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Undergraduate
Classics Teaching Collections |
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Forward |
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| Name: |
Assembly
of the Gods |
| Picture: |
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| Description: |
Parthenon
East Frieze VI. London, British Museum. H. 1.06m. From the left: Poseidon,
bearded, sits straight-backed, raising his left hand in which he held
his sceptre of office. In front of him, Apollo turns in his chair
to converse with his uncle, his pose relaxed and casual. Before him
sits his twin sister Artemis, her hair bound in a sakkos, her right
hand holding her dress over her breasts as she gestures to Aphrodite
on the next section of the frieze. |
| Date: |
c. 440 B.C. |
| Discussion: |
The
gods here are life-size, larger than the humans that surround them
on the frieze. There is still some discussion on the meaning behind
the Parthenon frieze, but all scholars agree that it represents the
Panathenaea, the great festival celebrating Athena's birth that took
place every Hekatombaion (July), with a special event every four years.
Each year, the cult statue was presented with a new peplos; every
fourth year, it was carried on board a wheeled ship. The festival
depicted on the Parthenon frieze seems to be a mixture of Great Panathenaea
and normal Panathenaea; the peplos was carried through the city accompanied
by the cavalry, maidens, elders, metics, etc. But the frieze, some
people believe, also shows the legendary royal family of Erechtheus,
whose daughter Otiona was sacrificed to save the city. The culmination
of the frieze at the east, the handing-over of the peplos, is seen
by Connelly (1995) as Erechtheus handing a winding-sheet to his daughter
in a sculptural shorthand for ritual sacrifice. This, she claims,
is why the gods are turning away from the peplos scene and are instead
talking amongst themselves, so as not to be tainted by the miasma
of human death. Robertson 1981: 100-1; Stewart 1990: 157; 343 (ill.). |
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