The Parthenon is consecrated in Athens - March 9th, 432 BC

On this day in 432 BC, the newly-completed Parthenon was dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show for those who can never know enough about history.
I'm Gay Blusier, and in this episode we're talking about
an enduring symbol of classical Greece and one of the

(00:22):
most celebrated buildings in human history, the Parthenon of ancient Athens.
The day was March ninth, four thirty two BC. The
newly completed Parthenon was dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena.

(00:43):
The imposing marble temple was part of the Acropolis of
Athens in ancient Citadel, built on a rocky outcrop overlooking
the city. Due to its durable materials and precise construction,
the Parthenon survived centuries of earthquakes, fires, wars, and looting.
It's a little worse for wear today, but thanks to

(01:04):
ongoing restoration efforts, the temple is still standing. It's now
one of the most recognized structures on Earth, and millions
of visitors make the pilgrimage to see it each year,
many of whom don't even believe in Athena. The Parthenon
that stands today is the same one that was consecrated
in the year four thirty two, but it was preceded

(01:25):
by an earlier structure, now known as the Older Parthenon.
That original temple stood on the same site as the
current Parthenon, but it was never fully finished. That's likely
because the Persian Empire invaded Athens in four eight BC,
destroying much of the city, including the unfinished temple. The

(01:45):
Persians kept the Athenians pretty busy for the next thirty
years or so, leaving them little time for rebuilding. But
around four forty nine, a renowned Athenian statesman named Pericles
was able to negotiate peace with the King of Persia.
Shortly after, Pericles launched an extensive building program designed to

(02:06):
transform the Hill of the Acropolis, the high point of
the city, into a monument to Athenian wealth, power, and culture.
And as the centerpiece of his grand building campaign, Pericles
commissioned a replacement temple for the city's patron deity, Athena,
the Goddess of Wisdom, warfare, and fine art. Construction on

(02:27):
the Parthenon began in four forty seven BC and took
about fifteen years to finish in estimated one hundred thousand
tons of marble was used in the project, all of
which had to be mined from a quarry about ten
miles outside of Athens. Once it was extracted, the marble
was loaded into wagons and transported up the steep incline

(02:49):
of the acropolis. When the raw marble finally reached the buildsite,
it was then carved and trimmed by hand into approximately
thirteen thousand, four hundred blocks. The smooth blocks were then
fitted together without the use of mortar, a feat that
may have been accomplished through the use of ropes, pulleys,
and wooden cranes. It was a meticulous and time intensive

(03:11):
process to perfectly carve and position each block, but nearly
twenty five hundred years on, it's hard to argue with
the results. The Parthenon wasn't built solely to honor the
goddess Athena. It was also a way to assert the
cultural superiority of Athens over its fellow city states. At
the time, the Parthenon was the largest and most ornate

(03:34):
temple on the Greek mainland. It was brilliantly designed, expertly crafted,
and adorned with dozens of intricate marble figures and sculpted panels.
Those larger than life compositions extolled the myths, values, and
beliefs of Athens, and they also caused a fortune to make.
In that way, the Parthenon was an expression of Athenian wealth, culture, skill,

(03:58):
and creativity, a monument not just to Athena but to
Athens itself. That sense of grandeur was also reflected in
the temple's location at the peak of the acropolis. Towering
above the city, the Parthenon could be seen from almost
any angle by the people below. All they had to
do was glance skyward, and the greatness of their city

(04:20):
would be reaffirmed. That said, the Parthenon was still a
temple to Athena, and as such, its most awe inspiring
feature was devoted to her. Inside the main chamber of
the Parthenon stood an enormous wooden statue of the goddess,
said to be nearly forty feet tall. Ivory was layered

(04:40):
onto the statue to represent the visible parts of Athena's flesh,
and thousands of pounds of gold were carefully sculpted to
represent her dress, armor, and jewelry. The imposing statue was
known as the Athena Parthenos aka Athena the Maiden or
Athena of the Virgin, and it's from that title that
the Parthenon gets its name. A renowned sculptor named Phidias

(05:05):
is believed to have created the statue, and he was
also the general overseer of the entire Acropolis building campaign.
He worked on the design for the Parthenon with two architects,
Ictinus and Callicritis, but it was Phidias himself who led
the project. As a result, the sculptor's influence is evident
throughout the temple, not just in the lifelike reliefs that

(05:28):
adorn it, but in the very walls, columns, and steps
that make it up. Famously, the Parthenon contains no straight
lines or right angles. It may look perfectly straight and
symmetrical from a distance, an illusion that may have been
by design, but if you look up close, you'll see
that all its walls and columns are slightly tapered, giving

(05:49):
them a subtle curvature, almost as if they're bulging. According
to classical scholar Jeffrey Hurwitz, the result is a building
that evokes the form of a statue. In an interview
with PBS, he explained the effect, saying, quote, these deviations
from the strait, from the perpendicular, from the perfectly vertical,

(06:10):
from the perfectly horizontal are analogous to the curvatures and
the swellings and the irregularities of the human body. And
in that sense, the Parthenon strikes me as being a
sculptural as well as an architectural achievement. Unfortunately, most Athenians
didn't get the chance to fully appreciate that achievement up close.

