DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4264#0022
22
OF THE TEMPLE OF MINERVA,
When Sir George Wheler and Dr. Spon visited Athens in the year I67G, this temple was
entire ; and the former has given the following description of it:
" It is situated about the middle of the citadel, and consists altogether of admirable white
1
prise
d in the following
few words : 'E; S\ rat »«m, o» TLaflzwia. on-
15 tovtov to-iovw, oiroaa Iv toT? jt«Xou^Evoi5 a£T0(5 xEiraij
ira.no. U -n* 'Afiisras e'^si yinmr tit. l\ omafot i Xlotmimos ir^k
'a8b>£» sow Jfifia-ep T?; y?{. »W Js I'x te sAE'ipaHTo; To kyaXpa. y.cci
x?vo-aS mminreu. Translated: " To those entering the temple
they call Parthenon, all the works in what are termed the pedi-
ments [eagles] relate to the birth of Minerva; those behind re-
present the contention of Neptune and Minerva concerning At-
tica ; but the statue itself [of the goddess] is formed of ivory
and gold." Pausanias then proceeds to a minute description of
the chryselephantine statue, notices other monuments of art, de-
scribes the Erechtheum, enlarges on the colossal bronze Minerva,
by Phidias called Promachus, describes other statues and offer-
ings, mentions the Pelasgic Wall, and descends to the lower city
in the direction of the Grotto of Pan, between which subjects, as
usual with him, he interweaves a variety of mythological and his-
torical information, and never recurs to this fabric. Some have
supposed that Pausanias, from the then well-known and minute
descriptions of this monument by Ictinus and Carpion, Heliodorus,
and other topographers, and having before him the subject of all
Greece, may have declined to occupy the attention of his readers,
and his own, by expatiating on an object of such admitted general
admiration to the whole civilized world as the Parthenon; for even
at Rome Horace describes the poetasters of his day as incessantly-
engaged in lauding the splendour of the Acropolis of Athens:
Sunt, quibus unum opus est, intactse Palladis arcem
Carmine perpetuo celebrare, et
Undique decerptae frondi praeponere olivam.
In the same manner therefore as an Italian topographer might
be supposed to slight the history of so well known and often
described an edifice as St. Peter's at Rome, or a British one to
be little communicative on the generally admitted grandeur of
St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, so may the Greek author have
hurried to the consideration of less known features of the Acro-
polis. Others have also conjectured that the comparative scale of
excellence of the sculptural decorations of the Parthenon may have
been so beneath the master-pieces of art on which he is profuse in
description, as not to entitle them to greater comparative notice ;
an idea which, if appropriate, while part of what remains to us
almost defies approach, these, had they existed, might have
changed ' emulation itself into despair.' Yet, whatever may have
been the cause of his slender description of the Parthenon, the
want of clearness with regard to the pediments is much to be re-
gretted, particularly as considerable diversity of opinion still
exists concerning the appropriation of subject to each of them,
and, consequently, in the designation of the statues of which they
are composed.
The beauty of the marble of the mountains surrounding
Athens, particularly of that of Pentelicus, from which this
temple is wrought., must have given a great zest to the Athe-
nians in the cultivation of the refinement of architectural design:
with more brilliancy of appearance, it is almost capable of re-
ceiving the high finish of ivory. According to Pliny, Dipcenus
and Scyllis, born in Crete about the 50th Olympiad, 578 B.C.
were the first sculptors distinguished in working marble, and to
them are also attributed the earnest statues of ivory and gold.
The peculiarly hard lime-stone we call marble appears to have
little received that distinguishing appellation derived from
its brilliancy, but from authors subsequent to the period of
the Roman Conquest. The Pentelic marble, from the small-
ness of the grain, is still mistaken for the Parian, but of the
two, the Pentelic is of a finer quality. The Pentelic quarries
display in a remarkable manner the energies of the ancient
Athenians: whole sides of the mountains have disappeared,
and present uniformly cut perpendicular clifffe; and holes^
still to be traced on the slope to the quarries, made for the in-
sertion of capstans or windlasses, mark the place of the me-
chanical descent of the marble, and a damaged and rejected
cylinder, apparently intended for part of a column of the Parthe-
non, interests the traveller on the ascent. It is possible that
when Greece shall be free, these quarries so long abandoned, might
be re-opened beneficially to the commerce of that country.
