Pheidias Appointed Overseer; Iktinos and Kallikrates Named Architects
Pericles placed Pheidias in overall charge of the Parthenon and named Iktinos and Kallikrates as architects in 447 BCE. Plutarch preserves the chain of command; Vitruvius remembers Iktinos’ technical treatise. Wax tablets scraped, orders ran down the hill, and the Acropolis became a disciplined worksite.
What Happened
The program needed a conductor. Pericles chose Pheidias, the celebrated sculptor, to act as general overseer of the Parthenon and related works, and appointed the architects Iktinos and Kallikrates to execute the design. Plutarch is blunt: “His general manager and general overseer was Pheidias… Callicrates and Ictinus were the architects” [4]. This was more than patronage. It was a management plan for speed.
Pheidias connected politics to craft. He could judge the standard of relief on a metope as readily as he could read the mood in the Assembly. Iktinos and Kallikrates, meanwhile, drew the grids that would carry the 8 by 17 columns, calculated entasis, and oversaw the innumerable decisions that turn drawings into stone [11]. Vitruvius’ later notice of a treatise by Iktinos and Carpion on the “Doric temple of Minerva on the acropolis of Athens” preserves the technical authority behind the name [6].
The appointments also established hierarchy on the hill. Orders moved from Pericles’ circle near the Agora up to the Acropolis in lines scored into wax tablets. Scribes read them aloud under the azure Attic sky as foremen gathered. The sound on site shifted from free chatter to patterned calls: “Hoist!” “Hold!” “Set!” Bronze and iron met marble in a crisp ring. The Acropolis, with the Propylaia to one side and the old precinct of Athena Polias nearby, became a coordinated shop floor.
Pheidias’ authority extended beyond aesthetics. He managed procurement, negotiated scarcities, and assigned carvers to pediments or frieze. He knew what marble the quarry at Mount Pentelikon would give him, how the grain would take a claw chisel, and which team could translate a sketch into crisp folds of a peplos [11]. The appointments, in short, built a single chain of accountability from Pericles to the last mason shaping a triglyph.
Plutarch marvels at the speed and at the public’s reaction: though some criticized the use of allied funds, the works themselves silenced opposition by their excellence [2][3]. But speed without coordination would have produced chaos. With Iktinos and Kallikrates on the plans and Pheidias on the program, the site found its rhythm. Scarlet plumb lines hung steady in the breeze; chisels clicked in rapid counterpoint; carts rattled up from the Kerameikos with timber and tools.
Vitruvius’ nod to Iktinos reads like a footnote, but it underscores the seriousness of these appointments. They were not ceremonial. They were technical. The very existence of a written treatise signals a project that documented itself as it went, setting standards even as stones rose [6]. And because Pheidias was sculptor as well as manager, the artistic program—the metopes of Gigantomachy, Amazonomachy, and Centauromachy; the interior Ionic frieze; the colossal Athena—would cohere [11].
By the end of the first season under this leadership, the hill had changed character. Scaffolds laced the bedrock; hoists groaned; a chain of command linked Pericles’ vision to a thousand blows of hammer and chisel. The appointments did not guarantee success. They made it possible.
Why This Matters
Pericles’ appointments solved the central problem of scale: how to turn an idea into an organism. Pheidias’ oversight unified sculpture, architecture, and logistics; Iktinos and Kallikrates’ authority ensured that design decisions translated into precise stonework across the entire footprint [4][6][11]. The result was the site’s newfound tempo, which Plutarch later celebrated [3].
The event clarifies the theme of accountability in stone. A single, named overseer and architects created traceable responsibility for choices, costs, and standards. Inscriptions would later record the boards of epistatai, but this top layer ensured their work aligned with the program’s aesthetics and pace [1][10].
In the larger narrative, these appointments underpin everything that follows—from quarrying schedules to the integration of a continuous Ionic frieze within a Doric shell. They also enabled the coordinated creation of the Athena Parthenos, whose removable gold turned the temple into a fiscal device [9][11]. Without this leadership, the promise of 447 BCE could have dissolved in delay.
Historians study this linkage of art and administration because it is rare to see technical authorship named so clearly. Vitruvius’ citation of Iktinos’ treatise, aligned with Plutarch’s testimony, gives the Parthenon a documentary pedigree that few ancient monuments possess [4][6].
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People Involved
Key figures who played a role in Pheidias Appointed Overseer; Iktinos and Kallikrates Named Architects
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.
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.
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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