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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Parthenon

Parthenon \Par"the*non\ (p[aum]r"th[-e]*n[o^]n), prop. n. [L., fr. Gr. Parqenw`n, fr.parqe`nos a virgin, i. e., Athena, the Greek goddess called also Pallas.] A celebrated marble temple of Athena, on the Acropolis at Athens. It was of the pure Doric order, and has had an important influence on art.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Parthenon

name of the temple of Athena on the Acropolis in Athens, Greek, literally "temple of the virgin goddess" (Athene), from parthenos "virgin, maiden, girl," of unknown origin.

Wikipedia
Parthenon

The Parthenon (; ; , Parthenónas) is a former temple, on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. Construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the peak of its power. It was completed in 438 BC although decoration of the building continued until 432 BC. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered the zenith of the Doric order. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, Athenian democracy and western civilization, and one of the world's greatest cultural monuments. The Greek Ministry of Culture is currently carrying out a program of selective restoration and reconstruction to ensure the stability of the partially ruined structure.

The Parthenon itself replaced an older temple of Athena, which historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon, that was destroyed in the Persian invasion of 480 BC. The temple is archaeoastronomically aligned to the Hyades. While a sacred building dedicated to the city's patron goddess, the Parthenon was actually used primarily as a treasury. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire. In the final decade of the sixth century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

After the Ottoman conquest, it was turned into a mosque in the early 1460s. On 26 September 1687, an Ottoman ammunition dump inside the building was ignited by Venetian bombardment. The resulting explosion severely damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures. From 1800 to 1803, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the surviving sculptures with the alleged permission of the Ottoman Empire. These sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles, were sold in 1816 to the British Museum in London, where they are now displayed. Since 1983 (on the initiative of Culture Minister Melina Mercouri), the Greek government has been committed to the return of the sculptures to Greece.

Parthenon (Nashville)

The Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee is a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens. It was built in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition.

Today the Parthenon, which functions as an art museum, stands as the centerpiece of Centennial Park, a large public park just west of downtown Nashville. Alan LeQuire's 1990 re-creation of the Athena Parthenos statue is the focus of the Parthenon just as it was in ancient Greece. The statue of Athena Parthenos within is a reconstruction of the long-lost original to careful scholarly standards: she is cuirassed and helmeted, carries a shield on her left arm and a small statue of Nike (Victory) in her right palm, and stands high, gilt with more than of gold leaf; an equally colossal serpent rears its head between her and her shield. Since the building is complete and its decorations were polychromed (painted in colors) as close to the presumed original as possible, this replica of the original Parthenon in Athens serves as a monument to what is considered the pinnacle of classical architecture. The plaster replicas of the Parthenon Marbles found in the naos (the east room of the main hall) are direct casts of the original sculptures which adorned the pediments of the Athenian Parthenon, dating back to 438 BC. Many fragments of the originals are housed in the British Museum in London; others are at the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

Parthenon (disambiguation)

The Parthenon is a former temple in Athens, Greece

Parthenon may also refer to:

  • The Parthenon (mountain), a mountain of the Du Cane Range, in Tasmania, Australia
  • Parthenon (Nashville), a full-scale replica in Nashville, Tennessee, of the Athens Parthenon
  • The Parthenon (newspaper), the student newspaper of Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia
  • Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean, a board game
  • Parthenon Zihuatanejo, an abandoned luxury residence in Zihuatanejo

Usage examples of "parthenon".

What might have gladdened and elevated poor suffering and blinded humanity as a wonderful masterpiece of art, like the book of Hiob, or the Iliad, or Prometheus Vinctus, or the Athene of the Parthenon, or the Zeus of Olympus, showing how man in the creations of the artist rises highest above personal pettiness and weakness, how the genius in fiction creates the highest perfection, such as has never been seen in flesh and blood, has now, as an invented historical occurrence, driven the whole world to the rudest falsifications of truth and impossible efforts of imitation.

In August of this year they had made, with Mark Ross’s help, a bottlecap Parthenon from a picture in a book.

At the first of the year the bottlecap Parthenon was slated to travel the block and a half to the Carver house.

The marble, worn and mellowed by the subtle hand of time, took on an unspeakable rosy hue, suggestive in some remote way of the honey colored columns of the Parthenon, but more mystic, more complex, a color not born of the sun's inveterate kiss, but made up of cryptal twilight, and the flame of candles upon martyrs' tombs, and gleams of sunset through symbolic panes of chrysoprase and ruby.

Larger even than the Parthenon in Greece, the towering edifice rose toward the night sky, its venerable exterior generously adorned with intricately carved friezes depicting picturesque scenes from Hindu folklore and mythology.

Police said Broom carried business cards listing him as an associate of the Parthenon Gallery and the Belle Meade Exhibition Center in Manhattan.

The Parthenon has survived first as a temple to Athena, then as a Byzantine church, later a mosque, and now it stands as a hallowed monument to the grandeur of the vanished Greeks who made it.

The Parthenon survived first as a temple to Athena, then as a Byzantine church, later a mosque, and now it stands as a hallowed monument to the grandeur of the vanished Greeks who made it.

With Time and revolutions, whose ravages are, at any rate, marked by impartiality and grandeur, has been associated a host of architects, duly bred, duly certificated, and duly sworn, despoiling with the discernment of bad taste, substituting the chicories of Louis XV for the Gothic lacework, for the greater glory of the Parthenon.

Like most first-class saloons, the Parthenon provided a maze of semi-private chambers, great and small, for the discreet get-togethers of patrons too delicate-natured for the main taproom up front.

I was more concerned with how a young widow with a hat shop tracked an owlhoot rider on the run all the way down here to Denver and the Parthenon Saloon, of all places.

But a copper badge at the Parthenon Saloon did tell him Sunny Jim Stanhope had been buried out by the clay pits, neatly wrapped in mattress ticking, at no cost to the taxpayers and damned little to Maxwell's law firm.

You'll be the first sculptor to have that many sculptured marbles in one place since Phidias did the frieze on the Parthenon.

A grand new palace, naturally, but also a lighthouse like the one in Alexandria, and a Parthenon twice the size of the real one, and a dozen or so pyramids like those in Aiguptos, only perhaps a little bigger, and a bronze Colossus on the waterfront like the one that used to stand in the harbor at Rhodes, andI'm unable to set down the entire list without wanting to weep.