Pheidias, Sculptor to the Gods

The Athena Parthenos, according to one ancient historian, contained 44 talents of gold, a quantity equivalent to more than 2500 pounds. Converted to troy ounces, the figure soars to 30,270.24 which, at $400 an ounce, would have a value of not less than $12 million. In fact, the worth of the Athena's gold was so incredible that some writers called her nothing more than a glorified treasury, an Athenian Fort Knox in the shape of a goddess.

Of course, to the Athenians, Pheidias's colossal sculpture was much more than that. Indeed, comparing Athena to other literary and statuary works of her time permits one "to allow a genuinely religious motive for the commission of such a huge statue" (Spivey, 167). This, even if the imagery and nomenclature tended to confuse. For Parthenos means virgin, yet the city revered their goddess as The Mother of Men, a queen, a mistress, and a protectress. "As they gazed on her, Athenians saw a figure at once comforting and threatening. Athena's warrior status was implied by her helmet-- from whose visor sprang winged horses, the spear resting against her left shoulder, and by the Nike [Victory] figure, flourishing a wreath, in her extended hand: victory assured" (Spivey, 167).

Since the great Athena did not survive the middle ages, moderns cannot be certain about her figure and appointments. Several much smaller marble copies and depictions on coins did endure and today provide scholars with the strongest evidence aiding reconstruction of Pheidias's work.

A Reconstruction of Pheidias's Athena, including the disputed column beneath the Nike View it in the Perseus Collection

From these and literary accounts, experts have concluded that base included three courses, consisting of a plinth at the bottom, a frieze with twenty-one golden figures in relief representing the Birth of Pandora in the middle, and moldings on the top (Leipen, 23). The base alone probably stood five feet (one-and-a-half meters) tall, lifting Athena's feet to the onlooker's eye-level.

Athena herself stood at the center of the wide base, with the middle of the five Doric columns of the Parthenon's two-tiered interior cella standing directly behind her. She wore a long dress that left her arms bare but covered the rest of her body clear down to the feet, leaving little more than toes exposed. It was not a complex garment, rather like a simplified version of the later Roman toga, with billowing folds and drapery. It was pinned together at the shoulders, and the goddess wore a belt of snakes with interlocking heads to keep her dress close to her form, a motif which some argue Pheidias himself invented(Leipen, 28). Most importantly, the sculptor finished the entire surface of the goddess' dress in gold.

Athena, depicted as an armed protectress, bore a golden aegis (breastplate) over her dress. In mythology, this shield belonged Zeus, who had lent it to her. Many ancient writers considered this accouterment, likely because of its ordained-by-Zeus symbolism, the second most important aspect of Pheidias's work, following only the goddess' helmet. The plate covered the breasts in front and reached below the shoulder blades in the rear, bore the ivory head of Medusa directly over the heart and surrounded her with snakes carved in golden relief (Leipen, 29).

Athena's sandals, that portion of her which visitors could see most clearly, followed the Pheidian model by leaving no space untouched. The sandals themselves were simple, fitting the feet in shape and attached to them by golden braids, one of which probably ran between the goddess' big and second toes. But the sandals' soles were very thick, and, archaeologists now believe, included a relief carving of the mythological battle between the Lapiths (men) and the Centaurs (half-man/half-goat beasts).

Like all other nude parts of Athena's body, Pheidias covered the arms with ivory. The left arm braced her spear against her shoulder while its hand rested atop the goddess' shield. The right arm, outstretched, held the life-size statue of Victory. On both arms, Pheidias probably (the record is rather unclear here) placed golden snake bracelets and similar golden serpentine charms around her biceps (Leipen, 28).

Unfortunately the information required for a reconstruction of Athena's face remains extremely poor. Pausanias reveals only that the face was of ivory, while Plato (who lived shortly after Pheidias's death) concurs and adds that her eyes were ablaze with precious stones. Examination of inferior copies indicates that the Athena probably bore a stoic expression on a smile-less face with a soft, rounded chin. Her hair, traditional and conservative for its day, protruded from the helmet in curly lock before either ear. In the back, a ribbon tied the hair together, except for a pair of tresses which came over the shoulders and rested on the aegis.

According to Pausanias, "the helmet is surmounted in the middle by a figure of a sphinx... and on either side of the helmet are griffins." The archaeological record shows that "on all the copies the helmet is of the Attic type, with the dome fitting the shape of the skull, a distinct neck-piece, and movable cheek-pieces" (Leipen, 32). "In the center, worked in the round and supporting the plume, was a winged sphinx with female bust sitting on her hind legs." On either side were pegasoi (winged horses), with their wings up-curved for the attachment of supplementary plumes made of either horsehair or feathers and possibly painted for effect (Leipen, 32). Additionally, Athena wore simple "disc and pendant" earrings, and a large necklace with concentric circles of gold beads and, most likely, precious gems.