Of the part that Phidias had in the design of this temple, and
in the production of the sculpture in particular, a diversity of
opinion has existed. It has been supposed that the whole of the
sculptural decorations are the ' undoubted' productions of that su-
perior artist, thus conveying to them a charm from the association of
that great name, which the unequal execution does not entitle por-
tions of them to receive : others assert that he had nothing to do
with the works, but that he may have designed the sculpture. Much
stress has been laid on the term TuOoi^yo; o-opo;, " skilful sculptor in
marble", applied by Aristotle to Phidias in opposition to atfyam-
mio;, " statuary", given by him to Polycletus whose works were
principally in bronze, in order to strengthen the probability of his
having executed the marble sculpture of the Parthenon; but the
same author and others also term him ayafytaTosroio; and mfyat-
i-oirAat7Tn;, terms apparently applied by that author synony-
mously to the sculptor's art. Now Pliny states Phidias to have
been the first who displayed and perfected the Toreutic art or
sculpture formed by the combination of metals and other mate-
rials, "primusque artem toreuticen aperuisse atque demonstrasse
meritd judicatur" : and Seneca says, " non ex ebore tantum Phi-
dias sciebat facere simulacra; faciebat et ex sere": and Quintilian,
" in ebore vero longe citra aemulum, vel si nihil nisi Minervam
Athenis, aut Olympium in Elide Jovem fecisset": omitting any
mention of his works in marble, which by these and other con-
current historical testimonies, it is clear was never the favorite
material of the eminent sculptors during the best ages of Greek
art; and Pausanias records only three statuer of marble of his
workmanship, from which we infer that his works in that material
were extremely rare, and, consequently, that no part of the ar-
chitectural sculpture of the Parthenon was from his hand. One of
the three statues mentioned by Pausanias as sculptured by Phi-
dias, was the statue of Nemesis at Rhamnus, related by him to
have been carved from a block of Parian marble brought for a
trophy of their anticipated victory by the Persians to Marathon,
but which, by Pliny, is spoken of as the production of his
pupil Agoracritus, on which he is recorded, by others, only to
have been allowed to inscribe his name; to reconcile which
with the assertion of Pausanias, M. Quatremere supposes the
statue of Venus, called Nemesis, by Agoracritus, and disposed
of by him to the Rhamnusians, to have been distinct from the
Nemesis of Pausanias. During an excavation undertaken within
the temple at Rhamnus under the auspices of the Dilettanti
Society, a colossal head of a statue was found, which has been
deposited in the British Museum, No. 273, and the holes
bored for the reception of ornaments corresponding with those
which would have been necessary for fixing the diadem de-
scribed by Pausanias, have almost proved it to have belonged to
that statue. The author of the Unedited Antiquities of Attica
considers the account of the Persian trophy to be a fable applied
to the statue, and adopted by Pausanias; in order to reconcile
to us the fragment here alluded to being of Pentelic marble ;
for, had it been Parian, we might have rejoiced in possessing an
undoubted fragment, if not from the hand, certainly from the
studio of Phidias: but the state of degraded mutilation in which
it appears, gives us no means of judging of his fine powers.
The fertility of genius of this great sculptor, who was equally
skilful in every department of his art, was surprising. He was at
the period of the erection of the Parthenon engaged in so many
and such various monuments belonging to the Toreutic art, that his
attention must have been occupied by them to so great a degree that
any but a general superintendence of the designs of the temple
can scarcely be supposed possible. When executing the Minerva
of the Parthenon, he had already completed or was engaged on, be-
sides many other statues and groupes in ivory and gold, five other
statues of that goddess, probably all of them colossal, of which the
Minerva Promachus in bronze on the Acropolis must have been
upwards of fifty feet in height, having been seen from the sea.
