A day in the life of an ancient Greek architect Mark Robinson
As dawn breaks over Athens,
Pheidias is already late for work.
The year is 432 BCE,
and he’s the architekton,
or chief builder,
for the Parthenon—
Athens’ newest and largest temple.
When completed, his masterpiece will be
an enormous shrine to the goddess Athena,
and a testament to the glory
of the Athenians.
But when he arrives onsite he finds
five epistatai, or city officials,
waiting to confront him.
They accuse Pheidias of embezzling gold
designated for the temple’s
sacred central statue.
He has until sundown to provide
all the temple’s expenses
and account for every flake of gold—
or face the judgement of the courts.
Though he’s insulted by these
false charges, Pheidias isn’t surprised.
Pericles, the politician
who commissioned the Parthenon,
has many enemies in city government,
and this project
is somewhat controversial.
The public is expecting a classic temple
in the Doric style:
simple columns supporting
a horizontal entablature,
crowned with a triangular roof.
But Pheidias’ plans are far more radical
by Athenian standards.
His designs combine Doric columns
with a sweeping Ionic frieze,
hosting a vast panorama of the city’s
Great Panathenaic festival.
Not only will this sculpture show
humans and gods side by side—
something never before seen
in a temple’s décor—
it will also cost much more
than the traditional approach.
Praying to the Gods that his colleagues
have been keeping track of their spending,
Pheidias sets off to prove his innocence.
First, he checks in with his architects
Iktinos and Callicrates.
Rather than using a blueprint,
they pore over the syngraphai,
or general plan,
and paradeigma, a 3D model.
Without an exact blueprint, the team
often has to resolve issues in real time,
guided only by careful calculation
and their instinct for symmetry.
Maintaining this symmetry
has proven especially difficult.
The Parthenon is built on a curve
with the columns leaning slightly inwards.
To project strength,
and potentially keep the columns
looking straight from a distance,
the architects incorporated entasis,
or slight bulging, in each column.
For the temple’s other elements,
the team calculates symmetry by employing
relatively consistent proportions
across the design.
But their shifting plans require
constant recalculations.
After helping solve one such computation,
Pheidias collects his colleagues’
gold records
and heads off to receive
a special delivery.
Immense marble blocks for the Parthenon’s
pediment have just arrived
from quarries at Mount Pentelikon.
The usual ramps would collapse
under the weight
of these 2 to 3 ton stone blocks,
so Pheidias orders the construction
of new pulleys.
After recording the additional expense
and supervising
the construction all afternoon,
he finally arrives
at the sculpture workshop.
His sculptors are carving
92 mythical scenes, or metopes,
to decorate the temple.
Every carving depicts fighting
from different epic battles—
each a mythical representation
of Greece’s victory over Persia
about 40 years earlier.
No temple has ever used
so many metopes before,
and each scene adds to the temple’s
ballooning expenses.
Finally, Pheidias turns
to his primary responsibility,
and the focal point of the entire temple.
Covered in thick layers of gold,
minutely decorated,
and towering above her worshippers,
this will be a statue of the city’s
patron and protector: Athena Parthenos.
When the temple is complete,
throngs will gather on its perimeter—
offering prayers, performing sacrifices,
and pouring libations
for the goddess of wisdom.
Pheidias spends the rest of the day
designing finishing touches
for the statue,
and as the light fades,
the epistatai arrive to confront him.
After looming over his records,
they look up triumphantly.
Pheidias may have accounted
for the temple’s general spending,
but his records show no mention
of the statue’s gold.
At that moment, Pericles himself arrives
to save his chief builder.
The temple’s sponsor tells
them that all the gold on the statue
can be removed and weighed individually
to prove Pheidias’ innocence.
Assigning laborers to the task—
and charging the officials to watch
them late into the night—
Pheidias and his patron
leave their adversaries
to the mercy of mighty Athena.