00:00The Parthenon.
00:05On the Acropolis, the sacred hill overlooking the city of Athens,
00:09the Parthenon was built as a symbol of success.
00:13It has stood strong for two and a half thousand years.
00:17The story of how it came to be built is as remarkable as the design of the building itself.
00:24This glorious new building that was arising from a field of ruins
00:28was a symbol to the Athenians.
00:32It told them that after their near annihilation by the Persians,
00:38they were now in charge.
00:40They were on the way up and this was their reminder.
00:44The Parthenon would be no ordinary temple.
00:47Its exquisite proportions on the outside would be matched by its interior
00:52with splendid carvings and coloured reliefs.
00:56But the two men responsible for its construction would face fierce criticism.
01:03Phidias was appointed master of works.
01:05He was the most famous sculptor of his day.
01:10Pericles was the Athenian statesman who commissioned the building.
01:14It was part of a vast regeneration programme conceived by Pericles to transform Athens,
01:21to make it stand as an exemplar to the rest of the Greek world.
01:26It was a great idea, but how would he fund it?
01:30The money that was used had been contributed for the war against Persia by Athens' allies.
01:37The war had gone so well, not all the money was needed.
01:40So much of it was now diverted to the Parthenon and Pericles' opponents used this.
01:46This was a disgrace.
01:47This was Athens misbehaving in the eyes of the other Greeks.
01:51Ignoring the political attacks, Pericles raided the war chest and started to build the Parthenon.
01:58At 101 feet wide and 228 feet long, it called for thousands of tonnes of expensive marble.
02:07The glittering stone, as it was called, was selected from the quarries that still remain at Mount Pentelicon, eight miles
02:15from Athens.
02:17But a special technique was needed to drag the massive column drums up the steep slopes of the Acropolis.
02:24The Acropolis is high above the city.
02:26Getting the drums up here on a cart would have been pretty difficult.
02:30So they probably used a system that they'd devised over a century before, where they built a wooden frame around
02:36the drum.
02:37And then using oxen, they could pull the stones up the hill, a bit like a roller.
02:43At the building site, they probably used cranes with a pulley system to lift vast blocks of stone.
02:49Lifting power came from a windlass attached to the back of the frame.
02:55Once they got the blocks and stones up here, they had to maneuver them into position with absolute precision.
03:01There's a clue here as to how they did that.
03:04These are bosses that were used for lifting ropes to carry the stones.
03:08They would normally have been cut off, but war broke out before the workers had finished.
03:14But the underlying genius of the building lies in the ancient Greeks' understanding of perspective, unsurpassed until the Renaissance.
03:23Well, they say that there isn't a straight line on the Parthenon.
03:26It's not exactly true, but certainly lines that you'd think should be straight aren't.
03:30The architrave along the top, for example, is two and a half inches higher in the middle than at either
03:35side.
03:38At every stage, the builders countered each optical distortion to make this temple appear to be perfect.
03:46Down here at the base, you can actually see that deviation from the horizontal.
03:50There's a very subtle rise along the step line here towards the middle, which drops off at the far side.
03:56And that gives us the impression from a distance of a perfect straight line.
04:01They created the columns with the same minute attention to detail.
04:06On the outside of the building, all these exterior columns slope inwards a bit.
04:11And they did that really to help build the grandeur of the design, that feeling of elegance.
04:16And they did that by cutting the top surface of the bottom drum so that it's sloped inwards perceptibly.
04:22Here on the corner, of course, the bottom drum is turned slightly, so the corner column rises up on a
04:28diagonal with extraordinary precision, right up towards the centre of the building.
04:35The Greek builders addressed every detail.
04:39You might have thought these great stone blocks weren't moving anywhere, but the ancient Greeks did use cramps to hold
04:46them together.
04:47This is one of the original ancient iron cramps and the actual hole that it came from that's been recently
04:54excavated.
04:54And it would have sat in here, like this, filled with molten lead, which then set, holding those blocks together.
05:02In fact, the cramps don't carry a lot of force in everyday use.
05:07But in the case of an earthquake, these cramps would have helped just to hold the stones together.
05:11Maybe that's one of the reasons that the building's still here today.
05:16The centrepiece of this enormous building was to be found inside.
05:22Here, Phidias designed the most lavish and impressive statue.
05:27It depicted the goddess Athena, to whom the building was dedicated.
05:32It was a masterpiece of ivory and gold.
05:35It was so extravagant, it absorbed over half the funds for the entire Parthenon project.
05:42At nearly 40 feet high, Athena dominated the interior, intimidating all who came to worship at the temple.
05:51The statue of Athena had on it over a ton of gold.
05:56It cost slightly more to put that gold onto the statue than it did to build the whole of the
06:02Parthenon.
06:04A stunning frieze, 524 feet long, depicted the annual procession in honour of Athena.
06:12The pale marble we see today would have looked very different two and a half thousand years ago, when it
06:17was painted in vivid colours.
06:21But the masterpiece was not an immediate success in its time.
06:27Pericles' opponents said he was dressing the Parthenon up like a pretentious woman.
06:32A slur both on his building and on his partner Aspasia, born outside the Athens elite.
06:40One Greek writer tells us exactly what a pretentious woman did.
06:45She put on built-up shoes to make her look taller, to suggest she was a more aristocratic family.
06:51She put on dabs of rouge on her cheeks to make it seem that she was younger and fitter than
06:57she really was.
06:57But above all, she plastered her face in powder of white lead, fashionably pale to look like an aristocrat.
07:06And they thought of the pretentiousness of Pericles in using other Greeks' gold to make Athens seem wealthier than she
07:15really was.
07:18To further discredit Pericles, Phidias, his sculptor and master of works, was accused of embezzling gold from the statue.
07:28He was also accused of blasphemy for portraying himself and his patron among the sacred figures on Athena's shield.
07:41Phidias, the sculptor, seems to have been a friend of Pericles, seems to have attracted some of the lightning that
07:49Pericles' enemies wanted to cast against him.
07:55We're told that he was imprisoned in Athens for embezzlement of the gold.
08:01But Phidias and his fellow craftsmen were not seen as heroes of civilization as we'd want to make them now.
08:10A scandal for a few years in its own time, the Parthenon is now a landmark of architectural excellence for
08:18all time.
08:21The ravages of war and pollution have taken their toll, but still the temple stands.
08:28The Parthenon is a huge statement of a building, what you might call an iconic structure.
08:33It's a coming together of understanding of stone and rock and how to use it and work it, and of
08:39geometry and shape and form.
08:42Something that really wasn't achieved again for thousands of years.
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