The passage of Plutarch describing the artists of the struc-
Itonn'
jwr
p1 ,
Sue *ii
' Itl
i: n
. m \
*ti
K
\,
OF THE TEMPLE OF MINERVA,
When Sir George Wheler and Dr. Spon visited Athens in the year I67G, this temple was
entire ; and the former has given the following description of it:
" It is situated about the middle of the citadel, and consists altogether of admirable white
1
prise
d in the following
few words : 'E; S\ rat »«m, o» TLaflzwia. on-
15 tovtov to-iovw, oiroaa Iv toT? jt«Xou^Evoi5 a£T0(5 xEiraij
ira.no. U -n* 'Afiisras e'^si yinmr tit. l\ omafot i Xlotmimos ir^k
'a8b>£» sow Jfifia-ep T?; y?{. »W Js I'x te sAE'ipaHTo; To kyaXpa. y.cci
x?vo-aS mminreu. Translated: " To those entering the temple
they call Parthenon, all the works in what are termed the pedi-
ments [eagles] relate to the birth of Minerva; those behind re-
present the contention of Neptune and Minerva concerning At-
tica ; but the statue itself [of the goddess] is formed of ivory
and gold." Pausanias then proceeds to a minute description of
the chryselephantine statue, notices other monuments of art, de-
scribes the Erechtheum, enlarges on the colossal bronze Minerva,
by Phidias called Promachus, describes other statues and offer-
ings, mentions the Pelasgic Wall, and descends to the lower city
in the direction of the Grotto of Pan, between which subjects, as
usual with him, he interweaves a variety of mythological and his-
torical information, and never recurs to this fabric. Some have
supposed that Pausanias, from the then well-known and minute
descriptions of this monument by Ictinus and Carpion, Heliodorus,
and other topographers, and having before him the subject of all
Greece, may have declined to occupy the attention of his readers,
and his own, by expatiating on an object of such admitted general
admiration to the whole civilized world as the Parthenon; for even
at Rome Horace describes the poetasters of his day as incessantly-
engaged in lauding the splendour of the Acropolis of Athens:
Sunt, quibus unum opus est, intactse Palladis arcem
Carmine perpetuo celebrare, et
Undique decerptae frondi praeponere olivam.
In the same manner therefore as an Italian topographer might
be supposed to slight the history of so well known and often
described an edifice as St. Peter's at Rome, or a British one to
be little communicative on the generally admitted grandeur of
St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, so may the Greek author have
hurried to the consideration of less known features of the Acro-
polis. Others have also conjectured that the comparative scale of
excellence of the sculptural decorations of the Parthenon may have
been so beneath the master-pieces of art on which he is profuse in
description, as not to entitle them to greater comparative notice ;
an idea which, if appropriate, while part of what remains to us
almost defies approach, these, had they existed, might have
changed ' emulation itself into despair.' Yet, whatever may have
been the cause of his slender description of the Parthenon, the
want of clearness with regard to the pediments is much to be re-
gretted, particularly as considerable diversity of opinion still
exists concerning the appropriation of subject to each of them,
and, consequently, in the designation of the statues of which they
are composed.
The beauty of the marble of the mountains surrounding
Athens, particularly of that of Pentelicus, from which this
temple is wrought., must have given a great zest to the Athe-
nians in the cultivation of the refinement of architectural design:
with more brilliancy of appearance, it is almost capable of re-
ceiving the high finish of ivory. According to Pliny, Dipcenus
and Scyllis, born in Crete about the 50th Olympiad, 578 B.C.
were the first sculptors distinguished in working marble, and to
them are also attributed the earnest statues of ivory and gold.
The peculiarly hard lime-stone we call marble appears to have
little received that distinguishing appellation derived from
its brilliancy, but from authors subsequent to the period of
the Roman Conquest. The Pentelic marble, from the small-
ness of the grain, is still mistaken for the Parian, but of the
two, the Pentelic is of a finer quality. The Pentelic quarries
display in a remarkable manner the energies of the ancient
Athenians: whole sides of the mountains have disappeared,
and present uniformly cut perpendicular clifffe; and holes^
still to be traced on the slope to the quarries, made for the in-
sertion of capstans or windlasses, mark the place of the me-
chanical descent of the marble, and a damaged and rejected
cylinder, apparently intended for part of a column of the Parthe-
non, interests the traveller on the ascent. It is possible that
when Greece shall be free, these quarries so long abandoned, might
be re-opened beneficially to the commerce of that country.
