Talk:Parthenon/Archive 1

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The phrase "was built at the initiative of Pericles" does not seem grammatical to me. Akb4 03:14, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The article is self-contradictory. It says the columns widened towards the top, then gives a single diameter measurement (noting that the corners were a bit wider). So is the diameter measurement given for the bottom, average, or top of a column? Akb4 03:14, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The Elgin affair gives rise to the expression "I've been Elginized" meaning that one has lost one's marbles... ;-) -- Tarquin 01:24 Aug 12, 2002 (PDT)

" The effect of these subtle curves is to make the temple appear more symmetrical than it actually is." Entasis and other adjustments habve no effect on the temple's symmetry. Any better thoughts? --Wetman 08:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Temple or Treasury

I cut this:

"but though modelled after a temple had no altar and was actually used as a treasury"

because Greek temples didn't have altars inside them, or only had altars for burning incense. The big altar for blood sacrifice was always under the open sky and thus, outside. The back room of the Parthenon was used as a treasury, but so was that of many other temples. --MichaelTinkler

I added a new reference to its role as a treasury, and a couple notes on history. (date/poster unknown)

Re the recent edit. You present some interesting points, but all the authorities I have consulted say that it was a temple, and I have to go with them rather than your opinion. Yes it was also a treasury, but so were most Greek temples. Adam 09:36, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just because an opinion is held by the majority does not make it right. Besides, I could claim myself to be an "authority" (PhD in Greek archaeology, lecturer in Greek history, director of excavations in Greece). So this question has to be decided on merit only : I am not satisfied by your answer. Just try to disprove my points instead of believing blindly the doxa. At the very least, I feel that this view has to be represented in a featured article — its omission is ground to remove the banner. Marsyas 12:50, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, here are some points:

  • I can tell you from bitter experience (as a PhD in history) that no-one at Wikipedis is allowed to argue anything from "authority". You cannot say "I am a professor of mathematics and I say that two and two makes four and that's that." You have to persuade the collectivity of editors that you are right on the basis of evidence, not assertion.
  • Wikipedia also has a rule against "original research" - which means you cannot present your own theories, no matter how much work you have done. You cannot say "I know that Troy was located on the Isle of Wight because I have dug it up myself." An encyclopaedia is not a learned journal - it has to represent the consensus of professional opinion (the doxa if you like) and not the viewes of the heterodox.
  • I have looked in three encyclopaedias and two textbooks and they all say that the Parthenon was a temple to Athena Parthenos. None of my books are very new, however. To convince me that the archaelogical consensus has changed, and therefore that the article should be changed to reflect that, you will need to produce some references, by authorities other than yourself.

Adam 13:36, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree. You are the one who wrote first about "authorities", not me. This is not my research — classical architecture is not my field. I wrote it in the article : this a view first exposed in the 19th c. and repeated numerous times since. I don't present my own original research on Wikipedia. I added one French important reference on the subject : this is not one obscure article in a little read journal, but one big manual for students in Greek archaeology. The writer was (he's retired now) the Professor of Greek archaeology in the Sorbonne university. The Encyclopaedia Universalis — the French equivalent of the Britannica — holds the same view. So this NOT some extremist stuff. Marsyas 13:59, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, I will try and recast the material you have added in a form which will pass muster with the Wikipolice.

The article cannot be written so that something the article itself sees as a minority view (that the temple was a treasury) is listed as proven and true. If you want to claim that certain people say it is a treasury, say who they are so it's them saying it and not Wikipedia. Of course then we should also have cites to the people saying it's not and why. See Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View for the policy. DreamGuy 16:06, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

OK, so the arguments should be rewritten in a more neutral way. I will do it and I will give you the whole debate. No problem. Marsyas 17:33, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, I found the Parthenon-treasury line in a French manual for students in art history: B. Holtzmann, A. Pasquier, Histoire de l'art antique : l'art grec, Documentation française, coll. q Manuels de l'École du Louvre », 1998, ISBN 2110038667. I stress the fact that it's a manual, which seldom contain anything strikingly new. The authors consider the Parthenon-temple line to be an old commonplace error: « combien croient encore que le Parthénon est un temple et la Vénus de Milo une statue classique » ? (“How many still think that the Parthenon is a temple, and the Venus de Milo a classical statue?”) Jastrow 00:11, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

