The Parthenon of Pericles has been shown in a new light as a result of
the eleven years of study and research made in connection with the
reproduction at Nashville. Some of the older conceptions were based on
assumptions rather than facts derived from research. For the first time
the modern Greek who visits Nashville sees the Parthenon as his
ancestors saw and admired it at Athens.
The Parthenon is sixty-five feet high with its superstructure resting on
the base or stylobate of the temple, consisting of three steps. The
largest dimensions are furnished by the lowest of these steps, which is
two hundred and thirty-eight feet long by one hundred and eleven feet
wide. The top step, on which the peristyle rests, is two hundred and
twenty-eight feet long by one hundred and one feet wide.
One of the most interesting peculiarities, or it might be said
subtleties, employed by the Greeks in building the Parthenon is that no
two major lines are exactly parallel nor are they exactly equal in
length.
The most striking feature of the Parthenon when viewed from any exterior
approach is the encircling row of great Doric columns forming the
peristyle. There are forty-six of these columns, seventeen on each side,
six on each end (not counting the corner columns twice), and six each on
the east and west porticos. The columns of the peristyle are thirty-four
feet high with an approximate diameter at the base of six feet. They
have an average spacing from face to face of eight feet. The columns of
the porticos are somewhat smaller, having a base diameter of five and
one-half feet.
[Illustration: Top of Treasury or West Room Showing Ionic Columns
and Decorations]
The main body of the building is called the cella. The exterior walls of
the cella on the long sides with the columns form majestic corridors.
The shadows falling at certain times of the day on the walls and floors
of the corridors are very beautiful.
Another interesting feature connected with the corridors is what has
come to be known as the "Greek Urn." This is the figure cut in the sky
by the columns and architrave at the ends of the long exterior
corridors. The Greek Urn has been made famous in literature by the poet
Keats in his "Ode to a Grecian Urn."
The only openings to the Parthenon are the two pairs of great bronze
doors leading off the east and west porticos. These doors are the
largest in America and probably are the largest bronze doors in the
world. They can only be challenged as to size by the Congressional
Library doors at Washington or by those of one of the old cathedrals in
Florence, Italy, and they are slightly larger than either. The doors are
twenty-four feet high, seven feet each wide, a foot thick, and weight
seven and one-half tons each.
There is no doubt that the front entrance to the Parthenon was through
the eastern doors. If there were no documentary evidence to prove this,
and there is an abundance, the fact that all of the twenty-two gods of
the east pediment are major deities of the Greeks while only four of
those on the west pediment are major (the remainder being
personifications and minor deities) would be sufficient proof that the
eastern end was the front of the building.
Entering the Parthenon through the eastern doors, the visitor most
likely would first note the division of the main body of the building,
or cella, by a transverse wall into two rooms--the east room and the
west room.
The east room is known as the Naos or temple proper. It is ninety-eight
feet long, sixty-three feet wide, and has a ceiling height of
forty-three feet. The most striking feature of the Naos is the double
row of Doric columns, twenty-three below and twenty-three above, with an
architrave between. These form a colonnade surrounding the main floor on
three sides. The lower units of the colonnade are three and
three-quarter feet in diameter at the base and twenty-one feet high.
Those of the upper tier are two and one-quarter feet in diameter and
sixteen feet high. The columns on the long side of the colonnade form
with the interior cella walls beautiful and impressive corridors.
Another interesting feature is that the floor of the corridors is raised
an inch and a half above the main floor of the Naos.
In the west end of the Naos, twenty feet from the end columns and facing
the eastern doors, stood the Chryselephantine Statue of Athena, the
beautiful shrine of the temple, if historians of that day are to be
believed. The statue was forty feet high and reached within three feet
of the ceiling. It was made, as its name indicates, of gold and ivory.
The fleshy parts were carved ivory and the remainder were plates of gold
suspended on a framework of cedarwood. It was the masterpiece of Phidias
and was worth a king's ransom.
When Theodosius II changed the Parthenon into a Christian church in the
fifth century he moved the statue of Athena to Byzantium, capital of the
Roman Empire, as it would have been incongruous to leave it in the
Parthenon after the change in religions. After the removal of the
Chryselephantine Statue its fate is shrouded in mystery. No part of it
and no authentic sketch, drawing, or model of it has ever been found.
[Illustration: Interior of Naos or East Room of Parthenon at
Nashville Showing the Ceiling and Plaster Casts of Elgin Marbles]
The Greeks entered the eastern doors at the hour of temple worship,
always in the early morning, bearing gifts of gold and silver and other
valuable articles. There they were met by the priests, who received the
gifts. While the worshipers paid their devotions to the goddess at her
shrine, the priests took the gifts through the great doors, thence along
the exterior corridors, through the western doors, and into the west
room where the gifts were deposited. This room is called the Maiden's
Chamber or Treasury.
The west room is forty-four feet long and sixty-three feet wide. As in
the east room, its most striking feature is the columns. There are four
of these arranged in a rectangle sixteen by twenty-three feet in the
center of the room. The columns are Ionic in design and, unlike those of
the east room, are monoliths. They are forty-one feet high, six feet in
diameter at the base, and three and one-half feet in diameter at the
top. The decorations of the room are Ionic also, in contrast with those
of the east room.
The decorations of the Parthenon are all authenticated. Fragments of
them are preserved in the British Museum and in the Louvre, and some of
the colors still show, though dimly, on the protected parts of the ruin
at Athens. The decorations at the top of both the interior and exterior
architrave, above and between the capitals of the Doric columns are
technically known as guttae. The color decorations are principally in
shades of blue and red with some yellows. In the interior the colors are
found in the fret along the top of the architrave in the east room and
in the moldings around the ceilings of both rooms. The colors of the
exterior occur in the frets around the top of the cella walls, in the
ceiling of the corridors and porticos, and in the decorations of the
cornice.
The Greeks lighted the old temple almost wholly through the great doors
in each end of the building; at Nashville the lighting comes from above,
and this is one of the most prominent of the modern innovations
incorporated in the reproduction of the Parthenon. The Greek ceiling was
exactly like that at Nashville with this exception: In the Greek temple,
between the great cedar beams that span the ceiling and support the roof
was an open grillwork of cedarwood, while at Nashville the open spaces
have been filled with frosted panes of glass, etched to resemble the
rays of the sun. The Greeks might have had glass, as the manufacture of
plate glass by the Phoenicians antedated the period of Pericles by some
five hundred years. As we have seen, however, they had no incentive to
use it, for they obtained their light from below. The incentive at
Nashville is to conceal the two hundred and seventy-two high-powered
electric lights which give to the interior its beautiful simulation of
sunlight, accentuating its beauty and, to a great extent, eliminating
the shadows.
The roof at Nashville is like the one at Athens except as to the
material used in its construction. The antefixes along the eaves served
the purpose of covering the joints between the marble slabs and are of
carved ornamental design. At each corner of the roof is a lion's head,
thought to be intended originally as a waterspout. Also at each corner
of the roof is a stone block upon which is surmounted a Gryphon monster,
standing guard over the temple day and night. The highest points on the
Parthenon are the carved ornaments, known as the Acroteria, at each end
of the building above the pediments.
It is difficult for anyone to describe the Parthenon and do it justice.
Suffice it to say that "it is a thing of beauty and a joy forever."
[Illustration: The Naos or East Room Showing Symmetry of Columns,
the Depressed Floor and Some of the Elgin Marbles]