In 437–436 BCE, sculptors advanced the metopes: Gigantomachy, Amazonomachy, Centauromachy. Shallow relief caught the high sun; battles ringed Athena’s house. The building’s outer skin turned conflict into civic clarity.
What Happened
With the entablature complete and pedimental teams at work, crews pressed on with the metopes. Each panel, set between triglyphs, framed a moment of struggle. The Gigantomachy pitted gods against giants; the Amazonomachy set Greeks against Amazons; the Centauromachy captured the moment when order fought back against savage disruption [11][16]. The suite announced Athens’ ethical claims in mythic shorthand.
The carving demanded discipline across dozens of panels. Foremen distributed cartoons and models to keep figures aligned in scale and style; carvers tuned the depth so that shadows read clearly in the harsh Attic light. The sound was ceaseless tapping, punctuated by the sharper ring of a tool reset. Dust drifted away on the wind toward the Agora and the Ilissos.
The metopes’ visibility made them propaganda. Anyone climbing from the Piraeus or crossing the Agora could lift their eyes and read. Against the azure air, the white reliefs invited interpretation: civilized Athens defeats chaos. British Museum galleries later preserved many panels, allowing modern eyes to compare designs across the flanks and ends [11][16].
Pheidias coordinated content so that the full ring worked as an argument, not just a collection of scenes. Iktinos and Kallikrates protected the panels’ framing against irregularities; the Doric rhythm of triglyph and metope continued unbroken even as content varied [4][11]. The building spoke with one voice in many vignettes.
The work, though refined, was also hard labor. Men perched on scaffolds in the heat; forearms ached from countless controlled blows. Scarlet cordage secured tools; water buckets hung near to damp down dust. From the Areopagus, the peristyle seemed to flicker with life as figures emerged from blankness.
By the end of this phase, a significant run of metopes had moved from blocked-out forms to finished relief. The temple’s exterior ring now stood not just as Doric form, but as moral theater. Inside, the Ionic frieze continued to breathe its quieter pulse; above, pediments gathered their ensembles. The Parthenon’s stories were converging.
Why This Matters
Advancing the metopes gave the Parthenon its most legible exterior narrative, visible to anyone who could see the Acropolis. These scenes of ordered victory framed the sanctuary’s role in the city’s self-conception and diplomacy—Athens as the bulwark of civilization [11][16]. That they were rendered within rigid Doric grammar underscored the pairing of discipline and drama.
The event underscores “architectural synthesis.” The building’s exterior now articulated conflict while the interior represented order, making the Parthenon a two-register statement about the city’s ideals [11]. The work also shows how Pheidias’ centralized artistic direction ensured coherence across a dispersed workforce [4].
In the wider timeline, metope progress dovetailed with pedimental payments and the interior’s maturation after the statue’s dedication. The project headed toward the integrated completion that Plutarch would later praise, with sculpture and structure mutually reinforcing a deadline [1][3][11].
For historians, the metopes are a rare survival of a complete sculptural program’s logic. The British Museum’s holdings and Athenian fragments allow reconstruction of sequences, a boon for understanding how classical art served civic messaging [11][16].
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