...and what was Holzmann/Pasquier's conclusion suggested by these rhetorical questions that are quoted? Are they actually countering a commonplace perception of the Parthenon as a temple and nothing but a temple? Are they encouraging a revised definition of "5th century Greek temple" that better fits the facts? Their point concerning the Venus de Milo is that it was not conceived as a "collectible" work of art, is that not it? A simple point indeed. So, what are the Parthenon's additional functions, in their text? Edit them into this article. But, more essentially, would one consider the Metropolitan Museum a gift shop? For surely the gift shop is one of the first spaces one encounters after penetrating the grand entrance hall. Are not such quibbles more for display of Self than for service to the reader? --Wetman 02:17, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

No, the point about the Venus de Milo is that it is not, as most people believe, a classical Greek sculpture. It is a late Hellenistic knock-off of a classical Greek sculpture. The point being made is that the belief that the Parthenon is a temple is a comparable error to the belief that the Venus de Milo is a classical sculpture. I don't know if that claim is true or not, but let's at least understand the claim clearly. Adam 04:41, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Adam's got it right. I must add that these rhetorical questions stand on the back cover of the book, so they're bound to be sort of provocative. Actually, the authors want to stress the idea that the old Occidental culture, relying heavily on the knowledge of humanities, led to a false familiarity with Antiquity.
About our subject, they state that “the Parthenon, despite appearance, is not a temple: the cult statue of Athena Polias, patron goddess of Athens, was never located there, and the rituals celebrating the statue (annual bath into the sea and renewal of the sacred robe) could never pertain to the colossal statue of Athena Parthenos, symbolizing the armed peace that Athens wants to enforce to her own profit. Actually, the Parthenon is a huge treasury, storing the impressive ex-voto (…), Phidias artwork, and the funds of the Delian League” (my translation). Jastrow 07:38, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I think I am persuaded about this point now. The text only actually says "temple" once so so major rewriting is needed.
  • Incidentally I read somewhere yesterday that if you look carefully you can still see some Byzantine Christian artwork on the inner surfaces of the Parthenon. I gazed reverentially at it for most of a day and photographed it from every angle, but I never saw any Christian paintwork, which I thought the good 19th century Hellenophiles had totally removed along with the minaret etc. Does anyone know about this? Adam 11:01, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

New introduction

I've just redone the introduction, and since it might be considered cheeky to redo the intro of a FA, I thought I'd explain myself. First, the assertion that the Parthenon was called "the temple of Athena the virgin" is silly; disputes about the translation of parthenos aside, the building is called the Parthenon by moderns; "the temple of Athena the virgin" is an (inaccurate) attempt to translate that Greek name. Furthermore, ancient sources do not universally call the building the Parthenon. Originally, "Parthenon" seems to denote a particular room in the building, which gradually came to be used for the entire structure; even so, other names are used, such as hekatompedos (the "hundred-footer"). Plutarch, in his Life of Perikles, calls the building the Hekatompedon Parthenon. (for a source on all of this, see Jefferey Hurwit's The Acropolis of Athens.)

Second, it seemed good to start with an actual defintion of the building ("a temple of Athena, built in the 5th century BC on the Acropolis of Athens") rather than a vague sentence about how awesome the Parthenon is ("is the best-known remaining building of Ancient Greece and is regarded as one of the world's greatest cultural monuments"). Ok, it's true, I added more vague (and unsourced) statements about how awesome the Parthenon is, but I hope to replace these with some quotes, because there should be no shortage of art historians, architects, etc. who can testify to the greatness of the building and its sculpture.

