the arts, of which he gave good proof in selecting 

 Pliidias to superintend all the works he caused to be executed. Of 

 these works the most remarkable in every respect is the monument to 

 which the present notice is devoted. 



In the middle of the Acropolis, or citadel of Athens, stood a temple 

 dedicated to Minerva, and called the Parthenon, either in homage to 

 the chastity of the goddess, or because it had been consecrated to her 

 by the daughters of Erechtheus, frequently designated by the name of 

 UapSem virgins (Hesychius). It was also called ' E/tarii/tireSor, on ac- 

 count of its extent, which was 100 feet in front, and not on every side, 

 as some authors have supposed. We know that after Xerxes had 

 ravaged the country of the Phocians, and vainly endeavoured to pillage 

 the Temple of Delphi, be entered Attica, razed Athens to the ground, 

 and destroyed all the temples by fire, without even excepting that of 

 Minerva, which was the oldest in the city, and the most revered by the 

 Athenians. Some traces of this last have been discovered recently. 

 Among the ruins burnt in the 75th Olympiad (450 before Christ), have 

 been discovered a number of tiles, antefixes of burnt clay, small 

 bronzes, an immense quantity of lead pencils, which were no doubt 

 used by the architects to draw on marble, and several colour-pots con- 

 taining blue and red, which were used to paint certain parts of the 

 architectural ornaments. 



The new temple built by Pericles was placed on the highest point 

 of the Acropolis, and is the first object that strikes the eye from what- 

 ever side Athens is approached, anil is visible from the very entrance 

 of the Gulf of ^*Egina. Under the direction of Phidias, the two 

 cleverest architects of the day, Ictynus and Callicrates, were employed 

 to erect the Parthenon. 



The Parthenon subsisted many centuries almost uninjured ; the 

 Christians converted it into a church, and when the Turks became 

 masters of Athens, either from indifterence or forgetfuhiess, they left 

 it untouched, except that some of the inliabitants occasionally carried 

 away a piece of marble to make lime. Spon and Wheeler, during 

 their stay in Attica, had the pleasure of seeing it entire in 1G76. Not 

 long after, Athens was besieged by the proveditor, Morosini, who was 

 subsequently Doge, and Field-Marshal Count de Koenigsmarck, a 

 Swede, who commanded the Venetians, then at war with Turkey. 

 The Turks had converted the Parthenon into a powder-magazine, 

 which was fired by a bomb on the iSth September Kis/, and the 

 broken pavement still shows where the destructive missile fell. The 

 explosion cut the temple into two parts, as it were ; the whole eastern 

 side of the celia, five columns of the portico, all the internal construc- 

 tions of the cella, eight columns of the northern row of the peristyle, 

 six of the southern, and all the sculptures belonging to these several 

 parts of the edifice, were either shattered to atoms or thrown down. 

 The eastern pediment, too, must have sutVered considerdily in its 

 sculptures, though its architecture was not injured ; but, to judge from 

 the state of the ruins, it would appear that it hud been seriously 

 damaged previous to the event of 1687, probably at the time when it 



was converted into a Greek church. Morosini's desire to enrich his 

 country with the spoils of this superb structure, contributed still more 

 to its ruin : he determined on removing the statue of Minerva, with 

 her car and horses, from the pediment ; but owing to some awkward- 

 ness or inattention on the part of the workmen, these chefs d'ceuvres 

 were thrown down and broken into a thousand pieces. 



The Parthenon is built entirely of white marble, dug out of Mount 

 Pentelicus, in the immediate neighbourhood. The temple is Doric, 

 octostylar, peripterous, and uncovered. Its length, measured on the 

 top of the steps that support it, is 114 ft.; its width, 51 ft. The 

 respective proportion of the two principal dimensions is very remark- 

 able. The sides have seventeen columns, and the ends eight only, — 

 less than half, an arrangement which seems to have been generally ob- 

 served by the Greeks; vpe find it again in the Temple of Theseus, 

 which has six columns at the ends and thirteen at the sides; and also 

 in the temples of Psestum. The Temple of Jupiter Olvmpius was in 

 the same proportion, being, according to Pausanius, 95 ft. by 230 ft. 

