What Really Happened to the Athena Parthenos?

The Athena Parthenos, a colossal gold and ivory statue of the goddess Athena created between 447 and 438 BC by the renowned ancient Athenian sculptor Pheidias (lived c. 480 – c. 430 BC) that originally stood in the naos of the Parthenon on the Athenian Akropolis, is one of the most famous of all ancient Greek statues.

Unlike the Venus de Milo, which, as I talk about in this article from September 2019, wasn’t famous in antiquity and is mostly only famous today because of a French propaganda campaign in the nineteenth century, the Athena Parthenos really was famous in antiquity. In fact, it is only famous today because of its ancient reputation, since the statue itself has not survived.

Many people have wondered what happened to the Athena Parthenos, but its ultimate fate is actually far less mysterious than many people have been led to believe. The story of how the Athena Parthenos was destroyed, recreated, and destroyed again is as fascinating as any story from the ancient world.

What the Athena Parthenos looked like

First, let’s talk about what the Athena Parthenos looked like. It was a chryselephantine sculpture of the goddess of Athena that stood originally approximately 11.5 meters tall created by the famed Athenian sculptor Pheidias, who was also famous for having created the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was originally displayed inside the naos of the Parthenon on the Athenian Akropolis.

The statue depicted the goddess standing upright, wearing a helmet, a peplos (i.e. a kind of ancient Greek dress), and a breastplate. Her right hand was outstretched, bearing the life-sized winged figure of Nike, the divine personification of victory. Her left hand, meanwhile, rested on a shield.

The exterior of the goddess’s shield depicted the Amazonomachia, a legendary war fought between the Athenians and the Amazons, a nation of female warriors said to reside in the steppes north of the Black Sea. As I discuss in this article from June 2019, it is highly probable that Greek stories about Amazon warriors were inspired by the real-life Sauromatian female warriors known to have lived in the region.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Strangford Shield, a Roman marble copy of the shield of the Athena Parthenos currently held in the British Museum in London

Resting against the goddess’s left arm was a spear. A serpent, representing Athena’s adoptive son Erichthonios, a legendary king of Athens, lay coiled between her left foot and her shield.

Our best available evidence indicates that, in Pheidias’s original sculpture, Athena’s right hand was probably not supported by anything. Although copies of the sculpture show it with some form of column or support under the goddess’s right arm, representations of the statue on Athenian coins, which we would expect to be the most accurate, do not depict it with any support structure under the goddess’s arm.

The core of the statue was made of wood. The goddess’s skin was made of ivory, while her dress, her breastplate, her helmet, and shield were covered in plates of gold that could be removed. It was one of the most famous sculptures of the ancient Greek world. Consequently, we have numerous surviving written descriptions of it, depictions of it on coins, and later copies of it.

The most accurate surviving copy of the Athena Parthenos is believed to be the Varvakeion Athena, a marble sculpture of the goddess Athena that was discovered in 1880 near the site of Varvakeion in Athens and is now on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. The Varvakeion Athena is usually thought to have been created during the reign of the emperor Hadrian (ruled 117 – 138 AD).

Many other surviving copies of the Athena Parthenos are known, however. This work from 1914 gives a complete list of all the ancient descriptions of the Athena Parthenos as well as all the ancient copies of it that were known in the early twentieth century. There are probably even more copies of the statue that have been discovered in the past century that are not on that list.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Varvakeion Athena, a mid-second-century AD Roman-era marble copy of the Athena Parthenos on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece, believed to be the most accurate surviving copy of the Athena Parthenos

Gold components melted down to mint coins

The gold plating on the Athena Parthenos did not survive long after its completion by Pheidias in around 438 BC. During the Peloponnesian War (lasted 431 – 404 BC), according to multiple testimonies by the Athenian orators Aischines, Andokides, and Isokrates, a man by the name of either Phileas or Philourgos evidently stole the Gorgoneion that adorned the goddess’s breastplate. By at least 398 BC, though, the Gorgoneion had been recovered and restored to the statue.

In 300 BC, a man named Lachares staged a coup d’état and declared himself tyrant of Athens. Lachares waged a war against Demetrios I Poliorketes, the son of Alexander the Great’s general Antigonos I Monophthalmos. According to four different ancient sources, the war left Lachares short on funds and he was in desperate need of cash to pay his soldiers. Thus, in around 296 BC, he stripped all the gold plates off the Athena Parthenos and melted them down—along with a large number of other gold artifacts plundered from the Parthenon—to make gold coins, which he used to pay his soldiers.

