Parthenon

Download or read book The Parthenon written by Mary Beard and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wry and imaginative, this gem of a book deconstructs the most famous building in Western history.” —Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic “In her brief but compendious volume [Beard] says that the more we find out about this mysterious structure, the less we know. Her book is especially valuable because it is up to date on the restoration the Parthenon has been undergoing since 1986.” —Gary Wills, New York Review of Books At once an entrancing cultural history and a congenial guide for tourists, armchair travelers, and amateur archaeologists alike, this book conducts readers through the storied past and towering presence of the most famous building in the world. In the revised version of her classic study, Mary Beard now includes the story of the long-awaited new museum opened in 2009 to display the sculptures from the building that still remain in Greece, as well as the controversies that have surrounded it, and asks whether it makes a difference to the “Elgin Marble debate.”

Download or read book The Parthenon Enigma written by Joan Breton Connelly and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Built in the fifth century b.c., the Parthenon has been venerated for more than two millennia as the West’s ultimate paragon of beauty and proportion. Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it? In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible. The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.

Download or read book Where Is the Parthenon? written by Roberta Edwards and published by Penguin Workshop. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the history of the grand temple to the goddess Athena which has sat atop the Acropolis above Athens, Greece, since 432 BC.

Download or read book The Real Life of the Parthenon written by Patricia Vigderman and published by Mad Creek Books. This book was released on 2018 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruminates on ancient remains and antiquities, illuminating an important element of contemporary cultural life: the dynamic between loss and delight.

Download or read book The Stones of the Parthenon written by Manolēs Korres and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most visitors to the Acropolis in Athens pause to wonder how the large marble pieces were hauled up the sacred mount. In fact, even with today's far more advanced construction equipment, it would be impossible to match the precision with which the ancient builders built the imposing structures of the Parthenon in just eight years! The Stones of the Parthenon is a riveting investigation of the technological achievements of the ancient Greeks. This highly readable account explains how an 11-ton Doric column capital was quarried and transported to Athens. The author's intricate line drawings clearly illustrate the methods and tools employed in the accomplishment of this feat of ancient craftsmanship.

Download or read book Parthenon written by David Stuttard and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Parthenon is one of the world's most iconic buildings: today, its silhouette symbolizes Greece. Built on the rocky acropolis of Athens in the aftermath of the devastating invasion of Xerxes, the Parthenon was part temple to Athene, part war memorial, part treasure trove of some of the most outstanding art of its age. Parthenon: Power and Politics on the Acropolis takes the reader through the dramatic story of the conception and creation of the Parthenon, setting it against a turbule nt historical background and rooting the building firmly in the real and mythological landscape of Athens. Written as a pacy, narrative history, the text features a cast of memorable characters, including Themistocles, the general whose decision to eva cuat e Athens led to the Persian sack of the acropolis; Pericl es, visionary statesman and mastermind of the Athens' building project; and Pheidi as, who created the cult statue of Athene, and narrowly escaped impeachment for embezzlement. Beautifully illustrated with evocative site photography, details from the Parthenon sculptures and other related artworks from the superb collection of the British Museum, this book explores the Parthenon as the spiritual heart of a network of commanding buildings, de vised by Pericles and continued by his successors to promote the power of Athens as leader of the Greek world.

Download or read book The Parthenon written by Jenifer Neils and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-05 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an overview of a classical monument interjected with the discoveries of modern scholarship.