The temple was beautifully constructed, with refinements often invisible to the human eye. Its horizontal lines curve slightly upwards to avoid an optical impression of sagging, the columns bend and tilt inwards, which creates a sense of height and grandeur, the corner columns thicken so that they stand out when seen against the sky. These modifications are barely perceptible, but they give the building greater presence.
It must be remembered that Greek sculpture did not look as it does today, plain unvarnished marble or bronze. It was painted in brilliant colors. Traces of red, blue, and yellow paint have been found on the Parthenon. So, for example, the background of the metopes (square spaces let into the marble lintels that lie on top of the temple pillars, on which carved reliefs were displayed) appears to have been blue or red. The skin color of males was usually a ruddy brown and of females, white. The overall effect was bright, if not gaudy.
The Parthenon was not simply a monument to victory, it was also a storehouse for state valuables. In the smaller back chamber the income from the league was stored and all kinds of trophy and valuable oddments were kept in the cella. These included a gold crown, five gold libation bowls, two nails of gilded silver, six Persian daggers, a Gorgon mask, twelve stalks of golden wheat, thirty-one bronze shields, seven Chian couches, ten Milesian couches, miscellaneous swords, breastplates, six thrones, and various musical instruments. The treasurers who provided this inventory in 434/3 also noted without comment “eight and a half boxes of rotten and useless arrows.”
The next building to be constructed on the Acropolis was a new monumental entrance, the Propylaea (literally “that which is before the gate” or more generally “the gate building”). The visitor climbed broad steps up to a stone façade that looked like an echo of the Parthenon, with six columns and a pediment. He entered a large covered porch through which he stepped out onto the Acropolis. A little way off to the right the Parthenon towered.
Other new shrines worth noting include the tiny temple of Nike, or Victory, perched on the edge of the Acropolis next to the Propylaea (it was tended by a priestess for an adequate part-time salary of fifty drachmas a year). It is in the Ionic style with elegantly slender fluted pillars surmounted by a carved capital resembling ram’s horns. Also built in the fifth century are a very well-preserved temple on the edge of the agora, in honor of Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths, artisans, and sculptors, where he and his half sister Athena were worshipped, and a temple of Poseidon on the headland of Sunium. Like the Parthenon, these were both in the heavier Doric style.
Not all public spending was dedicated to temples and statues of the gods. The polis also supported secular and social projects. It had once been natural in the days of Cimon to look to the great aristocratic families for patronage, but the city’s democratic rulers believed it was now their role to make life easier for citizens at state expense. New amenities such as gymnasia and baths were opened to all. Perhaps the most striking of these developments was a concert hall for music events. This was the Odeum, next to the theater of Dionysus, and it was designed to accommodate the music competitions during the Panathenaea. A large square building with a pitched roof rising to a single point and supported by ninety columns, it echoed the design of Xerxes’ great war tent, which had been brought to Athens after the battle of Plataea.
The exact total expenditure on these public works throughout Attica is unknown, but was very considerable. Most of it was drawn from the league reserve. Some badly fragmented inscriptions of accounts survive, from which we learn that the gold and ivory statue of Athena cost between 700 and 1,000 talents. The Parthenon that housed it may have cost about 500 talents. To offer a military comparison, the war against Samos and Byzantium cost 1,400 talents.
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The demos was proud of what it had achieved, and so was its leader. By the end of the 430s, Athens enjoyed a visual splendor that set it apart from the rest of mainland Greece, and especially from its great competitor Sparta and the collection of dim little villages that made up its capital. Its impotent “allies” could only look on as their Athenian hegemon spent their money on its magnificence.
Pericles well understood the importance of “soft power” and of Athens as a visitor destination. He advocated an open society. Unlike the introverted rigidities of the Spartan system and the impenetrable labyrinth of the Persian court, his city made a point of being readily accessible to all. Secrecy was discouraged so far as possible, even in matters of war and peace where an enemy might be able to gain an advantage by foreknowledge. Spies were welcome.
Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles opinions the great man held even if the historian gave him the words. “Mighty indeed are the marks and monuments of our empire which we have left. Future ages will marvel at us, as our present age marvels at us now.” A politician’s rhetoric usually has a short shelf life, but the judgment of posterity shows that on this occasion the speaker turned out to be telling the plain truth. The city became a masterpiece.
The great fifth-century poet Pindar evoked the glamour of Athens to his fellow-Greeks in less abstract terms. He will have done so with some reluctance, for he was a man of Thebes in Boeotia and so ought to have been an inveterate enemy of the ambitious new imperial power. But he found an unforgettable if mysterious phrase, when he wrote in praise of Pericles’ extraordinary polis:
Brightly shining and crowned with violets and beloved of poets
The bastion of Greece, famous Athens, god-favoured city.
What did he mean by “crowned with violets”? Pindar died before the city’s architectural rebirth and was perhaps inspired by the spectacular dawns and sunsets of Attica’s dry and dusty air. The glowing paintwork of the temple sculptures only enhanced the atmospheric glories of the Acropolis. Athens was the ville lumière of the ancient world.
17
The Prisoners on the Island
In the 430s, the politics of Athens began to change. For the time being we hear no more of disgruntled noblemen who were always carping at the democracy. A new breed of politician emerged and Pericles found that, to use the jargon of modern politics, he had enemies on the left rather than, as usual, on the right.
These were men of the middling sort, who had made their fortunes as traders or manufacturers. They rose to prominence on merit and by giving well-received speeches in the ecclesia or the law courts. They were fully committed to the democracy; they just wanted more of it. They were hawkish in foreign affairs and criticized Pericles for being overcautious in his policy towards Sparta and the Peloponnesians. One of their number was Cleon, probably the son of a wealthy leather merchant and tanner. He was a pushy, able, and lucky political improviser, whom Thucydides described as being remarkable “for the violence of his character.” Respectable opinion at the time disapproved of him and history too has been unkind. Aristotle (or one of his students) commented:
more than anyone else he corrupted the people by his wild impulses. He was the first man who, when on the speaker’s platform [at