Never one to leave unanswered the opportunity to add ornamentation and religious symbols to his work, Pheidias placed, as already mentioned, a six-foot chryselephantine statue of Winged Victory in the goddess' right hand. Nike's dress resembled that of the Athena, although her knees were slightly bent and she rested gently on her toes, ascribing the notion of recent or impending flight. Further, her billowing dress probably pressed against her legs, not unlike the pose of the Nike of Samothrace, helping to create the illusion of a wind-swept voyager. Finally, Nike held in her own outstretched hands a wreath, anxious to present it to the city which had, with the protection of Athena, earned Victory's prize in years of brutal war.

Looking at the Athena's home, through the columns of the Propylon View it in the Perseus Collection

Some archeologists believe that the protruding weight of the Nike required placement of an ornamental column below Athena's right hand. However, this theory, supported by the presence of a column in the marble reproduction deemed closest to the original, has no confirming documentation in the literary record and none in the archeological examination of the Acropolis-- scholars have not found a hole corresponding to that which held the Athena's backbone in the place where this alleged column would have stood.

Other probable accessories do, however, rely on firmer historical support. Dio Chrysostom, writing around 100 AD, noted that "the bird [an owl] was especially dear to Athena, the most beautiful and wisest of the goddesses, and it became part of Pheidias's art among the Athenians: he did not find it unworthy to set it up together with the goddess, and the people agreed" (Leipen, 40).

Athena's other animal companion coiled menacingly between the shield and her left leg: an enormous Erichthonius serpent. And though this particular spot may seem an unusual location for the artist to deposit a snake, study of later copies indicates that he did so out of architectural necessity. Athena's hand, gently placed atop the heavy bronze shield, simply could not support its weight. Thus the snake, likely also bronze, provided the required abutment even as it added an air of surety of purpose and danger to the goddess' image.

The shield, the final and most controversial element of the Athena, while expressing great mythological motifs, prompted Pheidias's exile even as it was, supposedly, the location of the artist's ultimate spiteful trick. The interior, concave side depicted the furious battle between the giants and the Olympian gods. The convex side, which smugly confronted people standing to the Athena's left, portrayed the battle between the Amazons and the Greeks. And since Pheidias chose to place the Acropolis itself at the center of the shield with the battle swirling around it, the similarity between that scene and the taxing wars with the Persians would have been obvious to all.

The charge of impiety sprang from close study of this scene. For the artist included a reverent rendition of a beautiful Pericles in combat with an Amazon. Moreover, at the top of the scene, Pheidias included a bald image of himself lifting a rock-- a plainly obvious reference to his part in creating the monumental Acropolis of which this very statue was the central piece. For this offense Pheidias found himself on trial. Nevertheless, when his enemies forced Pheidias to leave Athens, he did so assured that his Athena would follow the orders he had given her. Pheidias, it seems, foresaw the resentment his shield would foster and constructed it such that removing his image would cause the entire sculpture to fall apart.

The Athena's home, the Parthenon, in blazing sunlight View it in the Perseus Collection

Plots and legerdemain aside, Pheidias's work had a clear purpose and effect. As the historian Quintilian wrote, "That Pheidias is held to be a greater artist in the fashioning of gods than of men, and that his Zeus [like his Athena] had even added to the existing religion a new element, so closely does the majesty of the work approach the god himself" (Walston, 71). Before Pheidias, cult statues were merely idols, "physical stimulations of inner religious moods." Simply put, "The devotee brought more religious sentiment into the temple than was offered him by the spirit which emanated from the sacred monument of the god" (Walston, 72).

Pheidias, of course, changed that. The Athena Parthenos and the Olympian Zeus were not simple idols. "The form of the majestic figure, the grandeur of the perfect brow, over-shadowed by its massive locks, the sweetness and benignity of [Zeus's] smile, the colossal dimensions all but overpowering the perceptive faculty of the eye, the power, the brilliancy, and above all the beauty, shed forth by the more than human form must have moved the sense beyond the experience of previous sensations, must have filled the emotions with unfelt vibrations..." (Walston, 72).

As initially strange as this may seem to us, a people thousands of miles and thousands of years away from the Greeks, we too have our cult statues. Americans frequently see colossal images like those of Pheidias. The seated statue of Abraham Lincoln, holding court in a building not unlike a Doric temple, not unintentionally resembles the Olympian Zeus, right down to the bearded countenance. And, perhaps more obviously, the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor holds the undeniable and unassailable power to conjure up immense feelings of hope and faith in the American nation as she stands guard, like the Athena, over the city that made her its own. Pheidias's work may be gone, but his legacy will, unquestionably, survive well into the 26th century after his death.

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