Temple of Athena Nike

The Legend

This small Temple is one of the most memorable monuments on the Acropolis. Pausanias mentions seeing it on the way up to the Propylaea: The Temple of Athena Aptera (Wingless Victory) stands to the right of the Propylaea (gateway). The sea is visible from the spot, and the story goes that Aegeus flung himself from here when he saw the ship which had borne the young Athenians to Crete returning with black sails aloft. Theseus had left Athens in the hope of killing the Minotaur and had promised his father that he would hoist white sails in the event of success. But he forgot his promise and Aegeus, thinking he had been slain, leapt to his death from the citadel. (Paus. 1.22.4)

The Project

The Athena Nike (Athena of Victory) Temple stands on the remains of a Mycenaean fortification of Cyclopean masonry, originally several meters higher than the present bastion. By the 6th century B.C.E. a cult worshipping Goddess Athena as Goddess of Victory, had been established in the same location, and by ca. 490 B.C.E. a small poros Temple and several altars had been built.

The Temple of Athena Nike was begun in 427 B.C.E., two years after the death of Pericles. The building was completed three years later (424 B.C.E.), but the sculptors continued working on it until about 410 B.C.E.

Ca. 410 B.C.E. the famous carved parapet was constructed around the Temple, and the entire area is sometimes referred to as the Nike Parapet. Also on the bastion were Shrines of the Graces and Artemis Epipyrgidia (Artemis on the Tower).

The Plan

Ionic style, this small Temple of Pentelic marble is about 23 feet (7 m) high, 27 feet (8.2 m) long, 18 feet (5.6 m) wide and 13 feet (4 m) column height. Both the front facade and the back have a four-column portico. The cella (the inner sanctum) has unadorned walls, except for the east wall where two rectangular pillars stand between the antae. Originally it housed a statue of the Goddess that was a copy of the xoanon (wooden image) burned during the Persian occupation. The Ionic triple architrave is supported by the porticos and the long walls of the cella.

The Frieze

A sculpted frieze runs around all four sides of the building. The only surviving original panels in sito are those on the east side; all the others are castings taken from the originals, which are in the British Museum. The figures on the frieze of the east wall have been damaged by pollution; but the Goddess Athena, with Her shield, and the God Zeus (beside Her) are easily recognizable, with a throng of Gods and Goddesses around them. Illustrated on the other friezes are battles against the Persians, notably the 5th century B.C.E. Battle of Plateae, on the North wall. Because the Temple is so close to the edge of the platform there is a parapet on every side except the east. The balustrade, about 3 feet (91 cm) high and built of marble, supported a bronze grille. The marble slabs are decorated with reliefs on the outside. At the center of the west side of the balustrade, the most decorative panel of the ensemble depicts the Goddess Athena receiving the homage of two processions of winged Victories. Some of these sculptures are on display in the Acropolis Museum.

The Cult

Inside the Temple was a cult statue described by literary sources and rendered in a fourth-century relief has a stiffly standing figure of wood holding an unusual pair of attributes, a helmet and a pomegranate.

When Athena announces the festival program at the end of Euripides' Erechtheus, the last item is a sacrifice emphatically located at my own altar and placed in charge of the priestess of Athena Polias. An ephebic (young people) decree of 123/2 B.C.E. happens to mention a separate festival with sacrifice at the altar of Athena Nike: an ox is led by processioners up to the Acropolis. Erechtheus and the ephebic decree refer to the same festival and sacrifice. It is the Skira, and this is the ritual which the shrine is meant for.

The festival etiology is the battle between Erechtheus and Eumolpos. At the end of Erechtheus, also Athena describes a sacrifice that takes place at the other terminus of the Skira, the farmland west of Athens. Oxen are slaughtered inside a forbidden precinct, abaton, reputedly the grave of Erechtheus' daughters. Euripides speaks of the rite as sphagai bouktonoi, "a blood-letting of slain oxen". Though part of the festival, it is assimilated in the following lines to the military practice of killing an animal just before battle is joined. It is even said that the precinct is closed off in order to prevent any enemy from conducting the rite and thus ensuring "victory" for himself. To warrant this analogy, the animals must have been slaughtered in the same way as on the battlefield, by stabbing through the neck. The threshing was an anxious time, no less so than a battle.

The festival explains both the features of Athena Nike and the decoration of Her shrine. The wooden image holded a helmet and a pomegranate in token of war and of natural abundance. Battles are depicted on the Temple frieze, and on the parapet frieze personified Nikai set up trophies and sacrifice oxen. In one version of this repeated scene, on the prominent west face of the parapet, a Nike raises a sword in her right hand, and wrenches back the animal's head with her left. The ox is being slaughtered in the fashion prescribed for the abaton. The parapet frieze was carved, seemingly in haste, about the same time as Erechtheus was performed.

History

In 1678 Spon and Wheler viewed the Temple intact on its outcrop, but within eleven years it had been demolished during the siege of the Acropolis by the Venetians.

Present state

In 1835 the architects Schaubert and Hausen rediscovered nearly all the blocks and reconstructed the Temple on its original foundations, which had remained intact.

The program of restoration now under way involves the complete dismantling of the Temple and the treatment of each stone individually. The concrete foundation dating the 1938 restoration will be demolished and its iron girders replaced; the plinth will then be reconstructed and the Temple restored to include newly identified architectural elements, secured with titanium studs.

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