Third, the intro to a wikipedia article, as I understand it, should be a short summary of the contents of the whole article, so I tried to give a brief overview of the entire history of the building. --Akhilleus (talk) 07:54, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

the temple, round 2

Also, I am calling the Parthenon a temple. I understand quite well that there probably was no cult activity associated with the building itself (although it's likely there was a little shrine on the north porch), but it looks like a temple, and most classical scholarship refers to the Parthenon as a temple, with a caveat that it didn't function like most classical temples. We can follow those examples, in my opinion. --Akhilleus (talk) 07:54, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think looking like a temple and lots of past folks calling it a temple are the same as being a temple, especially if even those folks are giving caveats. Why do you feel the need to call it that?
If you want a definition, "best known surviving building of ancient greece" is much better than "temple", considering how much debate there is around that term. It is in fact the best known surviving building of ancient greece, and its modern role as a cultural monument is the main reason it's notable to most people. It may or may not be a temple, depending on who you ask (though it is definite that lots of people refer to it as a temple).
New England has several notable buildings that look like churches because the architects chosen for the projects were church architects; this does not make those buildings churches. Sometimes people even refer to them as churches for the purpose of giving directions ("turn left at the big brick church"). At least one has a pipe organ, a raised altar-like stage at one end, and is used to hold weddings; it still isn't a church. Akb4 03:14, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm calling it a temple because the building is commonly called a temple in classical scholarship. --Akhilleus (talk) 21:44, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Given how much debate exists on this page, including citations, I'd say that isn't a good reason. What's wrong with calling it the "best known surviving building of ancient greece"? We know that that is correct. We seem to have a debate about whether it was a temple, even if no-one argues that it looks like one and served some of the same uses. If you have two possible descriptions, one of which is both useful and accurate, while the other is possibly not wholly accurate and is certainly debateable, why insist on using the latter? Akb4 23 May 2006
Citations
I'm calling it a temple because the building is commonly called a temple in classical scholarship. Not "lots of past folks"; experts in Greek art and archaeology call the building a temple in current scholarship.
For instance, the Oxford Classical Dictionary says, in the "Parthenon" entry (p. 1116):
The Parthenon was the temple of Athena built on the highest part of the Acropolis at Athens south of the Archaic temple.
Jennifer Neils' The Parthenon Frieze (Cambridge, 2001), p. 4:
Because of the temple's conversion into a Christian church around A.D. 600 and a mosque around A.D. 1460, the Parthenon frieze remained virtually intact...What remained in situ of the frieze after the bombardment was largely at the west end of the temple...
A.W.Lawrence, Greek Architecture (Yale U. Press, 5th ed., 1996), p. 111:
What Perikles did was to revive the concept of the 480s, a large marble temple to Athena and a related propylon...Perikles first undertook the building of the Parthenon, a Doric temple, entirely in marble, dedicated to the city's patron goddess, Athena.
William R. Biers, The Archaeology of Greece (Cornell U. Press, 2nd ed. 1996), p. 201:
The Parthenon is justly regarded as the high point of Doric architecture as conceived by the Periklean architects. Built between 447 and 438 by the architects Iktinos and Kallikrates, it is a Doric peripteral temple built on remains of a pre-Periklean temple but much bigger...
Biers and Lawrence are standard works assigned in many Greek archaeology courses, so I see no reason to deviate from their terminology. There's also the small fact that in antiquity the Parthenon was sometimes referred to as a neos ("temple"), as I believe the 5th-century building records do (see Hurwit, The Athenian Acropolis, p. 163). Also, the Roman-era writer Pausanias (1.24.5) calls the building "the temple they name the Parthenon". So we have both ancient and modern authority to call the Parthenon a temple, and this is the standard way of referring to the building: Wikipedia doesn't need to innovate in this area. --Akhilleus (talk) 21:44, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
The previous round of this debate made it quite clear that different experts say different things. See Marsyas' posts above. There is clearly both a history of common usage and a scholarly debate over both the historical functions of the building and the definition of the term temple. I personally don't care if we call it a phone booth, but whatever we say has (IMO) to be wholly accurate. Calling it a temple clearly has some technical issues; if there's a debate over either whether or not it had to have sacrifices to be a temple OR whether or not it actually had sacrifices, then calling it a temple is not reasonable when we already have a wholly accurate non-debatable alternative that will prove just as useful to the average user.
I'm doubly concerned about this because the issue was already settled once and then a change reversing the decision was made without any prior discussion. Akb4 23 May 2006
Caveats