As horrific as it sounds, melting down old works of art to mint new coins was a fairly common practice in the ancient world. As I wrote about in this article about the Colossus of Rhodes from July 2019, the Athenians melted down many of the gold and silver decorations from their own Akropolis to make coins near the end of the Peloponnesian War (lasted 431 – 404 BC). Later, the Phokians melted down many of the treasures dedicated at the Temple of Apollon at Delphoi to make coins, which they used to fund an army of mercenaries during the Third Sacred War (lasted 356 – 346 BC).

Thus, when Lachares melted down the gold from the Athena Parthenos, he wasn’t doing anything particularly new or shocking. Rather excitingly, a number of gold staters minted by Lachares have survived to the present day. Although Lachares reportedly melted down other gold artifacts from the Parthenon to mint his coins, it is highly probable that at least some of these surviving coins are made from gold that was taken from the Athena Parthenos.

ABOVE: Photograph from the Classical Numismatic Group, LLC of a gold stater of Lachares. Lachares is recorded to melted down the gold fixtures of the Athena Parthenos, along with various other gold artifacts from the Parthenon, and used the metal to mint coins to pay his soldiers.

Fire and restoration

After Lachares stripped the Athena Parthenos of its gold fixtures, all that was left was the wood and ivory. Archaeological evidence indicates that, sometime probably shortly before 165 BC or thereabouts, a massive fire broke out in the east naos of the Parthenon where the Athena Parthenos was kept. (For an analysis of the archaeological evidence of this fire, you can read this article by William Bell Dinsmoor titled “The Repair of the Athena Parthenos: A Story of Five Dowels.”)

The fire appears to have severely damaged the base of the sculpture. The outside bottom marble blocks of the pedestal on which the statue stood appear to have actually been replaced afterwards, as well as the roof tiles, indicating that the damage to the temple was quite extensive. If the fire was so severe that the blocks of the pedestal had to be replaced, then there is virtually no chance the wooden statue itself could have survived.

This fire from sometime shortly before around 165 BC, then, almost certainly destroyed whatever was left of Pheidias’s original Athena Parthenos. Nonetheless, we know that a very accurate full-scale replica of the statue, possibly using surviving pieces from the original sculpture, was apparently put on display as a replacement, since many later Greek and Roman writers describe seeing the Athena Parthenos on display in the Parthenon.

Most notably, the Greek travel writer Pausanias (lived c. 110 – c. 180 AD) gives an extremely detailed description of the Athena Parthenos in his book The Guide to Greece in which he unambiguously describes it as still being on display in the naos of the Parthenon. Pausanias does not say anything about the original sculpture having been destroyed and the sculpture he saw being a replacement, but the most plausible explanation given the archaeological evidence is that Pausanias must be describing a later replica of Pheidias’s original sculpture.

The replica of the Athena Parthenos seen by Pausanias and other Greek writers remained in the east naos of the Parthenon until the fifth century AD. The Greek Neoplatonist philosopher Marinos of Neapolis states in his biography of his teacher Proklos Lykaios (lived 412 – 485 AD) that, at some point during Proklos’s lifetime, Christians “removed” the Athena Parthenos from the Parthenon. Marinos writes in his Life of Proklos 30, as translated by Kenneth S. Guthrie:

“But the goddess testified to that herself when the statue of the goddess which had been erected in the Parthenon had been removed by the [Christian] people who move that which should not be moved.”

Notably, Marinos doesn’t say that the Christians “destroyed” the Athena Parthenos; instead he only says that they “moved” it. Thus leaves us to wonder where exactly they moved it to.

ABOVE: Nineteenth-century artistic imagining of what the east naos of the Parthenon might have looked like during a festival. This depiction is based on some archaeological and literary evidence, but some features shown here are imaginary.

The Athena Parthenos in the Forum of Constantine?

In 330 AD, the Roman emperor Constantine I refounded the Greek city of Byzantion as Nova Roma, making it the new capital of the Roman Empire. Constantine I is known to have brought dozens of famous classical Greek sculptures from all over the Greek world to Nova Roma, where he put them on public display. Many of these sculptures are known to have been taken from Greek temples.

