By 445–444 BCE, the peristyle began to rise: 8 columns at each end, 17 along the flanks. Hoists creaked, drums turned in the light, and the white Pentelic shafts found their stance. The accounts list columns among major outlays—stone turned into standing order.
What Happened
Column drums arriving from Pentelikon met their fates as shafts. Crews used wooden cranes to swing each drum into place, rotating it until incised marks aligned. The Parthenon’s iconic count—8 by 17—now became visible in the skyline over the Agora and the Piraeus. Each column gained its slight swelling, entasis, through careful stacking and final dressing in situ [11].
The sound changed again. Cords sang under tension; wooden pins squealed; foremen called in a clipped cadence as each drum settled with a thud that trembled through the bedrock above the Areopagus. Bronze clamps and iron dowels flashed dark against the bright Pentelic marble. The columns grew in a rhythm that made time feel sculpted.
These were expensive days. The building accounts record outlays for columns among the major expenditures, a reminder that each vertical demanded both stone and expertise [1][10]. The epistatai approved payments, the names of teams, the movement of funds from Athena’s treasury in the opisthodomos to the worksite. Public finance and pure geometry met in the same rising shaft.
The white of the marble under the azure Attic sky made the peristyle read from far off. On the north slope, men climbing toward the Propylaia could count the flanks and feel their own steps fall into the temple’s measure. Within that measure, crews left minute refinements for later: the exact flare of echinus, the flute depth calibrated against light and shadow.
Iktinos and Kallikrates oversaw the order of assembly: corner columns with special attention to optical corrections, then filling in along the flanks. Pheidias, though focused on the sculptural program, watched proportions—ensuring that what rose outside would harmonize with the cella inside and the Athena Parthenos to come [4][11]. The result was balance, even at this skeletal stage.
The erection of columns also carried a message. The city now displayed its Doric face at scale. Allies and rivals coming into Athens by sea could look up and see a ring of white shafts, not an abstract promise. Plutarch’s later admiration for the speed of the works gains context here: this is where the city’s effort became undeniably public [3].
By the season’s end, the peristyle framed the air. The temple had a perimeter, a set of ribs to carry the entablature and the stories cut into metopes. The columns did not yet whisper with fluting; that finishing would come. But they stood, and their stance defined everything that followed.
Why This Matters
Erecting the peristyle translated budget lines into the city’s visible identity. Columns are the grammar of Doric architecture; once they stood 8 by 17, the Parthenon could no longer be delayed or reimagined without obvious loss [11]. The accounts’ recorded outlays testify to the civic priority given to this phase and the mechanisms used to keep funds flowing [1][10].
The event advances “architectural synthesis.” The outer Doric shell now had a presence that would frame the interior Ionic frieze later carved inside the cella. The measured ring of columns created the cadence against which the continuous inner narrative could play [11].
In the broader narrative, the columns’ rise set the stage for the entablature and metopes, and for the dedication of the Athena Parthenos. It also realized the “image as power multiplier” dynamic: travelers from Sounion to the Piraeus could read Athens’ ambition in white stone from miles away [8][11].
For historians, this is the moment when structural clarity becomes a public fact. The 8×17 peristyle is a number as well as a sightline; it anchors debates about refinements and optics in a frame that is both measurable and enduring [11].
Event in Context
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People Involved
Key figures who played a role in Doric Peristyle Columns Erected
Kallikrates
Kallikrates was a leading Athenian architect of the Periklean era, co-architect of the Parthenon and later designer of the graceful Temple of Athena Nike. On the Parthenon, he paired design intelligence with engineering pragmatism: sequencing lifts, coordinating clamp-and-dowel systems, and aligning roof and metal fittings with a relentlessly advancing schedule. He helped turn Pentelic marble and civic ambition into a disciplined workflow that kept sculptors, masons, and haulers moving in tandem. In this timeline he embodies the project’s logistical heartbeat, where elegant detailing meets industrial-scale organization.
Iktinos
Iktinos was a 5th-century BCE Athenian architect best known as co-designer of the Parthenon and later credited with the temple of Apollo at Bassae. On the Acropolis he orchestrated the Parthenon’s strict Doric shell and its refined optical corrections—subtle curvature, column entasis, and precise corner solutions—while accommodating an Ionic frieze and colossal cult statue. He transformed political mandate into measured stone, ensuring elegance did not compromise speed. In this timeline he translates quarry deliveries and civic ambition into a mathematically tuned structure that reads as both sanctuary and manifesto.
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