The Historians' History of the World 03

The new scheme upon which the Piræus was laid out, was not without its value as one visible proof of the naval grandeur of Athens. But the buildings in Athens and on the Acropolis formed the real glory of the Periclean age. A new theatre, termed the Odeon, was constructed for musical and poetical representations at the great Panathenaic solemnity; next, the splendid temple of Athene, called the Parthenon, with all its masterpieces of decorative sculpture, friezes, and reliefs; lastly, the costly portals erected to adorn the entrance of the Acropolis, on the western side of the hill, through which the solemn processions on festival days were conducted. It appears that the Odeon and the Parthenon were both finished between 445 and 437 B.C.: the Propylæa somewhat later, between 437 and 431 B.C., in which latter year the Peloponnesian War began. Progress was also made in restoring or reconstructing the Erechtheion, or ancient temple of Athene Polias, the patron goddess of the city—which had been burnt in the invasion of Xerxes. But the breaking out of the Peloponnesian War seems to have prevented the completion of this, as well as of the great temple of Demeter, at Eleusis, for the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries—that of Athene, at Sunium—and that of Nemesis at Rhamnus. Nor was the sculpture less memorable than the architecture; three statues of Athene, all by the hand of Phidias, decorated the Acropolis, one colossal, forty-seven feet high, of ivory, in the Parthenon, a second of bronze, called the Lemnian Athene, a third of colossal magnitude, also in bronze, called Athene Promachos, placed between the Propylæa, and the Parthenon, and visible from afar off, even to the navigator approaching Piræus by sea.

It is not, of course, to Pericles that the renown of these splendid productions of art belongs; but the great sculptors and architects, by whom they were conceived and executed, belonged to that same period of expanding and stimulating Athenian democracy, which likewise called forth creative genius in oratory, in dramatic poetry, and in philosophical speculation.

Considering these prodigious achievements in the field of art only as they bear upon Athenian and Grecian history, they are phenomena of extraordinary importance. When we learn the profound impression which they produced upon Grecian spectators of a later age, we may judge how immense was the effect upon that generation which saw them both begun and finished. In the year 480 B.C., Athens was ruined by the occupation of Xerxes: since that period, the Greeks had seen, first, the rebuilding and fortifying of the city on an enlarged scale; next, the addition of Piræus with its docks and magazines; thirdly, the junction of the two by the Long Walls, thus including the most numerous concentrated population, wealth, arms, ships, etc., in Greece; lastly, the rapid creation of so many new miracles of art—the sculptures of Phidias as well as the paintings of the Thasian painter Polygnotus, in the temple of Theseus, and in the portico called Pœcile.b

Plutarch says: “That which was the chief delight of the Athenians and the wonder of strangers, and which alone serves for a proof that the boasted power and opulence of ancient Greece is not an idle tale, was the magnificence of the temples and public edifices. Works were raised of an astonishing magnitude, and inimitable beauty and perfection, every architect striving to surpass the magnificence of the design with the elegance of the execution; yet still the most wonderful circumstance was the expedition with which they were completed. Phidias was appointed by Pericles superintendent of all the public edifices.”f

It thus appears that the gigantic strides by which Athens had reached her maritime empire were now immediately succeeded by a series of works which stamped her as the imperial city of Greece, gave to her an appearance of power even greater than the reality, and especially put to shame the old-fashioned simplicity of Sparta. The cost was doubtless prodigious, and could only have been borne at a time when there was a large treasure in the Acropolis, as well as a considerable tribute annually coming in: if we may trust a computation which seems to rest on plausible grounds, it cannot have been much less than three thousand talents in the aggregate [£600,000 or $3,000,000].