ABSTRACT
In the early years of their Empire, Athenians created a building which to modern tastes is perhaps the most satisfying work of art of antiquity, the temple of Athena known as the Parthenon. When we look for evidence of how contemporary Athenians viewed the building, there is a special need to guard against wishful thinking. Very little is heard about the Parthenon from ancient writers:1 we should like to be able to believe what we do hear, rather than admit ignorance on so alluring a topic.2 There are some surviving building accounts concerning the Parthenon, inscribed on stone at Athens.3 These make clear that the building began in 447, and reveal something of the bureaucracy which controlled the work, but do not help us much in reconstructing any special ideals or enthusiasms connected with the new temple.4 Some stray remarks by a literary commentator of the second century ad may indicate that it was in 450/49 that the Athenians prepared to use accumulated funds from the Delian League for the building.5 But the only account of contemporary attitudes to the building project, a highly colourful account, is contained in Plutarch’s Life of Perikles.6 Plutarch depicts Perikles as championing the policy of funding Athenian buildings from the treasure of the Delian League, and as meeting lively opposition from other Athenians, seemingly led by Thucydides son of Melesias (a politician perhaps related to Thucydides the historian7). It is argued by A. Andrewes that Plutarch’s account of this conflict is “worthless”, that in the main it is not based on contemporary records or memories, but reflects rhetorical reconstruction of a later age, with anachronism from the Roman period.8 Now we know that Plutarch was not able to draw on any history of the period which was both contemporary and systematic – other than that of Thucydides, who makes no mention of controversy over Athenian building. And there are points which give some plausibility to Andrewes’ view. For
example, Plutarch represents Perikles as arguing that Athens could reasonably decide for herself what to do with money from the League, so long as Athenians succeeded in keeping the Persians away, while the allies contributed “not a horse, not a ship, not a hoplite but only money”.9 In reality, we know that some states were still contributing ships and men rather than money: Khios, Lesbos and Samos.10 However, Andrewes seems to overstate his case. He shows that Thucydides son of Melesias may well have had a creditable military record, and implies that Plutarch misrepresents him as a civilian, with “no record in the field”.11 But Plutarch does not do this; he states that Thucydides son of Melesias was “less of a warrior than Kimon, but more of a civilian politician”, which is very different. There were probably many Athenian politicians with good military records which fell short of Kimon’s.12 The misrepresentations in Plutarch’s account seem insufficient to require us to reject it in its entirety. Even the exaggeration about horses, ships and hoplites may faithfully reflect fifth-century rhetoric. Thucydides himself reports a speech with a distortion which would have been hardly less obvious to a contemporary audience. He shows an Athenian speaker claiming that Athens fought alone against the Persians at Marathon,13 although it was well known that she was supported in the battle by allies from Plataia.14 On the other hand, there are signs, normally overlooked, that Plutarch’s account reflects ideas of the classical period and may indeed derive from that time. Enemies of Perikles stated, according to Plutarch, that
Greece seems to be wilfully degraded with a terrible degrading arrogance and to be the victim of blatant tyranny, as she sees us [Athenians] using what she contributed under necessity for the war to gild our city and to give her a pretty face, like an alazōn woman, decked out with expensive stones and statues and thousand-talent temples.15