(06:31):
Although the Parthenon was considered the center of religious life
in Athens, only a handful of priests and other religious
figures were allowed inside of it. Everyone else, including Pericles,
had to settle for a view from the second step,
which was as close as they were allowed to get.
That said, even the clergy didn't get to enjoy the

(06:52):
temple in peace for very long. Just a year or
so after its completion, the Peloponnesian War broke out and
Athens was once again and plunged into a long and
draining conflict. The war between Athens, Sparta and their respective
allies lasted until four oh three BC, when Athens was
finally defeated. After the Persian Empire lent its support to Sparta.

(07:15):
The fighting had wiped out entire cities and upended centuries
of religious and cultural traditions, effectively reshaping the ancient Greek world,
and so the brief Golden Age of Athens was over,
and the Parthenon became an ever present reminder of all
that had been lost. In the centuries that followed, the

(07:36):
Temple of Athena was co opted by multiple different religions
and was used in turn as a Byzantine church, a
Roman Catholic cathedral, and a mosque. The latter happened when
the Ottoman Empire seized control of Athens in the mid
fourteen hundreds. Two centuries later, the Ottoman Turks converted the
Parthenon into an ammunition depot during their war with the Venetians.

(08:00):
That decision is the major reason why the Parthenon is
in the ruined state it is today. In sixteen eighty seven,
the attackers bombarded the acropolis with cannon fire, and one
of the blasts ignited the gunpowder stored inside the temple.
The resulting explosion destroyed the main chamber of the building
and caused extensive structural damage throughout In the eighteen twenties,

(08:23):
the battle scarred Parthenon was used as an army barracks
during Greece's War for Independence. A decade later, the Greeks
defeated the Ottoman Empire and the Parthenon was left empty
once again. Many of its surviving features were further damaged,
both by looters and by the elements, but thankfully, the
temple's marble, friezes and other sculptures were removed and shipped

(08:46):
to London for safe keeping. Restoration efforts then began in
the late nineteenth century, when the Parthenon assumed its current
role as a world famous tourist destination. However, the Greek
government didn't fully back the object until the nineteen seventies,
when it appointed an archeological committee called the Acropolis Restoration Project.

(09:07):
Under the direction of Greek architect Monoleese Correz. The committee
made a record of every relic in the ruins, and
then used computer mapping to identify each piece's original location.
This allowed them to rebuild damage portions of the temple
using much of the original marble, and in cases where
that wasn't possible, the team filled the gaps with new

(09:29):
marble mined from the same quarry that the ancient Athenians
had used. That painstaking restoration lasted more than forty years,
and some renovations remain ongoing today. The goal isn't to
restore the Parthenon to its full former glory. It will
always remain a partial ruin, reflecting the complete story of

(09:50):
its long, tumultuous history, rather than just its glory days.
The decision to leave it incomplete seems like the right one,
as there would be plenty of work involved in a
total restoration. For instance, we know that the Parthenon sculptures
and other parts of the structure weren't always the gleaming
white color they are today. Traces of pigment found during

(10:12):
laser cleaning of the Parthenon revealed that it was once
painted with vivid colors, including shades of blue, red, and green. However,
two and a half thousand years of sunlight and weathering
bleached away all that color, and now it would be
virtually impossible to recreate the exact shades and placement. Another
missing piece that would have to be made from scratch

(10:34):
is the Athena Parthenos statue. It disappeared at some point
in late antiquity, and most historians believe it was likely
destroyed completely. We do have a good idea of how
the statue looked, though, thanks to surviving Roman replicas. Still
recreating it would be a tall order and could never
match the original exactly. Some sculptures from the Parthenon are

(10:57):
still housed at the British Museum by Greece's requests to
have them returned, and many other artifacts are on display
at the nearby Acropolis Museum in Athens. But if your
heart is really said on seeing a full sized Athena statue,
you're gonna want to skip grease and Rome and instead
take a trip to Nashville, Tennessee. For reasons we'll say

(11:19):
for another day. The city is home to full scale
replicas of both the original Parthenon and the Athena Parthenos statue.
So while the Athens of the South doesn't have the
history of its Mediterranean cousin, it does offer an arguably
more complete picture of its most famous landmark, and all
within walking distance of the world's finest hot chicken. Athens,

(11:42):
eat your heart out. I'm gay, Bluesier, and hopefully you
now know a little more about history today than you
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(12:02):
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Thanks to channel Or Mays for producing the show, and
thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in history class.