The article includes the information that the Parthenon did not function as a temple in the ordinary sense. That section could be expanded a bit. The introduction could also refer to that section, along the lines of "Though the Parthenon has the architectural form of a Greek temple, and housed a cult image, there appears to have been no cult or priestess associated with the Parthenon, meaning that the building did not fulfill one of the essential functions of a temple." That's badly written but you see the point--the intro can include the idea that the Parthenon is not a normal temple. --Akhilleus (talk) 21:44, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

This paragraph to me demonstrates exactly why the very first sentence of the article should not say it was a temple. The issue of whether or not it was a temple is complicated, because it depends on how you define the word temple as used both by us and by ancient greeks and by all the writers in between. Saying something that is not 100% correct in the first line and then expecting people to notice a paragraph further down that possibly contradicts this is not reasonable, especially when it consitutes a change from a previous situation that did not have this issue. Akb4 23 May 2006
Definitions

One more thing: a Greek temple had several functions: it contained a cult image, and served as a repository for items dedicated to the god. It was also the focus of cultic activity, including civic festivals and animal sacrifice. The Parthenon does most of these things: it has a cult image, it contained items dedicated to Athena, and it (perhaps) played a role in the Panathenaea. If we say it's not a temple, we effectively privilege one of the functions of a Greek temple over the others, and I don't think that's a great idea. --Akhilleus (talk) 07:14, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

It's about definitions. If we say a temple had four or five functions (cult image, repository of dedicated items, civic festivals, animal sacrifice, treasury) and the building in question didn't definately do all of them, then we should not just blithely say it was a temple. Akb4 23 May 2006
Some of the scholars defending the "treasury only" line of thought argue that Phidias' statue was precisely *not* a cult image. Cf. the "Temple or Treasury" of this Talk page. Jastrow 07:15, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough, let's say "image of the god" instead. The point still remains; the Parthenon looks like a temple, does many of the things other temples do, and was called a temple by ancient sources. So, there's no problem for us to refer to the Parthenon as a temple, as long as we have the section that notes that it was not a temple in the ordinary sense. --Akhilleus (talk) 18:13, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
"many of the things" and "looks like" are simply not the same as "is". "called" is a very tricky one, because that brings on the definitional discussion. the very fact that we can spend this much space debating this, complete with source references, says to me that it is in fact a debatable point. If it is a debatable point, then the article needs to say so, and not just choose one side of the debate in the very first sentence.
We are not being inaccurate by saying it's "the best known surviving building of ancient greece"; that fact is why the world outside of classical scholarship cares about it; it's old and beautiful. We can intelligently argue about whether it is or was a temple; that means we shouldn't call it one. Akb4 23 May 2006

The Parthenon as a temple

Akb4, rather than respond to all your scattered comments individually, I'm just going to write down here. First of all, let's remember that we're not supposed to conduct original research here; we're not supposed to come to our own decisions about what the truth is, rather we report the views of reputable scholars. The citations I've provided, from standard handbooks of Greek archaeology and architecture, and from the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the standard reference work in English for the classical world, show that the standard practice in modern scholarship is to call the Parthenon a temple. To this we may add the Greek Ministry of Culture's site for the Acropolis, which calls the Parthenon a temple. Furthermore, an indication that the Parthenon is generally referred to as a temple in college and university classes may be seen at this webpage for Reed College's Humanities 110 course and this webpage by Janice Siegel, professor of Classical Languages and Literature at Illinois State University. I'll add this entry from the Perseus Project, which discusses the Parthenon as a "Doric peripteral temple." I can provide links to additional scholarly sources if necessary.

I hope my point is clear: most scholars refer to the Parthenon as a temple. There really is no debate about whether we should call the Parthenon a temple. There is, however, broad agreement that the Parthenon did not function as a Greek temple usually functioned. Notice that there's two separate issues there, and scholars are usually happy to refer to the Parthenon as a temple while saying that it wasn't a temple in the usual sense of the word. The Wikipedia article should follow standard practice, and call the Parthenon a temple. In response to your concerns I'll note that it's very easy to write the article in such a way that the word "temple" doesn't need to be used very much; we can call it a monument, building, structure, etc. But the word "temple" must be used in the definition, because that is what most scholarship calls the Parthenon. To call it something else is to take a side in a scholarly debate, which looks like original research to me.

