Faculty of Classics - University of Cambridge

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Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis, South Frieze

One slab.
The little temple of Athena Nike was built on the site of an earlier shrine. Unlike the Parthenon it used the more slender proportions of the Ionic order of architecture. It has a dramatic high position looking westwards from the edge of the Athenian Acropolis, next to the entrance.

The external frieze is made up of a series of battle scenes involving the Greeks and their enemies. The south frieze here features opponents in oriental dress, probably Persians.

Like much of the temple, the friezes had been dismantled and reused to build fortifications in late medieval times

Material: 
Pentelic marble
Location of Original: 

London British Museum 424

Size: 
1.95m long
References: 

Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 194, pl. 69.3
Richter: Sculpture & Sculptors of the Greeks (1950), fig.295

Date: 
c.425 BCE
Provenance: 

Removed from the Acropolis by Lord Elgin, the temple having already been dismantled in medieval times

Number: 
158

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