Postmortems for Workshop #4: Parthenon Frieze

Stefani Cerday's postmortem:

For our workshop on Monday we looked the frieze which surrounds the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. The theme of the frieze is unclear. The majority of scholars think that it is a narrative of the Panathenaic Festival. This seems like a probable conclusion as this festival celebrates Athena’s birthday and this frieze is on a temple built in her honor. Joan Connelly proposed another opinion. The ‘peplos’ panel on the east frieze represents something besides the unfolding to the peplos (this is the popular interpretation). Connelly holds that it this panel depicts a mythical king, Erectheus, his wife and their three daughters. While both of the arguments are valid in many respects they both have one major flaw in common: What about the horsemen?
If one accepts that the frieze is depicting the progression of a parade during the Panathenaic Festival then these horsemen are normally explained as part of the parade. But this does not explain the fact that many of the horses do not look like they are under the control of their masters. They are rearing up and even a few seem to be running away from their owners. This kind of behavior does seem as though it would have been tolerable in a large crowd of people. The entire citizen population came to see the parade of the Panathenaic Festival and if the horses were out of control then everyone was in danger.

If one accepts that the frieze is depicting the myth of Erectheus, his wife, and his three daughters then the horses are still unexplained. In the Eurpidean version of this myth the king Erectheus founds a new city and it is threatens by a rival. Of course he goes to Delphian Oracle and of course it tells him to sacrifice his daughter. The three daughters make a pact that if one of them dies then they all die. Big surprise: They ALL die in the end. The problem with this interpretation of the panel is that, once again, it has nothing to do with horses. The daughters are not horses, the gods are not horses and they do not get trampled to death by horses. The only connection is that Erectheus’ rival is the son of Poseidon-the god of horses.

The horsemen are the main focal point of the frieze and neither one of these explanations take this into account. One scholar has pointed that the numbers of the riders in the frieze match the number of those who died at Marathon exactly. This would be an excellent way to commemorate those great men if it were not for a few minor problems. One problem is that the men who died at Marathon were hoplites. They didn’t ride on horses, they walked. Also, why would you want to put something so commemorative on a frieze that was barely visible? In the end, the existence of the horses does not fit into any surviving myth and it is not explained by any festival. These horses may never be explained, in my opinion because they are probably just filler on an unimportant and barley visible architectural element.

Will Davis' postmortem:

The workshop on Wednesday dealt with the Parthenon frieze and concluded with a question as to the purpose of the cavalrymen on the frieze. This question directly ties in to what the Parthenon frieze actually depicts and to this question there are a number of theories. For years it has been assumed that the frieze on the Parthenon depicted the Panathenaic procession. There is evidence to support this theory as the scene seems to depict a procession of some kind, many of the figures seem to represent members of the Panathenaic procession, and there appears to be a depiction of the peplos being presented to Athena. However if this is the case, then the inclusion of the cavalrymen seems a strange addition. There was no procession of cavalrymen in the Panathenaic procession, but they are the most common figures found on the frieze. One possible explanation for this may be that the 192 horseman displayed on the Parthenon frieze, represent the 192 dead from the battle of Marathon. Though the dead at Marathon were hoplites, they may be depicted as cavalrymen in order to indicate their status as heroes. The problem with this view is that it is unlikely that the average Athenian citizen was going to take the time to count up the number of horsemen on the frieze and so the meaning of the cavalrymen would be totally lost. It has been proposed that the Parthenon may not represent the Panathenaic procession at all. That figures associated with the Panathenae are not included and figures with no role in the procession are included in the frieze would seem to lend creedance to this theory. Also if the Parthenon did not depict a mythological scene it would be one of the only temple friezes from antiquity to not do so. However the inclusion of so many elements from the Panathenaic festival in the frieze, in my opinion, makes it much more plausible that it does depict the Panathenaic procession. I do, in fact, like the theory that the horses represent the dead at Marathon and while it may seem that the numbering may be so obscure as to make it difficult for the average Athenian to properly identify the cavalrymen as the dead from Marathon, it could also be that it was simply common knowledge among the Athenians that that is what the cavalrymen depicted.

Jason Dyer's postmortem:

Though horsemen and charioteers are incorporated into a religious procession on the Parthenon’s frieze course, the horsemen do not necessarily appear to be part of the procession. Such movement would simply be too overstated for a solemn processional, thus indicating a different visual context. Slow, tranquil horses would not offer the appropriate level of dynamism to the frieze composition: rather, the horses and their riders are the embodiment of tekhne, a gift from Athena herself. These skills allow for the Athenians, through the patronage of their goddess, to tame nature through intellect and physical prowess. The frieze composition becomes a celebration of Athena and the abilities of her inhabitants, but it also possesses another layer of cultural significance: the horsemen appear as if they were riding to war, a symbol of Athenian clout in post-Marathon Attica. With a growing list of cities opposed to Athens’s newfound authority and wealth, the frieze links the Athenian military, confidently racing to war, with a pious religious processional. The frieze’s position on the Parthenon, a monumental building containing immense wealth, would further emphasize Athens’s prominence.

Though the Parthenon is largely associated with Athena Parthenos, the epitaph of Hippia contributes another level of symbolism to the building’s visual program. Horses, too, are associated with Athens’s patron goddess, thus making it appropriate to address one of her many facets on her most sacred site, the Acropolis. Furthermore, the presence of horses serves as a possible reference to Poseidon, another deity often associated with horses, and his competition with Athena for patronage of the city. Though Poseidon ultimately lost the competition, he remains invariably linked with the Acropolis. It is therefore possible to infer that the Parthenon’s frieze may incorporate Poseidon’s contribution to Athens by extension, though not explicitly stated. This is not to assert a definite or purposeful reference to Poseidon. Rather, one can infer that an Athenian citizen would associate horses with the two deities.

While the horses allude to one of Athena’s many guises, they also provide a striking function when considered with the Parthenon’s greater architectural design. The frieze’s directional elements literally propel the viewer toward the figures of the seated gods, and, ultimately, the entrance into the structure. This implied movement, though at times concealed by the Parthenon’s columns, provides for a succession of architectural reliefs featuring the very activities that the Panathenaic procession would take part in. The frieze, therefore, is a continual echo of the procession itself, thus making for a design that encapsulates the permanence of the Acropolis with the transitory, but undeniably sacred, nature of the Panathenaic procession.