You point to the discussion above as evidence that some scholars insist that the Parthenon should not be called a temple. But only one published work is cited, that of Holtzmann and Pasquier. It's not entirely clear whether H&P argue that we cannot under any circumstances call the Parthenon a temple, or whether they present what I would say is the consensus view, that the Parthenon did not function as a standard Greek temple. If, however, Holtmann and Pasquier maintain that we can't call the Parthenon a temple, they do not represent a majority view, especially in Anglo-American scholarship. To slip into bean-counting for a moment, I've provided eight citations, including some from standard reference works, in comparison to the one reference above that (apparently) insists the Parthenon should not be called a temple. It would be appropriate to mention Holtzmann and Pasquier in the "Treasury or Temple?" section (but whoever cites them should make sure to read them in the original French). At any rate the more substantive point to be drawn from these scholars is that the Parthenon did not function like many other temples: this dispute over whether we can call the Parthenon a temple or not is simply not a prominent issue in scholarship on the Parthenon.

You raise some issues of definition in one of your comments. Your argument seems to be the following: if we can say that there are five functions of a Greek temple, and the Parthenon only serves two, then we cannot call it a temple. I think, since we're not relying on published academic arguments here, we're straying into original research. But since I started off this line of argument, let me just ask you to contemplate why it is that we can call football, Scrabble, hopscotch, and Crazy Eights all "games". It's fairly difficult to come up with a set of essential characteristics of games that all of these activities fulfill. Similarly, it's quite possible that the buildings that Greeks called "temples" didn't do all the things we think temples do. (For more on problems of definition, an interesting place to start is with Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblance, or perhaps by reading Plato.)

Futhermore, the Greeks called the Parthenon a temple, and we should be very happy to follow their example. The inscriptions that record the money spent on building the Parthenon call it a temple (a translation of the inscriptions is available in Dinsmoor, American Journal of Archaeology, 17.1 (1913) 53-80). If the people who built it and lived with it and used it called it a temple, why shouldn't we? Now, the argument I just made is original research, and so shouldn't appear in the article, but it's necessary here to make an original argument because there really is no controversy in the scholarship as to whether we should call the Parthenon a temple. I'll repeat, the issue of nomenclature is separate from the issue of function; scholars are happy to call the Parthenon a temple (nomenclature) while agreeing that it did not have all the functions of most Greek temples. I'll add that in my opinion, most experts on Greek archaeology and architecture would regard the debate we're having here as a bit silly.

You also disagree with the opening sentence. Here's how it appears right now:

The Parthenon (Greek: Παρθενώνας) was a temple of Athena, built in the 5th century BC on the Acropolis of Athens.

Here's what this sentence tells you:

1. "Parthenon": the name of the monument. 2. "temple": tells you that the building has a particular architectural form. 3. "temple of Athena": tells you what goddess this building was dedicated to. 4. "built in the 5th century BC": tells you when the monument was built. 5. "on the Acropolis of Athens": tells you where the monument was and is.

This is a very specific definition; it gives you plenty of information right away. In contrast, "the best known surviving building of ancient greece" is vague. It doesn't tell you what the architectual form of the building was, it doesn't tell you when or where it was built, and it doesn't tell you why the building is famous. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

NPOV re: Elgin Marbles

See the edit as of 18:27, 27 January 2006 by 161.74.11.24. I'm not sure if this is really NPOV, or is borderline propaganda on the "side" of the British (I'm English myself). Reading the previous version though, it could be considered not quite neutral, instead favouring the Greek side. What do other people think? Should we keep this new edit? Eurosong 20:07, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Parthenos

