: The Parthenon at Athens Greece and at Nashville Tennessee by Wilson Benjamin Franklin - Parthenon (Athens Greece); Parthenon (Art museum : Nashville Tenn.)

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The Parthenon at Athens, Greece and at Nashville, Tennessee

PARTHENON PRESS NASHVILLE

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF PARK COMMISSIONERS 1920-1941

R. M. Dudley M. T. Bryan Lee J. Loventhal W. R. Cole R. T. Creighton Chas. M. McCabe Percy Warner Rogers Caldwell J. P. W. Brown Edwin Warner C. A. Craig Jas. G. Stahlman Vernon Tupper Bascom F. Jones

Background

The Parthenon of Pericles, while not thought to be one of the wonders of the world, nevertheless has always been regarded as one of the most wondrously beautiful and inspiring of the world's buildings. It embraces the best effort of the mind, the heart, and the hand of man. In it are bound up the religion, the history, and the art of Greece.

It has been well said that art is organized emotion, while science is organized knowledge. The field of emotion found its first great development among the Greeks and in the time of Pericles reached its zenith. Assuredly the Greeks have never been excelled in the beauty of their architecture or sculptural art.

The influence of religion was dominant in the life and thought that produced such outstanding men in this period of world history as Phidias and Sophocles, Ictinos and Pericles. Every function of the mind, every activity of the hand, was closely associated with some god or goddess, and to this inspirational incentive the world is greatly indebted for the Parthenon. The mythological stories of the Parthenon largely cover the mythology of Greece. Twenty-eight of the major deities and numerous minor deities and personifications adorn its pediments.

At the time of its destruction in the seventeenth century, a little more than two thousand years after its completion, the Parthenon was almost in as good condition as it was at its beginning. The changes made by the Christians in the fifth century and by the Turks in the fifteenth century had impaired it but little, all of which is eloquent testimony to the thoroughness with which the task was accomplished. The co-ordination of mind, hand, and heart of the Greeks of that age has never been excelled by men of any time and found its culmination in the Parthenon.

The Parthenon at Athens

The Parthenon was built on the Acropolis, a hill two hundred feet above the streets of Athens, in the year 438 B.C. Not yet had the blight of decay laid its hand upon an outstanding civilization and Athens was at the zenith of her glory and power. The nations she had conquered contributed to her wealth and her slaves furnished the labor for her every great undertaking. It is no wonder that at this time she should turn her heart toward her beloved Athena and honor her with a shrine. Athena Parthenos was her name, hence the word Parthenon. She was the wisest and most beautiful of the Grecian deities and the Parthenon was her temple.

It is thought that the earliest Greeks worshiped their goddess with crude altars of uncut stone and unhewn wood. Gradually, as the Greeks became more intelligent, they began building temples, each lovelier than the one before and all on the same foundation, as attested by excavations at Athens. It is not known just how many temples there were in this series, but it is known that the last one was destroyed by the Persian Xerxes in the year 480 B.C. Then came the Parthenon, begun in 447 and dedicated to the goddess Athena in 438 B.C. Here for a thousand years the Greeks worshiped their goddess, and it was during this period that Greece produced the greatest of her philosophers, warriors, artists, and writers.

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