Faculty of Classics - University of Cambridge

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Parthenon, South Frieze

The layout of the south frieze is very similar to that of the north. Sixty horsemen are shown arranged in ten groups of six. In front of the horseriders were ten chariots, the first moving at speed; the ones nearer the front are being reined in because of the slower traffic ahead of them — elders, musicians, and the slow walking sacrificial oxen.

Unfortunately the south side of the Parthenon was one of the most seriously damaged parts when the temple was hit by a bomb during the war between the Venetians and Ottoman Turks in 1687. These two surviving slabs, though badly damaged and weathered, show two horsemen and two oxen. One slab is pictured

Material: 
Pentelic marble
Location of Original: 

London, British Museum 327

Size: 
1.02 x 1.42m
Accession: 

Purchased in 1884 from Brucciani

References: 

Smith: Catalogue of British Museum Sculpture I (1892), 183-
Smith, AH: Sculpture of the Parthenon, pls. 79 & 90
Jenkins, I: Annual of the British School at Athens 1990, 85-114, esp.105

Date: 
c.442-438 BCE
Sculptor: 
Pheidias (and workshop of)
Provenance: 

Removed from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin

Number: 
140

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