 Tlie Romans made their temples much shorter. 



The length of the cella outside, not including the pilasters that pro- 

 ject at each end, is 78 ft. (3 in. ; the width 35 ft. 2 in. The interior 

 is divided into two parts, of unequal side ; the largest is the temple, 

 or I'aos ; the other, which was entered from the back front, was the opis- 

 thodome. The position of this temple with respect to the points of 

 the compass, gave rise to an error which is not yet entirely removed, 

 notwithstanding all that architects and antiquarians have written for 

 that purpose. It was long believed that the front of the Parthenon, 

 as is the case with most other temples, was turned towards the west, 

 and in fact it is the western front that faces the entrance to the Acro- 

 polis by the propylea ; but here lies the difficulty. It is at this end 

 that we find the smaller division of the cella, which the partizans of 

 the common custom have beeu pleased to call a vestibule, or irpowor. 

 But if we admit this, where shall we find the opisthodome, which all 

 ancient authors are unanimous in placing in the back part of the tem- 

 ple? It must therefore be acknowledged that, contrary to the usual 

 practice, the front was turned to the east, anel we shall give further 

 proofs of this when we come to speak of the sculptures on the pedi- 

 ments. Round the temple, as we have already said, there runs a 

 peristyle conijiosed of forty-six columns, eight on each front, and 

 seventeen along the sides. We are indebted to Mr. Travers for one 

 important remark: Ldl the colunnis lean towards the interior of the 

 temple, so that those at the angles have a double inclination, in order 

 to oppose a greater force to the pressure of the edifice. The jointing 

 of the blocks that form them is so well executed, that it requires close 

 examination to discover it, the interstice being scarcely so thick as 

 the finest thread ; and the same perfection is observable throughout. 

 The columns have no base, but stand u|)ou three very high steps, 

 which form a styloba'.e for the whole edifice. The height of the co- 

 lumns, including tl.e capital, is 34 ft. 2 in. ; their diameter is 3 ft.; 

 those at the angle-j being rather larger, their diameter is nearly Ih in. 

 more. 



The capital is very plain, and has no astragal, its place being sup- 

 plied by an irdenture which crosses the Huting without stopping it. 

 The capital is joined to the shaft by four listels ; the plinth has no 

 talon : as that moulding would have had a paltry appearance in such 

 a severe ■'tyle of architecture. The total height of the capital is 

 2 ft. 24 in.; 1. 1. 13 inches for the eehines and listels, and 132 in. for 

 the plinth. 



The columns are fluted with sharp edges throughout their whole 

 height; but to make the fluting appear si ill deeper by the effect of 

 light and shade, it is not out in segments of a circle, which would 

 have permitted the light to fall equally ou every part of the conca- 

 vity ; but it is made flat at bottom, so that the sides, rising abruptly, 

 cause a deeper shadow. This fluting does not, as in most Greek 

 temples, run up directly, and at right angles, to the listels of the ca- 

 pital ; it is more in the Roman style, except that in the Parthenon, 

 instead of terminating, as in Roman architecture, by a semicircle, 

 they end in a kind of elliptical arc. 



The columns support an entablature 10 ft. lOi in. in height, no less 

 admirable for the beauty of the marble with which it is ornamented, 

 than for the masculine character that prevails in its profiles. The 

 face of the tiyglyph is exactly perpendicular to that of the architrave, 

 a rule which Leroy thinks was followed at Athens till the reign of 

 Augustus, when the Greeks, and the Romius after them, began to de- 

 viate from it, in making the face of the tryglyph slope to the archi- 

 trave. The height of the trvglyphs of the Parthenon is 4 it. 44 in., 

 and their width 2ft. 9iin. It will be observed that here, as in all 

 Greek Doric temples, the angle of the frieze is flanked by a tryglyph, 

 whereas the Romans left the corner plain, and placed the tryglyph 

 perpendicularly over the axis of the column. 



There is one very singular peculiarity, whieh Messrs. Fuente and 