Extract from Liddell Scott & Jones:

parthenos , Lacon. parsenos Ar.Lys.1263 (lyr.). hê,

A. maiden, girl, Il.22.127, etc. ; hai athliai p. emai my unhappy girls, S.OT1462, cf. Ar.Eq.1302 ; also gunê parthenos Hes. Th.514 ; p. kora, of the Sphinx, dub. in E.Ph.1730 (lyr.); thugatêr p. X.Cyr.4.6.9 ; of Persephone, E. Hel.1342 (lyr.), cf. S.Fr.804; virgin, opp. gunê, Id.Tr.148, Theoc.27.65. 2. of unmarried women who are not virgins, Il.2.514, Pi.P.3.34, S.Tr.1219, Ar.Nu.530. 3. Parthenos, hê, the Virgin Goddess, as a title of Athena at Athens, Paus.5.11.10, 10.34.8 (hence of an Att. coin bearing her head, E.Fr.675); of Artemis, E.Hipp.17 ; of the Tauric Iphigenia, Hdt.4.103 ; of an unnamed goddess, SIG46.3 (Halic., v B.C.), IG12.108.48,54 (Neapolis in Thrace); hai hierai p., of the Vestal Virgins, D.H.1.69, Plu.2.89e, etc. ; hai Hestiades p. Id.Cic.19; simply, hai p. D.H.2.66. 4. the constellation Virgo, Eudox. ap. Hipparch. 1.2.5, Arat.97, etc. 5. = korê 111, pupil, X.ap.Longin.4.4, Aret. SD1.7. II. as Adj., maiden, chaste, parthenon psuchên echôn E.Hipp. 1006 , cf. Porph. Marc.33 ; mitrê p. Epigr.Gr.319 : metaph., p. pêgê A.Pers.613 . III. as masc., parthenos, ho, unmarried man, Apoc.14.4. IV. p. gê Samian earth (cf. parthenios 111 ), PMag.Berol.2.57.

Adam 02:53, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I have cited here a recognised source for my contention that "parthenos" is best translated as "a virgin", and until someone comes up with a better source that is what the article is going to say. "Virgin" and "maiden" are synonymous in English so to use both is redundant. Adam 08:30, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Adam, you're killing me here. You say that the building is "officially" called the "Temple of Athena the Virgin", but you're translating it to English to do so! Then you use that as justification to say that parthenos means virgin! Virgin and maiden are not synonymous in English, and the words are not precisely translatable, so why do you insist on simplifying the issue? The source above even lists "maiden" as its A-level definition! There's obviously doubt here and I'm not sure what your qualifications are to unilaterally enforce your view upon this article. Please help me/us understand. -- nae'blis (talk) 06:30, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
  • On "Virgin" as the standard English translation of parthenos: See "parthenogenesis", Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 654. Partridge agrees (A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 473). That is also the basic definition given by LSJ above.
  • On maiden versus virgin: "Maiden" has evolved a number of meanings over time but its basic meaning is a virgin girl. Hence "maidenhead," the condition of female virginity. 19th century writers like L&S used it as a more seemly synonym of virgin.
  • On Athena the Virgin: The important attribute of Athena for the Athenians was not that she was a "young girl" (she was depicted as a female warrior, not a girl), but that she was a virgin - a sexually inviolate woman. The Greeks understood this distinction perfectly well. See Eva Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens, 38, for a discussion of Athena as a "sexless warrior-goddess."
  • Don't give me the "what are your qualifications?" line. I have cited sources for my position. The onus is now on you to do likewise. Adam 08:13, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
That's what I don't get, Adam. We're using the same sources! But you're relying on the 19th-century interpretations, and I'm talking about a) contextual meaning in ancient Greek, and b) not succumbing to Victorian simplicities. You cannot logically expect me to accept an 18th-century discovery of a phenomenon, which uses ancient Greek as its roots, to explain why we should narrowly define the ancient Greek itself in terms of the 18th- and 19th-century usages! That's circular reasoning at its finest. Parthénos is the stage of a woman's life in ancient Greece before marriage, not necessarily sex (which wasn't as important, since she was largely property in that society). source with further bibliography. Just because nymphomania uses the same word root as 'wife' doesn't mean that all wives are sex-crazed! -- nae'blis (talk) 14:10, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
  • That link is dead.
  • The Athenians did not see Athena as a "young girl prior to marriage", they saw her as a mature woman who was a virgin. So when they called it the Temple of Athena the Virgin, that's what they meant. Adam 00:28, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

References, Citations?

