History_of_Parthenon

History of Parthenon For this project, I chose to research about The Parthenon. The Parthenon was a temple to Athena built on top of the highest hill in Athens, the Acropolis or High City. In the Late Bronze Age, the Acropolis had been where the kings of Athens lived, and where everybody went to defend themselves when there was a war. But after the Dark Ages, the Athenians had no more kings to rule them. Instead they had an oligarchy, and so there was no king to live on the Acropolis. Instead, the Acropolis became sacred to the goddess Athena, and the Athenians built her a temple there. There was at least one Parthenon on that spot before the one that is there now. It was built in the Archaic period out of limestone. The Persians destroyed this first temple when they sacked Athens in the Persian Wars, just before the battle of Salamis in 480 BC. We have only scraps of it that were buried on the Acropolis after the war. For a long time after the Persian Wars, the Athenians left the Acropolis in ruins, as a sort of war memorial. But by the 440’s BC, a generation later, they wanted to rebuild their Parthenon bigger and better than before. To get the money for this new, big, beautiful temple, the Athenians used the tribute money from their allies that was supposed to be spent defending the Greeks from Persian invasions. The Athenians hired two great architects, Callicrates and Ictinus, and a great sculptor, Pheidias, to rebuild the Parthenon. This time the whole building would be made of marble, and in the very latest style, and big, too.