The Parthenon
The Parthenon was a temple to Athena
built on top of the highest hill in Athens, the Acropolis (Acropolis
means High City). In the Late Bronze
Age, the Acropolis had been where the kings of Athens lived (like
Theseus in the myth), and
where everybody went to defend themselves when there was a war. But
after the Dark Ages, the Athenians
had no more kings to rule
them. Instead they had an oligarchy,
and so there was no king to live on the Acropolis. Instead, the Acropolis
became sacred to the goddess Athena, and the Athenians built her a temple
there.
There was at least one Parthenon on that spot before the one that is
there now. It was built in the Archaic period
out of limestone. The Persians
destroyed this first temple when they sacked Athens in the Persian
Wars, just before the battle of
Salamis in 480 BC. We have only scraps
of it that were buried on the Acropolis after the war.
For a long time after the Persian Wars, the Athenians left the Acropolis
in ruins, as a sort of war memorial. But by the 440’s BC, a generation
later, they wanted to rebuild their Parthenon bigger and better than
before.
The Athenians hired two great architects, Callicrates and Ictinus, and a great sculptor, Pheidias, to rebuild the Parthenon. This time the whole building would be made of marble, and in the very latest style, and big, too.
More on the Parthenon
Classical architecture
Main Greek architecture
page
Main Ancient Greece page
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