In the center of the city of Nova Roma, Constantine constructed a massive round forum known as the “Forum of Constantine.” In the center of this forum stood a colossal porphyry column with a statue of Constantine himself in the form of the Greek god Apollon on top. The rest of the forum was decorated with dozens of famous classical Greek sculptures, taken from temples all over the Greek world.

In later times, Constantine’s city of Nova Roma eventually became known as Κωνσταντινούπολις (Kōnstantinoúpolis) or “Constantinople,” which means “City of Constantine” in Greek. (Contrary to popular belief, it was later people who named the city after Constantine, not Constantine himself.) Constantine’s successors continued his habit of removing famous sculptures from temples and bringing them to Constantinople to put on display to showcase the wealth and glory of the Roman Empire.

Now here is where things get really interesting: the Byzantine theologian Arethas of Kaisareia (lived c. 860 – c. 939 AD) mentions that, in his own time, there was an ancient Greek chryselephantine statue of the goddess Athena that stood on public display in the Forum of Constantine in Constantinople, alongside other famous ancient Greek sculptures.

Many scholars believe that the chryselephantine statue of Athena seen by Arethas in the Forum of Constantine may, in fact, be the very same replica of the Athena Parthenos that originally stood in the Parthenon as a replacement for the original sculpture by Pheidias that was destroyed in the fire shortly before c. 165 BC. It is possible that some Byzantine emperor in the fifth century may have ordered the statue to be removed from the Parthenon and brought to Constantinople and that this is the very “removal” that Marinos mentions in his Life of Proklos.

ABOVE: Modern reconstruction by Antoine Helbert of what the Forum of Constantine would have originally looked like after it was first built

Of course, all of this is highly conjectural. There were no doubt many copies of the Athena Parthenos created in antiquity and we cannot be certain the one seen by Arethas in Constantinople really came from the Parthenon. Nonetheless, when we consider the fact that Constantine I’s successors are known to have gathered up famous cult statues from various temples, it is certainly a very real possibility that one of Constantine I’s successors removed the replica of the Athena Parthenos from the Parthenon and brought it to Constantinople to decorate the Forum of Constantine.

Unfortunately, if the chryselephantine statue of Athena that Arethas saw in Constantinople was indeed the replica of the Athena Parthenos from the Parthenon, that statue almost certainly met a grisly end. In April 1204, the western European armies of the Fourth Crusade laid siege to the city of Constantinople. The city fell on 12 April. The Crusaders ruthlessly sacked the city and showed the people of Constantinople no mercy.

In the days that followed, Constantinople suffered one of the most brutal sacks in history. Thousands of civilians were brutally slaughtered. The streets ran with blood. Women (including nuns) were raped and many of them were murdered afterwards. All the major sacred sites in the city were systematically violated. Churches, monasteries, and convents were ransacked and burned. Altars were smashed and valuables stolen to be melted down. The tombs of the Roman emperors were torn open and looted.

ABOVE: The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, painted in 1840 by the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix

The Forum of Constantine itself was utterly razed to the ground. All of the classical Greek and Roman statues that had stood in the Forum of Constantine for so many centuries were melted down by the Crusaders for their raw material value, including a famous bronze statue of Herakles by the great Greek sculptor Lysippos of Sikyon (lived c. 390 – c. 300 BC).

If the replica of the Athena Parthenos from the Parthenon was in the Forum of Constantine during the Sack of Constantinople, then it is almost certain that the Crusaders must have stripped the gold pieces from it and melted them down for the raw metal. The wood and ivory components would have been burned in the fire that consumed the Forum of Constantine.

In the years after the siege, the ruins of Forum of Constantine were built over with new buildings. Today, all that remains of the Forum of Constantine is the Column of Constantine itself, which still bears the black scorch marks from when the forum surrounding it was burned. Another fire in 1779 left further damage to the column. Today, it is known as “the Burnt Column.”

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Burnt Column of Constantine, which is all that remains of the magnificent Forum of Constantine, where the Athena Parthenos may have been displayed for hundreds of years

Modern replica

The original Athena Parthenos has certainly been destroyed, but there is actually a full-scale reconstruction of what it might have looked like on display in the replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee. This reconstruction was created by the American sculptor Alan LeQuire from gypsum cement and ground fiberglass. He began working on it in 1982. After eight years, it was finally unveiled to the public in 1990 as a bare white statue. In 2002, the statue was painted and gilded to look more like the original statue from the Parthenon.

