This reverence for Pandora is a likely reason Phidias felt comfortable with depicting her birth on the base of the Athena Parthenos statue in the Parthenon. This project was funded by the Athenian government. Since the original no longer exists I will be relying on a interpretation created by Alan LeQuire for the Nashville Parthenon. The original would have been made with an armature overlaid with chryselephantine, gold and ivory. Ivory was used for the body of Athena and the figure Nike, resting in Athena’s right hand, with gold being used in ornamentations such as the garment Athena is wearing, her sandals, and helmet. The exterior of the shield (Fig. 4b) depicts the battle of the Athenians and Amazons. On the inside of the shield (Fig. …show more content…
All these depictions match the decoration in the metopes of the Parthenon which also depicted battle scenes . The overall theme of the Parthenon is the Athenians ability to conquer and control the “uncivilized”. While the base of the Athena Parthenos, which is at eye level for those visiting, is the birth of Pandora (figures 4d). One reason for this has to do with the similarities Pandora and Athena share and by extension Athens. While most city-states in Greece viewed Pandora as evil, Athens still revered her as she once was earth-goddess with similarities to their own patron goddess Athena. Both were born fully grown, the gods attended the creation of Pandora, just as they were present for the birth of Athena. Pandora is made of earth and water resulting in clay, terracotta presumably, a mixture associated with the craftsmen of Athens. An attribute of Athena was protector of potters, and in short anything created from terracotta such as Pandora. In her role as Athena Ergane, she was the goddess of work. Pandora was believed to have help humankind learn many crafts and if we follow Hesiod’s writings Pandora is the reason men have work. There are also links in the cults of Athena and
There is an ongoing debate on whether the Parthenon Marbles, now located in London, England, should be returned to their original homeland of Athens, Greece. The marbles were removed from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin from 1801-1812 and transported to England. They were sold to the British government in 1816 and put in the British Museum where they have been for the last 200 years. I believe that the marbles should now be returned to Greece, not only because of the method and circumstances surrounding their removal, but because they are original pieces of the oldest and most symbolic structure in Greek history that epitomizes the pinnacle of Ancient Classical Greece and the beginning of western democracy through artistic ingenuity.
During Classical Greece the Parthenon was built as temple to the Goddess Athena, as symbol of the state’s wealth and superiority, along with serving as the treasury. The architecture uses a bit of both Doric and Ionic orders. On the outside rim of the temple Doric columns, triglyphs and metopes are used but on the inside of the temple Ionic friezes were used. Both the metopes and friezes were completely filled with painted sculptures depicting the gods, Athenians, and conquered enemies. The themes center on gods or Athenians being victorious over chorus. One of the main stories shown in the Parthenon is the story of the Goddess of Wisdom, Athena being chosen as the patron Goddess of Athens over the Sea God, Poseidon. Poseidon was a war god who offered the people a beautiful but useless saltwater spring while Athena offered an olive tree. The people of Athens choose the olive tree symbolizing their culture valuing peace and prosperity over the chorus of war. The Parthenon also shows the Ancient Greeks value in mathematics and idealized perfection. The columns were carved to bulge slightly as well as tilting inwards, which creates the illusion that the columns were both straighter and taller than they were. Other illusions they used to give the appearance of perfection included arching in the middle just enough to ensure what would not pull and stop the eye from seeing the ends of the steps rise. Ancient Greeks valued their gods, perfection, mathematics, wealth and
On the right and left of the entrance are niches that may have held sacred representations of the different gods; the influx of peoples and cultures resulted in their worship and the dedication of this temple, to all the gods of Rome, may have served to unify differences.
According to the ancient myths and the secondary sources read throughout this course in relation to women, it is suggested that women in ancient Greece were treated as less than their male counterparts because of the contrast present in being both praised and abhorred for their innate sexuality. This innate sexuality is seen as uncontrollable specific to negative traits associated with it like deception and madness, which manifested itself in enforced ideals and a patriarchal system that feared women. This fear of the female nature led to men controlling them and was reinforced in daily life and ritualistic practices. This assumption is supported by the myths Hesiod’s Myth of Pandora and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite as well as the secondary
The Parthenon is an amazing Greek temple that was built 2,500 years ago. Even the architects of today have numerous questions about how it was constructed and how it has held up through its eventful past. The Parthenon's detailed appearance is not its only meaningful quality. The Parthenon was constructed as a temple to the goddess, Athena, and as an icon of the Greek people themselves. The Parthenon represents the Greek ideals of humanism, idealism, and rationalism.