Of the part that Phidias had in the design of this temple, and
in the production of the sculpture in particular, a diversity of
opinion has existed. It has been supposed that the whole of the
sculptural decorations are the ' undoubted' productions of that su-
perior artist, thus conveying to them a charm from the association of
that great name, which the unequal execution does not entitle por-
tions of them to receive : others assert that he had nothing to do
with the works, but that he may have designed the sculpture. Much
stress has been laid on the term TuOoi^yo; o-opo;, " skilful sculptor in
marble", applied by Aristotle to Phidias in opposition to atfyam-
mio;, " statuary", given by him to Polycletus whose works were
principally in bronze, in order to strengthen the probability of his
having executed the marble sculpture of the Parthenon; but the
same author and others also term him ayafytaTosroio; and mfyat-
i-oirAat7Tn;, terms apparently applied by that author synony-
mously to the sculptor's art. Now Pliny states Phidias to have
been the first who displayed and perfected the Toreutic art or
sculpture formed by the combination of metals and other mate-
rials, "primusque artem toreuticen aperuisse atque demonstrasse
meritd judicatur" : and Seneca says, " non ex ebore tantum Phi-
dias sciebat facere simulacra; faciebat et ex sere": and Quintilian,
" in ebore vero longe citra aemulum, vel si nihil nisi Minervam
Athenis, aut Olympium in Elide Jovem fecisset": omitting any
mention of his works in marble, which by these and other con-
current historical testimonies, it is clear was never the favorite
material of the eminent sculptors during the best ages of Greek
art; and Pausanias records only three statuer of marble of his
workmanship, from which we infer that his works in that material
were extremely rare, and, consequently, that no part of the ar-
chitectural sculpture of the Parthenon was from his hand. One of
the three statues mentioned by Pausanias as sculptured by Phi-
dias, was the statue of Nemesis at Rhamnus, related by him to
have been carved from a block of Parian marble brought for a
trophy of their anticipated victory by the Persians to Marathon,
but which, by Pliny, is spoken of as the production of his
pupil Agoracritus, on which he is recorded, by others, only to
have been allowed to inscribe his name; to reconcile which
with the assertion of Pausanias, M. Quatremere supposes the
statue of Venus, called Nemesis, by Agoracritus, and disposed
of by him to the Rhamnusians, to have been distinct from the
Nemesis of Pausanias. During an excavation undertaken within
the temple at Rhamnus under the auspices of the Dilettanti
Society, a colossal head of a statue was found, which has been
deposited in the British Museum, No. 273, and the holes
bored for the reception of ornaments corresponding with those
which would have been necessary for fixing the diadem de-
scribed by Pausanias, have almost proved it to have belonged to
that statue. The author of the Unedited Antiquities of Attica
considers the account of the Persian trophy to be a fable applied
to the statue, and adopted by Pausanias; in order to reconcile
to us the fragment here alluded to being of Pentelic marble ;
for, had it been Parian, we might have rejoiced in possessing an
undoubted fragment, if not from the hand, certainly from the
studio of Phidias: but the state of degraded mutilation in which
it appears, gives us no means of judging of his fine powers.
The fertility of genius of this great sculptor, who was equally
skilful in every department of his art, was surprising. He was at
the period of the erection of the Parthenon engaged in so many
and such various monuments belonging to the Toreutic art, that his
attention must have been occupied by them to so great a degree that
any but a general superintendence of the designs of the temple
can scarcely be supposed possible. When executing the Minerva
of the Parthenon, he had already completed or was engaged on, be-
sides many other statues and groupes in ivory and gold, five other
statues of that goddess, probably all of them colossal, of which the
Minerva Promachus in bronze on the Acropolis must have been
upwards of fifty feet in height, having been seen from the sea.
The passage of Plutarch describing the artists of the struc-
Itonn'
jwr
p1 ,
Sue *ii
' Itl
i: n
. m \
*ti
K
\,