erroneous. At the back of the cella was a square chamber, not communicating with it, but entered from the west end of the temple; this was the Parthenon in the narrower sense. It seems to have been used only as a store-house, though it may have been originally intended for a more important purpose. The Prodomus and the Opisthodomus were enclosed by bronze gratings fixed between the columns, and were thus adapted to contain valuable offerings and other treasures. We have inventories on marble of the contents of these four compartments of the temple. The opisthodomus, in particular, probably served as a treasury for sacred and other money, though it has been disputed whether the opisthodomus mentioned in the inscriptions is part of the Parthenon or another building.
For the sculptures decorating the Parthenon and the statue by Pheidias in the cella, see article Greek Art. The metopes over the outer colonnade were all sculptured, and represented on the east the battle of gods and giants, on the west, probably, the battle of Greeks and Amazons, on the south Greeks and Centaurs; those on the north are almost lost. The east pediment represented the birth of Athena, the west pediment her contest with Poseidon for the land of Attica. The frieze, which was placed above the cella wall at the sides, represented the Panathenaic procession, approaching on three sides the group of gods seated in the middle of the east side. These sculptures are all of them admirably adapted to their position on the building, and are, in themselves, the most perfect works that sculpture has ever produced.
The Parthenon probably remained intact until the 5th century of our era, when the colossal statue was removed, and the temple is said to have been transformed into a church dedicated to St Sophia. In the 6th century it was dedicated to the Virgin Mother of God (Θεοτόκος). The adaptation of the building as a church involved the removal of the inner columns and roof, the construction of an apse at the east end, and the opening of a door between the cella and the chamber behind it. These alterations involved some damage to the sculptures. In 1456 Athens was captured by the Turks, and the Parthenon was consequently changed into a mosque, apparently without any serious structural alterations except the addition of a minaret. In this state it was described by Spon and Wheler in 1676 and the sculpture was drawn by the French artist Carrey in 1674. In 1687 the Turks used the building as a powder magazine during the bombardment of the Acropolis by a Venetian army under Morosini, and a shell caused the explosion which blew out the middle of the temple and threw down the columns at the sides. Still further damage to the sculptures was done by Morosini's unsuccessful attempt to lower from the west pediment the chariot of Athena. Later a small mosque was constructed in the midst of the ruins; but nothing except gradual damage is to be recorded during the succeeding century except the visits of various travellers, notably of James Stuart (1713-1788) and Nicholas Revett (1720-1804), whose splendid drawings are the best record of the sculpture as it existed in Athens. In 1801 Lord Elgin obtained a firman authorizing him to make casts and drawings, and to pull down extant buildings where necessary, and to remove sculpture from them. He caused all the remains of the sculpture to be found on the ground or in Turkish houses, and a certain amount—notably the metopes—that was still on the temple, to be transported to England. Some fault has been found with his methods or those of his workmen; but there is no doubt that the result was the preservation of much that would otherwise have been lost. The Elgin marbles were bought by the British government in 1816, and are now in the British Museum. Certain other sculptures from the Parthenon are in the Louvre, Copenhagen or elsewhere, and much is still in Athens, either still on the temple or in the Acropolis museum.
The most accurate measurements of the temple, showing the exactness of its construction and the subtlety of the curvature of all its lines, was made by F. C. Penrose.
Authorities.—A. Michaelis, der Parthenon (Leipzig, 1871); J. Stuart and N. Revett, Antiquities of Athens (London, 1762-1815); F. C. Penrose, Principles of Athenian Architecture (London, 1851 and 1888); A. S. Murray, The Sculptures of the Parthenon (London, 1903); British Museum, Catalogue of Sculpture, vol. i. See also Greek Art. (E. Gr.)