I do not see how this can remain FA without references or citations. Please put them in!PDXblazers 00:07, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

past page discussion, hopefully settled issues

images

it would be nice to have the images alternate floating right, left, right, left....or to have some variance rather than floating right, right, right, right. Kingturtle 19:57, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I would once have agreed, but every time I put an image on the left I get complaints from people who say their browsers can't cope with it. I have given up trying to "design" pages. Anyway this new photo format means that these are just thumbs anyway, and anyone who is interested in the photos will look at the enlarged versions. Adam 00:23, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Nashville Parthenon

I added a short paragraph referencing the Parthenon replica in Nashville, TN. If you get a chance, visit it! Cheaper than a Grecian vacation, and walking through the massive bronze doors and seeing the overwhelming statue of Athena Parthenos at the opposite end of the building is awe-inspiring. It was an amazing experience that must be akin what the ancient Greeks felt upon entering the temple. -- Woody Eadie

  • shudders at thought of the Parthenon in Nashville* (I suppose it's better than Gracelands in Athens) Adam 09:21, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

geometry

We also need an art history/architecture buff to add some commentary about construction. For instance, the Parthenon appears square because it's not. The architectes took perspective in to consideration and bowed it up a bit in the middle so that it would look perfectly square.

was it (among other things) a treasury

The Parthenon was not the treasury of the Delian league, which in fact was so named because its treasury was on Delos. Jeff Anonymous 18:47, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It was moved to the Parthenon in 454. Adam 04:42, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Oh, they shouldn't have done that. I predict it will cause only trouble. :) -- Decumanus 04:43, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It couldn't have been moved in 454 BC... it wasn't built until 447! Does anyone have a reference for the real date? jamesmusik
The name stayed the same, even though they moved the treasury.

The dates are correct. The Treasury was moved from Delos to the Acropolis at Athens before the Parthenon was built. In fact it was the Delian League's money that was used to pay for it. I agree the text is a little ambiguous on this, and I will expand it. Adam 00:45, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

antinous

(PS: Tell me what you think of the image I deleted today from Antinous and the comment I make on my reason for deleting it in Talk:Antinous.) Adam 14:04, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

...a 19th-century neoclassical ideal bust "of Antinous type"? --Wetman 13:48, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that is just what I thought. Adam 14:04, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Golden Ratio?

Why does 'Golden Ratio' appear in the "see also" category? I'm removing it... please explain why it's there if you put it back.

I expect it's there because the external dimensions make a golden rectangle.. -- nae'blis (talk) 15:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Memo akb4

Please put your comments and questions together at the foot of the Talk page (ie, here) - no-one can follow or reply to them scattered all over the place. Adam 20:14, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

OOPS. Sorry! Just noticed this after doing a sort of reorg and reply above! I won't do it again. Question: If everything is long and sequential, how do we handle threading? It means everyone has to read everything instead of just following the individual topics... If the mess I made above is heinous, feel free to revert and just junk what I wrote this morning... AKB4 23 May 2006

"The Temple of Athena the Virgin"

As I mention above, no one ever called the Parthenon the "Temple of Athena the Virgin"--i.e., no one ever says ho neos Athenes Parthenou. If you disagree, please find an ancient source that actually says this.

Otherwise, it looks like an attempt to translate "Parthenon", but it isn't a good translation. It's in fact not entirely clear what "Parthenon" means--it could well mean "of the virgins", which has been traced to the arrhephoroi, the young girls who weaved the peplos presented to Athena in the Panathenaea. It does seem likely that it derives from the cult statue in the building, which was known as Athena Parthenos, but scholars are not certain about this.

Even so, as I also mention above, ancient sources do not universally call the building the Parthenon. Originally, "Parthenon" seems to denote a particular room in the building, which gradually came to be used for the entire structure; even so, other names are used, such as hekatompedos (the "hundred-footer"). Plutarch (Life of Perikles 13.7) calls the building the Hekatompedon Parthenon (for a source on all of this, see Jefferey Hurwit, The Acropolis of Athens, pp. 161-163).

