Art - Greek Architecture Reflection

Greek Acropolis

The Greek Acropolis and, as such, the Greek Pantheon are amazing feats of human ingenuity, theology, and architecture. The Acropolis is a fortified hill that overlooks the city-state of Athens. It is 170 x 350 meters wide. Now, the temple, which is called the Parthenon, is often associated with the goddess Athena. She was the goddess of war and strategy, as well as many other attributes. A while after the Acropolis was built, the Erechtheion, the Propylaia, and the Temple of Athena and Nike were built.  It was on this very Acropolis that democracy, philosophy, theater, and Free Speech were forged, this is both literally and figuratively. The Parthenon survived many ages, and it was only in the modern era that it became a ruin.

Something incredibly interesting and unique about the Parthenon in comparison to other modern-day structures is its lack of right angles. Now, when someone might look at this building, they would probably think that it is filled with right angles, geometry, and trigonometry to the most basic degree. Though in reality, a lot of these visual right angles are just optical illusions. The perfection of the Parthenon is in how it is distorted to adjust for the errors in human vision and perception. Examples of this would be how the columns are wider and the base has a bulge coming out of it instead of being completely straight. This is called the eutasis, and the bulge is only 11/16 of an inch wider than the top of the column. Now, generally, the architecture of the Parthenon would be described as Doric due to its more simplistic nature, but there are still Ionic elements. Some examples of why this structure would be considered Doric would be elements that include how the flutes or the column go directly to the stylobate without any interjections or embellishing blocks. When going up to the roof, it is very simple with a slight angle going to the abacus above. The triglyphs and metopes are, from the human perception, evenly spaced out. With a triglyph above each column and a metope between each column. Now this is not exactly true, in reality, the triglyphs and metopes are closer together in the middle and slowly get farther spaced down towards the corners. This is to keep the running theme of the metope being in the middle of the column, except for on the very edge, where the triglyphs are at the edge of the column. Today, architects still use the mathematical formula x = 2y + 1 to distinguish the numberings of how many elements should be repeated on asymmetrical sides. This is seen in how, in the Pantheon, on the ends, there are eight columns, and on the sides, there are 17 columns.   

Over the years, the Athenian Parthenon has been used for many different things. Initially, the ancient Greeks built it as a temple for Athena. The carvings and sculptures in the pediment describe Poseidon and Athena fighting over who gets to be the patron God of Athens. It is quite clear by the name that Athena had won this battle. Athena offered military strategy and wits, whereas Poseidon offered Naval advantage. This is represented by how Poseidon struck the ground and created the winds with the tides of the sea, and Athena planted an olive tree by the Parthenon, offering to the people of Athens. After this, it became a Greek Orthodox Church that worships the Father, the Son, and the holy ghost as well as honoring the Virgin Mary. Then it became a Roman Catholic Church. At some time, it even became a mosque. Throughout all of this, the Parthenon was not explicitly used for worship as a typical Church would be seen, but as an offering to the Gods, and usually it would be used as a treasury for the state in which gold and valuables were held.

Now, going back to when it was mentioned, how it was only recently in the modern day that the Parthenon was destroyed. It was during a war between the Ottomans and the Venetians that it became a casualty. In the 17th century, the Venetians attacked the Parthenon specifically because they were well aware that the Ottomans had been storing ammunition and gunpowder within it. This caused an explosion that ripped the Parthenon to pieces. In the 18th century Elgin got permission from the Turks to take the sculptures that had already fallen off the Parthenon and take them back to England. Tare now stored in a museum in England. The Greeks are currently working on negotiating a deal to return these statues to Greece, where a museum already built is waiting for them.