John Boardman on the Parthenon

Britain's most distinguished historian of ancient Greek art recounts what the Parthenon and its sculptures meant to the citizens of fifth-century BCE Athens.

The sculptural friezes of the Parthenon in Athens are the most recognizable, if least well understood, of all the monuments of Classical antiquity. Created in the mid-fifth centuryBCE to adorn the new temple on the Acropolis, they represent a high point in the development of Classical Greek art and a testimony to that moment the image o...