I've changed the sentences in the introduction, but perhaps it would be good to have an entire section about the name(s) of the Parthenon. --Akhilleus (talk) 22:39, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no problems with that text. Adam 09:23, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Connelly's book

I think the recently added statement "In a recent book, the archaeologist Joan Breton Connelly has argued that this 'biggest, most technically astonishing, ornately decorated, and aesthetically compelling temple ever known' was designed to commemorate a human sacrifice" distorts what Connelly says. Uninformed people reading that statement may assume that Connelly is arguing that the Parthenon commemorates an actual, specific incident of human sacrifice. In fact, what she is suggesting is that the building commemorates a myth of a human sacrifice. Whether the myth has any basis in a real life incident is of course something that can't be determined, and Connelly certainly doesn't argue or assume that it does: indeed she says on p.142 of her book that there is not a single credibly attested instance of the sacrifice of a maiden in historic Greece, and that the evidence for actual human sacrifice in pre-historic Greece is "problematic, inconclusive, and slight." I suggest changing the wording to make it clear that Connelly is not supposing an actual event. (BTW I don't know why references show up under this comment but I didn't put them there.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.139.210.170 (talk) 18:10, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I've fixed the references, they are from earlier discussions.  Unician ∇  06:44, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
I've amended this paragraph (without having first checked the talk page) as follows:

In a recent book, the archaeologist Joan Breton Connelly has controversially argued that this "biggest, most technically astonishing, ornately decorated, and aesthetically compelling temple ever known" was designed to commemorate a human sacrifice.<ref>Joan Breton Connelly, ''The Parthenon Enigma'', New York, Knopf, 2014</ref><ref>Daniel Mendelsohn, Deep Frieze, ''The New Yorker'', 14 April 2014</ref>

Before, the two references were strangely conjoined with a comma. I removed "page 35" as the DM article is online (where it has no page number) nor is it clear to me that the page number belongs to the book (another possibility). I also added the word 'controversially' which is in Mendelsohn. The DM reference is not a good one for encyclopedic purposes: in that piece he's often not speaking directly, but posturing instead as a highbrow unreliable narrator, through a satirical lens of presumptuous future-history. My sense is that this article would be better off without this paragraph in its current state. — MaxEnt 10:48, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
I've added a brief revision which I think clarifies what Connely is actually saying. I tend to agree though that the whole paragraph isn't really necessary: there are all kinds of theories about the Parthenon, and I don't see why special emphasis should be given to this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.139.207.88 (talk) 16:35, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

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Northern metopes

The article states: ”On the north side of the Parthenon, the metopes are poorly preserved, but the subject seems to be the sack of Troy.”

No much later it states:

”Several of the metopes still remain on the building, but, with the exception of those on the northern side, they are severely damaged.”

What does that mean? That they are poorly preserved, so that we are not even sure if they present the sack of Troy, but not severely damaged? Afil (talk) 02:12, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

New theory on names of the Parthenon

According to a new theory published in the 2020 issue of the American Journal of Archaeology, the name Parthenon for the temple is secondary, as this name in the Classical period referred to a treasury in the west part of the temple usually called the Erechtheion. Previous scholars assumed that the treasury called the Parthenon was located in the smaller west room of the building that later became known as the Parthenon. The new theory establishes that this room was called Opisthodomos. The original name of the entire building seems to have been Hekatompedon or Great Temple of Athena.[1] It seems worthwhile to include the new theory in the Etymology section and elsewhere.

Phidias as supervisor of Parthenon

Hello! I have a source which corroborates that Phidius is the supervisor of the temple Parthenon, but somehow I can't find a placeholder in the infobox to input that information. Can someone help me? Thanks JN Dela Cruz (talk) 10:21, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

  1. ^ van Rookhuijzen, J.Z. (January 2020). "The Parthenon Treasury on the Acropolis of Athens". American Journal of Archaeology. 124 (1): 3–35. doi:10.3764/aja.124.1.0003.
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