PARTHIA, the mountainous country S.E. of the Caspian Sea, which extends from the Elburz chain eastwards towards Herat, and is bounded on the N. by the fertile plain of Hyrcania (about Astrabad) at the foot of the mountains in the corner of the Caspian and by the Turanian desert; on the S. by the great salt desert of central Iran. It corresponds to the modern Khorasan. It was inhabited by an Iranian tribe, the Parthava of the inscriptions of Darius; the correct Greek form is Παρθυαῖοι. Parthia became a province of the Achaemenian and then of the Macedonian Empire. Seleucus I. and Antiochus I. founded Greek towns: Soteira, Charis, Achaea, Calliope (Appian, Syr. 57; Plin. vi. 15; cf. Strabo xi. 516); the capital of Parthia is known only by its Greek name Hecatompylos (“The Hundred-gated”) from the many roads which met there (Polyb. x. 28), and was, according to Appian, founded by Seleucus I. (cf. Curtius vii. 2). In 208 many Greek inhabitants are found in the towns of Parthia and Hyrcania (Polyb. x. 31, 11).
When about 255 B.C. Diodotus had made himself king of Bactria (q.v.) and tried to expand his dominions, the chieftain of a tribe of Iranian nomads (Dahan Scyths) east of the Caspian, the Parni or Aparni, who bore the Persian name Arsaces, fled before him into Parthia.[1] Here the satrap Andragoras appears to have shaken off the Seleucid supremacy, as he struck gold and silver coins in his own name, on which he wears the diadem, although not the royal title (Gardner, Numism. Chronicle, 1879-1881). In Justin xii. 4, 12, Andragoras is wrongly made satrap of Alexander, of Persian origin, and ancestor of Arsaces. He was slain by Arsaces (Justin xli. 4), who occupied Parthia and became the founder of the Parthian kingdom. The date 248 B.C. given by the list of the Olympionicae in Euseb. Chron. i. 207, and in his Canon, ii. 120 (cf. Appian, Syr. 65; Justin, xli. 4, gives wrongly 256 B.C.), is confirmed by numerous Babylonian tablets dated simultaneously from the Seleucid and Arsacid eras (cf. Mahler, in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlands, 1901, xv. 57 sqq.; Lehmann Haupt in Beiträge zur alten Geschichte, 1905, v. 128 sqq.). The origin and early history of the Parthian kingdom, of which we possess only very scanty information, is surrounded by fabulous legends, narrated by Arrian in his Parthica (preserved in Photius, cod. 58, and Syncellus, p. 539 seq.). Here Arsaces and his brother Tiridates are derived from the royal house of the Achaemenids, probably from Artaxerxes II.; the young Tiridates is insulted by the prefect Agathocles or Pherecles; in revenge the brothers with five companions (corresponding to the seven Persians of Darius) slay him, and Arsaces becomes king. He is killed after two years and succeeded by his brother Tiridates, who reigns 37 years. There is scarcely anything historical in this account, perhaps not even the name Tiridates, for, according to the older tradition, Arsaces himself ruled for many years. The troubles of the Seleucid empire, and the war of Seleucus II. against Ptolemy III. and his own brother Antiochus Hierax, enabled him not only to maintain himself in Parthia, but also to conquer Hyrcania; but he was constantly threatened by Diodotus of Bactria (Justin xli. 4). When, about 238 B.C., Seleucus II. was able to march into the east, Arsaces fled to the nomadic tribe of the Aspasiacae (Strabo xi. 513; cf. Polyb. x. 48). But Seleucus was soon recalled by a rebellion in Syria, and Arsaces returned victorious to Parthia; “the day of this victory is celebrated by the Parthians as the beginning of their independence” (Justin xli. 4). Arsaces was proclaimed king at Asaak in the district of Astauene, now Kuchan in the upper Atrek (Attruck) valley (Isidor. Charac.), and built his residence Dara on a rock in a fertile valley in Apavarktikene (Justin xli. 5; Plin. vi. 46), now Kelat still farther eastward; the centre of his power evidently lay on the borders of eastern Khorasan and the Turanian desert. The principal institutions of the Parthian kingdom
- ↑ Strabo xi. 515; cf. Justin xli. 4; the Parni are said by Strabo [ibid.] to have immigrated from southern Russia, a tradition wrongly transferred to the Parthians themselves by Justin xli. 1, and Arrian ap. Phot. cod. 58.
