Pedimental Sculptors Paid; Pediment Themes Defined
By 438/7 BCE, the building accounts record payments to sculptors on the pediments. Pausanias identifies the themes: the Birth of Athena and the Contest with Poseidon. The temple’s roofline prepared to tell Athens’ origin myths in marble.
What Happened
The Athena Parthenos stood within; attention turned to the heights. By 438/7 BCE, the accounts inscribed on stone record payments to sculptors working on the pediments, a sign that the project had moved into its culminating narrative spaces [1]. The pediments’ subjects, later noted by Pausanias—the Birth of Athena on the east and the Contest of Athena and Poseidon on the west—gave the temple civic origin stories at either end [5].
Pedimental sculpture is a different craft. Figures must fill triangular fields, rise against the sky, and read from far below. Carvers sketched full-scale on plaster or boards; teams blocked out massive figures for corner and center, ensuring that limbs and drapery would align with raking cornices. The sound up there was crisp in the wind—hard blows, short breaths, foremen’s calls clipped by altitude.
The Birth of Athena, a story of emergence and order, suited the east front facing the rising sun. The Contest with Poseidon, a tale of the city’s choice and favor, guarded the west toward the Propylaia. Pausanias’ terse report lets us hear the ancient consensus: these were the stories Athenians wanted their temple to wear on its brow [5].
The accounts’ mention of payments grounds the poetry. Names of sculptors may be lost, but their wages formed a cadence: allocation approved, disbursement made, progress checked. The boards of epistatai turned myth into payroll, ensuring that work at the roofline kept pace with metopes below and frieze within [1][10]. Public money, public myths.
From the Areopagus and the north slope, Athenians watched groups of figures rise into place. The azure sky behind them made edges cut sharp; at dusk, the marble turned honeyed. Scarlet rope cordons kept the curious back from falling stone. As pieces locked in, the temple’s profile resolved into something like a sentence: beginning, conflict, choice.
By season’s end, both pediments had advanced, with payment stones proving it. The building’s voice grew deeper. If the metopes were drums and the frieze was a harp, the pediments played horns—clear, high, carrying far.
Why This Matters
Recording payments to pedimental sculptors ties the Parthenon’s most public narratives to its most public records. The east Birth of Athena and west Contest with Poseidon conferred civic identity on the temple’s skyline, while accounts show the city’s oversight of timing and cost [1][5]. Myth took its place under audit.
The event highlights “accountability in stone.” Even at the roofline, the polis documented its outlays, making the most symbolic carvings answerable to budget and schedule [1][10]. It also resonates with “image as power multiplier,” since pediments project meaning across Athens, reinforcing leadership through origin tales [5][8].
Within the larger narrative, the pediments’ progress paralleled the consolidation of interior works after the statue’s dedication. The whole complex sharpened: Doric frame, Ionic interior, colossal cult figure, and now roofline myths. Completion by 432 BCE came into view [3][11].
For scholars, this intersection of inscription and iconography is gold. Pausanias’ subjects align with the archaeological program; the accounts’ dates pin labor to a narrow window, making the Parthenon one of antiquity’s best-documented sculptural campaigns [1][5].
Event in Context
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People Involved
Key figures who played a role in Pedimental Sculptors Paid; Pediment Themes Defined
Epistatai (Building Overseers)
The epistatai were annually appointed boards of Athenian citizens charged with supervising major public works, including the Parthenon. They awarded contracts, audited deliveries, approved wages, and published expenditures on stone stelai—state transparency made visible. In this timeline they knit together quarrying, sculpture, and assembly by enforcing schedules and standards, while ensuring that funds, including imperial tribute, were tracked. Their signatures on accounts turn the temple into both a financial instrument and a civic performance: every payment, from metal fittings to pedimental sculpture, passes through their hands.
Pheidias
Pheidias was Athens’ foremost sculptor, renowned for creating the chryselephantine Athena Parthenos and, at Olympia, the colossal Zeus—later counted among the Seven Wonders. As artistic overseer of the Parthenon, he united dozens of workshops and sculptors into a coherent program: a sweeping Ionic frieze, dramatic metopes, and measured pediments. He translated political ambition into visual theology, designing Athena’s removable gold as both sacred adornment and reserve fund. Targeted by lawsuits and envy, his reputation survived scandal. In this timeline he is the aesthetic nerve center, turning marble and gold into a city’s public face and financial instrument.
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