To the Curators of Greek Sculpture, British Museum, London:

Let me begin by thanking you, your colleagues, and your institution, for all you have done to preserve and display my Parthenon sculptures during these past two centuries.  While I cannot endorse their removal from Athens, I rejoice that you have made them available to the world.  I am in your debt.

You will not be surprised that an artist, even a deified one, maintains a lively interest in the fate of his work.  I was and remain proud of my design and proud of its execution.  Naturally I have been distressed each time  the frieze has suffered physical damage, and annoyed each time it has been misinterpreted.  For centuries many classicists, archaeologists, art historians, artists, and others have written perceptively about the Parthenon and its frieze.  Some have written less perceptively.  Yet in the past decade interpretations have arisen that are so tortuous, so disconnected from my enterprise, that I can no longer remain silent.  I write now—with the help of Hermes, translator and friend—to clarify a few matters sorely in need of clarification.

To begin with the obvious: The frieze depicts a procession of Athenians to the Acropolis during the Greater Panathenaia.  It seems to me perverse to think it might depict anything else.  Some scholars have objected that temple decoration had never before portrayed a non-mythological event.  Have they not noticed the other innovations, apparent in every stone of the Parthenon?  Pericles’s exact words to me were: “Let us have a Panathenaic Procession—Athens honoring our Goddess.”  He did not say, “last year’s Procession” or “the first Procession” or any such thing.  He was the city's leader.  I was the city’s best sculptor.  Those few words were enough.

The design was entirely mine, and like all my work a product of imagination as well as memory.  I felt no need to study any particular Procession.  I had seen, indeed had participated in, a great many of them.  I determined to show the essentials of the quadrennial event, without ticking off every common detail.  My challenge as an artist was to produce a frieze that would be beautiful, true to the festival celebration as we knew it, and somewhat readable from below.

I believe that I fulfilled my commission.  But time and war and transport have defaced my work, creating ambiguities today where none existed when the frieze was new.  “Stools!”  Why on earth would the basket-carriers lead the sacred Procession carrying furniture?  No.  As one would expect, each carries a round, tray-like basket, containing the loaves, grains, ribbons, and knife required for the sacrifice.  To see my footed baskets as stools, one must imagine that seven of eight stool legs have disappeared, and that the first young woman has grasped the one remaining leg—nearer to the viewer than her right shoulder—with her left hand.  Could I have been this inept?  That so-called stool leg is actually an incense burner, also necessary for the sacrifice.  Similarly, it has been conjectured that the second young woman carries a “footstool,” although the curve and handles of a libation bowl remain visible in the marble.  In short, all three of the sacrificial objects in the final scene have been misread!

The presentation of the sacred peplos has fared no better.  Scholars ask, “Why do we not see the peplos arrive as the sail of a wheeled ship?”  Clearly because you see it here, having already arrived.  It is being folded  during this presentation ceremony before being carried to the temple.  The Procession and its conclusion are continuous.  Do you see the basket-carriers twice?  Meanwhile, some have improbably supposed that a girl brings the peplos to the Archon!  Leaving aside "her” partial nudity, unusual to say the least, does “she” not possess one of the handsomest boy-profiles in the frieze?

Like all great histories in stone—or paint, or ink, for that matter—mine was an imagined event, quite unlike your modern news photograph.  Again, to be explicit: Did the Procession typically separate, only to rejoin at the east end of the temple?  It did not.  Did it contain more cavalry than foot-soldiers?  It did not.  Was any member of The Twelve visibly present at the celebration?  Not that I recall.  And did the presentation of Athena's peplos normally occur just as the basket-carriers arrived?  Of course not. 

With apologies to classicists everywhere—whose literary interpretations I have often admired—I must insist that reading a work of plastic art is not like reading a text.  And creating a work of art is a different enterprise altogether.  In my frieze, the Procession is made to separate because the rectangular wall space and our preference for symmetry demand it.  One sees more horses than hoplites because mounted cavalry offer so many more visual opportunities than a file of marching men.  Clearly the physical presence of approving gods is better understood as an invocation rather than an observation.

As for the sacred baskets and the peplos, no scene was more easily understood at the time of its creation, and none has been more mischievously interpreted since.  In my day, the great Procession culminated in two signal events: Athena’s Priestess received the baskets, bowl, and incense burner for the animal sacrifice.  The City’s Archon received the garment that would adorn Athena for the coming year.  This is precisely what I have shown.  I chose to place Priestess and Archon back to back at the center of the frieze, first because of their parallel receipt of sacred objects and second because the two would soon exchange these very objects.  The Priestess oversaw the dressing of Athena, whereas the Archon officiated at the sacrifice.  I should note that none of these objects was ever brought into the Parthenon. The peplos would clothe the ancient statue of Athena Polias, housed in a separate temple on the Acropolis; the sacrifice, of course, took place at the great altar, in the open air.

Those who know my work, those who understand our age, will not search for hidden meanings, for secret codes, for puzzles to solve.  Giving honor to Athena Polias, “Athena of the City,” was the whole point of the Panathenaia, and thus of my frieze.  Could the meaning of the two halves of my central scene—separate but united, like the framing gods—be any more transparent?  “The City” on the right joins the “The Temple” on the left in a public celebration of our beloved goddess.

Thank you for your attention.   Let me again commend you for your service to humanity.

Pheidias 
 
 
Straight from the sculptor/designer’s mouth!  One cannot imagine a more authoritative account      of the frieze, particularly of “the peplos scene.”  But most of what Pheidias says here is either an assertion or an explanation, not a reasoned argument. 

My companion piece, a proper research paper, has now been published as a paperback book, available from amazon.com.  It offers a detailed analysis of the relationship between the Panathenaic procession and its ceremonial conclusion.  Look for the title, "ALL for ATHENA:        Freeing the Parthenon Frieze."

F. T. Kettering
ftkettering@gmail.com