Fittingly, the center of Athena’s worship in her namesake city was a most impressive citadel, the Akropolis. Among the many riddles of Athenian cult topography, the question of Athena’s temples on the Archaic and Classical Akropolis is perhaps the most vexing. Nobody has yet achieved a definitive reconstruction of the sequence of major Athena temples and how these match up with the structures mentioned in the inscriptions and literary sources. Archaeological remains provide evidence of several temples. First, there is the so-called Bluebeard temple, named for the triple-bodied, snake-legged creature in its pediment, which belonged to the second quarter of the sixth century. This Doric temple, the first monumental temple on the Akropolis, may have stood on the north side, directly over the old Mycenaean palace, or on the south side where the Parthenon was later built; it is sometimes called
The “grandfather of the Parthenon.” Second, well-preserved foundations on the north side, excavated in the nineteenth century by Wilhelm Dorpfeld, belong to a splendid late sixth-century temple, also Doric, which possessed two porches and a cella divided into four chambers. Sculpture from this temple, including a striding Athena attacking a giant, has been identified. A number of sculptures from unidentified buildings, such as the “Olive tree pediment,” are also known. Finally, immediately following the victories of 490, the Athenians began to build a splendid, large temple as a thank offering to the goddess. Located on the south side of the Akropolis, this was the Older Parthenon, the direct predecessor of the great Periklean temple. When the Persians sacked the Akropolis in 480, they burned the existing temples, including the unfinished Older Parthenon, and the remains of these were incorporated into the north Akropolis defensive wall.2
It is safe to say that Athena possessed a temple from the eighth or seventh century, since this is the most likely date of the ancient olivewood cult image around which the central rituals for the goddess were organized.3 Two Homeric passages are relevant; in the Iliad (2.549) she establishes the cult of Erechtheus “in her own rich temple” while in the Odyssey (7.78-81) she travels across the sea and enters “the strong-built house of Erechtheus.” The Ionic building we call the Erechtheion was known to the Classical Athenians as “the temple with the image” or the archaios neOs (Old Temple), even though it was quite new at the time. It took over this name from its predecessor, either the Dorpfeld temple or a “pre-Erechtheion.” Active controversy attends the question of whether the Ionic building, in addition to housing Athena’s olivewood statue, is also the shrine of Erechtheus; some say the latter, described by Pausanias (1.26.5-27.4), is to be found elsewhere on the Akropolis. Though the question must remain open, the Homeric passages above suggest that Athena’s holiest shrine always housed Erechtheus’ cult as well. The same sacerdotal family, known as the Eteoboutadai, supplied the priests for both Poseidon-Erechtheus and Athena Polias. If the cults were housed together, we also have an explanation for the four-chambered cellas of both the Dorpfeld temple and the Ionic temple.4
An early fifth-century decree (IG I3 4) was carved on a metope from the Bluebeard temple and therefore postdates the dismantling of that structure. It refers to a neOs (Temple) and a hekatompedon (Hundred-Footer) as separate sacred areas, but there is no consensus on which labels fit which places. This inscription does however illustrate the pattern, probably dating to the early sixth century, of maintaining two Akropolis temples dedicated to Athena. One, situated on the north side, held the olivewood statue (and perhaps the associated cult of Erechtheus) and was the focus of the most ancient rituals. The other, on the south, came about as a result of the competitive vogue for elaborate “Hundred-Footers” that swept the Greek world in the seventh and sixth centuries, and the final representative of this tradition was the Parthenon, with its colossal gold and ivory cult statue sculpted by Pheidias.5 The
Figure 4.1 Athena Parthenos. Roman marble copy of the cult statue in the Parthenon at Athens, 447-39. Ht 1.045 m. National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Alinari/Art Resource.
Southern temples, whose primary function was to store and display the increasing number of rich objects dedicated to Athena, were themselves a form of offering from the citizens to their goddess.
Some two hundred marble fragments preserve the inventories of the tamiai (treasurers) of Athena, officials who were responsible for keeping track of the valuable ritual objects and dedications stored in the Parthenon and the Erechtheion in the Classical period. These inventories show that the interior walls of the temples were fitted with shelves or cupboards. For smaller items, baskets (often gilded) and bronze boxes were used. The earliest inventory of objects in the Parthenon (434/3) includes gold and silver ritual vessels, armor, at least fifty-seven items of furniture, several lyres, and six Persian daggers inlaid with gold. Many of these objects were used in Athena’s festivals and returned to the temple, while others were simply valuable or decorative items owned by the goddess. The inventories for the Ionic temple describe the contents of the room where Athena’s olivewood cult statue stood, including a gold incense burner fitted into the floor and a lustral basin held by a male statue. The cult image itself is said to possess a gold circlet, earrings, a neckband, five necklaces, a gold owl (probably on the statue’s shoulder), a gold aegis with a gorgon’s head, and a gold libation bowl.6
The bastion flanking the south entrance to the Akropolis was the site of a cult of Athena Nike (Victory) dating to the early sixth century. During the modern restoration of the gemlike Classical temple perched on the bastion, workers found remains of the Archaic sanctuary, which had been incorporated into the newer structure. Beneath the new altar, a block from the old was preserved with its sixth-century inscription: “Altar of Athena Nike. Patrokles erected it.” The theme of victory relates to the reorganization of the Pana-thenaia in 566 and that festival’s association with Athena’s victory over the giants. The Archaic sanctuary was presumably destroyed by the Persians, though the cult statue, a wooden Athena holding a pomegranate in the right hand and a helmet in the left, survived to be reinstalled in its new home.7 The mid-fifth-century Nike Temple Decree (IG I3 35) commissioned Kallikrates to design the temple that still stands and established the office of priestess of Athena Nike, which was awarded based on the drawing of lots from all Athenian citizen women.
Figure 4.2 Bronze votive statue of Athena in battle from the Athenian Akropolis, c. 480. Athens, National Archaeological Museum. Bildarchiv Foto Marburg.
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