The statue is impressive on account of its size and its gilding, but it is far from the masterpiece that Pheidias’s original sculpture has been described as. It may be a decent imitation, but it is not the work of a true master sculptor. I seem to recall someone said, “All this statue proves is that Alan LeQuire isn’t Pheidias.”

ABOVE: Modern full-scale reconstruction of the Athena Parthenos by the American sculptor Alan LeQuire on display in the replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee

The Serpent Column

While the Athena Parthenos have been destroyed, there are a few famous monuments from classical Greece taken to Constantinople that still exist. For instance, the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived  484 – c. 425 BC) records in his book The Histories that, after the Greeks defeated the Persians in the Battle of Plataia in 479 BC, the Greek forces melted down the Persians’ weapons and fashioned a ten-cubit-high bronze column with three serpent heads at the top supporting a massive golden tripod, which they dedicated to the god Apollon at his temple at Delphoi.

The Serpent Column, as it is now known, remained at Delphoi for centuries afterwards. The gold tripod that sat atop the column was removed and melted down by the Phokians in around 345 BC during the Third Sacred War (lasted 356 – 346 BC), but the bronze column itself was left untouched. The traveler Pausanias saw it at Delphoi in the second century AD.

When Constantine refounded the city of Byzantion as Nova Roma in 330 AD, the Serpent Column was one of the monuments he ordered be brought to Constantinople, where it was put on display in the hippodrome. The Serpent Column survived both the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 and the sack of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks.

Unfortunately, all three serpent heads reportedly fell off on the night of 20 October 1700. No one knows why they fell off. One of the heads is on display in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. The column itself is still standing in Atmeydanı Square in Istanbul, which is where the hippodrome of Constantinople used to be located.

ABOVE: Ottoman illustration from the Surname-i Vehbe dating to 1582 depicting street-sweepers at the hippodrome in Istanbul. Notice that the heads on the serpent column are still intact but the bowl is missing.

ABOVE: Western print illustration from 1727 depicting the Sultan Ahmet Square

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of what remains of the famous Serpent Column, originally dedicated at Delphoi after the Battle of Plataia in 479 BC. Notice that all three serpent heads are now missing. These reportedly fell off in the year 1700 for unknown reasons. One of them is on display in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of one of the heads from the Serpent Column on display in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum

The Horses of Saint Mark

The so-called “Horses of Saint Mark” are four gilt bronze horses that were originally created by a Greek sculptor at some point between the second and third centuries AD as part of sculpture of a quadriga. They originally came from the Greek island of Chios, but they were brought to Constantinople during the reign of Emperor Theodosius I.

They were displayed for many centuries above the hippodrome of Constantinople, but, in 1204 AD, when the Crusaders sacked the city, they were looted by the Venetians. Their heads were removed for transportation purposes and they were brought to Venice, where their heads were reattached and collars were added to cover up where the heads had been removed. They were then put on display outside St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

The original horses have now been moved inside the basilica to protect them from the elements, while four replica bronze horses stand outside in the position originally occupied by the horses themselves.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the gilt bronze Horses of Saint Mark

Conclusion

The original Athena Parthenos created by Pheidias in the fifth century BC was stripped of its gold fixtures by Lachares in around 296 BC. What remained of the statue was almost certainly destroyed by a fire in the east naos of the Parthenon that must have taken place sometime shortly before around 165 BC. A replica, possibly incorporating some surviving pieces of the original, was created as a replacement.

This replica of the Athena Parthenos was apparently “removed” from the Parthenon by Christians in the fifth century AD. It may have been moved to Constantinople, where it may have been put on display in the Forum of Constantine. If this is the case, then the replica was almost certainly destroyed in 1204 during the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders.

As it happens, although the original Athena Parthenos was destroyed long ago, we do have surviving sculptures created either by Pheidias himself or by his students, since Pheidias was the head sculptor who presided over the creation of the Parthenon Marbles, which I wrote about in this article from June 2019. Pheidias’s workshop at Olympia where he created the famous Statue of Zeus has also survived, as I discuss in this article from July 2019.