... made such a great impression that it has carried through to our present day buildings such as the White House. The Athena Parthenos has been recreated by the Romans and then most recently by recreated by Alan LeQuire which is in Nashville. (See Fig 2.) We can get a glimpse with LeQuire’s recreation of how that statue may have been in ancient Greece standing in the Parthenon with such majestic greatness.
Hesiod tells the story of how the curse of Pandora came to be in his writing. In his two works Hesiod, Works and Days and Hesiod, Theogony that contain the story of Pandora are both writing in a slightly different perspective. However, at the end both have the same meaning to them. That Zeus created women as a punishment for men. In developing this meaning in both poems Hesiod uses a few different things in each story as oppose to telling the same story for both. Hesiod, Works and Days and Hesiod Theogony have the same meaning and most of the same plot but different in some aspects.
The country of Greece has opened a state of the art museum to house the Parthenon Sculptures, just steps away from their original home on the Acropolis Hill. However, only half of these important sculptures, inscriptions and architectural columns have been placed within the museum. Due to a series of unfortunate events including an explosion in the 1600's, the sculpture and marble structures sat in disrepair for over 200 years. In 1816, an English gentleman named Lord Elgin purchased them from the ruling Ottoman Empire and brought them back to London where they have been on display in the British Museum. Although saving them from further harm and ruin in the 1800s and 1900's, Greece is now ready to take them back, embracing their all important ancient identity.
also the goddess of war and the patroness of arts and crafts. Which led her to be a great leader
The Parthenon was built to honor the goddess of wisdom, Athena. When structures are built using straight lines they tend to look slightly distorted due to the science of optics. The architects Iktos and Kallikretes were skilled architects of their time and they used illusory tactics to create an ideal aesthetic for The Parthenon. The architects compensated for these visual illusions by counteracting them in their design. The end result is a structure that is not composed of straight lines, but when viewed by the human eye, looks perfectly straight. Plato would have mentioned one of his famous dictums, ?That which changes least is most real.? He would have viewed Iktos and Kallikretes designs as less real than other designs that do not u...
depicts the two cities and the happenings within, as well as Agamemnon's kingly. estate. The. To gain insight into the details and intricacies of the shield, one must. look at the shield itself, the cities depicted within the shield, and the King's.
It is made up of Styrofoam and wood but painted to give it the texture of marble. I was inspired when I first learned about the Parthenon that I wanted to know everything I could about it. The real Parthenon is made of all marble, but seeming’s how marble is very heavy and expensive I chose a light weight medium so that it can be transported. The overall design was to keep it as accurate to the original as possible. Although nothing can be built exactly the same way it is a little off, but it has eight (8) columns on the facade, and there are seventeen (17) on the flanks. There are two (2) rooms on the inside and the statue of Athena on the inside. Although she is not made of gold and ivory she is made of clay and gold paint. I chose the Greek style because it inspired me to want to learn more and become familiar with the past. There is not symbolism to my architectural model. I chose the tan color because it makes the model look older. My piece means that there was a great accomplishment for the city and the people of Athens. It is supposed to make the viewer feel that the builders took the time to make something so geometrically correct. The realization as to how much thought actually went into making the Parthenon is
In ancient times, shields spoke yields of their owner and their beliefs. Sometimes, they even showed their owner’s eminent fate. In the Iliad and the Aeneid, the shields of heroes—Achilles and Aeneas—are described both similarly and differently. There are many similarities in their shields: both having received the shields from their goddess mothers. Both shields were made by Hephaestus/Vulcan. The shields were also described in depth, making the shields seem comparable. However, they differed in the images on the shields. In the end, the Iliad’s description of the shield was the more effective symbol of the two stories.
Pygmalion in Greek mythology was a Cypriot sculptor who constructed a woman out of ivory and named her Galatea. According to Ovid’s translation, after seeing the Propoetides prostituting themselves in public for their defiance against the gods, he became uninterested in women; however his statue was so beautiful and realistic that he fell in love with it. After a short time, Aphrodite's festival day came, and Pygmalion made several offerings at the shrine of Aphrodite. Pygmalion was too scared to admit his true desire at the altar, so he quietly wished for a bride who would be "the living likeness of my ivory girl". When he returned home, he kissed his Galatea, and found that the statue’s lips felt warm. He kissed it again and found that the ivory had become flesh. Aphrodite had granted Pygmalion's wish. Pygmalion married the ivory sculpture changed to a woman under Aphrodite's blessing. In Ovid's translation, they had a son named Paphos, and in some other translations, they also had a daughter.