1458, Previous and Subsequent Occupiers

    1458 Athens

"...a work less of human hands than of Heaven itself, 

should remain standing for all time"  - Evliya Çelebi 

"The Parthenon is regarded as the finest example      

of Greek architecture."                                                

- John Julius Cooper historian             

The Knights of Florence on the Acropolis of Athens
                             [were under siege.... (long been besieged)...

That they would give up, the entire world believed,
but they repelled a myriad of attacks by the Asian's Ottoman Turks,
while the shooting cannons pounded the castle, with constant jerks...

But now, in the year one thousand four hundred fifty-eight *1458
the pride of the unbeatable knights hurt, humiliate...

Debilitated by hunger and fatigued after three years of fighting,
they decided to surrender,
                            [for the unconquerable knights how uninviting.

The winners in the habit of previous and subsequent occupiers,
took all the belongings of the residents, certainly not as buyers,
but as common robbers, common predators.

Somehow, Frankish Crusaders, Turks and Venetians...
                                                         [were competitors.

In the year 1204 the Frank's Crusaders entered the city,
                                                [indulged in extensive looting.
and this act with subsequent acts and of the next conquers suiting..


In the year 1456 the capture of Athens by Turks
                                [followed by unprecedented, plunder,
massacres, rape, enslavement,
             [and the Greeks now were hoping for a small wonder.

In the year 1466 the capture of Athens by Venetians,
                    [followed by depredations and multiple crimes.

In the year 1941 the capture of Athens by Germans,
                     [followed by crimes larger by one thousand times,
because they snatched all the food of the country
                                         [τo feed the German army,
resulting in death from starvation to thousands of people,
                           [because of the order given by a paranoid, a barmy.

to be continued

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''IT COULD BE OTHERWISE  in verse''  
Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS//

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"The Parthenon is regarded as the finest example of Greek architecture." The temple, wrote John Julius Cooper, "enjoys the reputation of being the most perfect Doric temple ever built. Even in antiquity, its architectural refinements were legendary, especially the subtle correspondence between the curvature of the stylobate, the taper of the naos walls and the entasis of the columns."

* At the time of the Latin occupation, it became for about 250 years a Roman Catholic church of Our Lady. 

During this period a tower, used either as a watchtower or bell tower and containing a spiral staircase, was constructed at the southwest corner of the cella, and vaulted tombs were built beneath the Parthenon's floor.

* In 1456, Ottoman Turkish forces invaded Athens and laid siege to a Florentine army defending the Acropolis until June 1458, when it surrendered to the Turks. 

The Turks may have briefly restored the Parthenon to the Greek Orthodox Christians for continued use as a church. Some time before the close of the fifteenth century, the Parthenon became a mosque.

The precise circumstances under which the Turks appropriated it for use as a mosque are unclear; one account states that Mehmed II ordered its conversion as punishment for an Athenian plot against Ottoman rule. The apse became a mihrab, the tower previously constructed during the Roman Catholic occupation of the Parthenon was extended upwards to become a minaret, a minbar was installed, the Christian altar and iconostasis were removed, and the walls were whitewashed to cover icons of Christian saints and other Christian imagery.
Despite the alterations accompanying the Parthenon's conversion into a church and subsequently a mosque, its structure had remained basically intact. 
In 1667 the Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi expressed marvel at the Parthenon's sculptures and figuratively described the building as "like some impregnable fortress not made by human agency". He composed a poetic supplication that it, as "a work less of human hands than of Heaven itself, should remain standing for all time".
The French artist Jacques Carrey in 1674 visited the Acropolis and sketched the Parthenon's sculptural decorations. 
Early in 1687, an engineer named Plantier sketched the Parthenon for the Frenchman Graviers d’Ortières. These depictions, particularly those made by Carrey, provide important, and sometimes the only, evidence of the condition of the Parthenon and its various sculptures prior to the devastation it suffered in late 1687 and the subsequent looting of its art objects.


* On the Athenian Acropolis,   (/ˈpɑːrθəˌnɒnˌ -nən/; Ancient Greek: Παρθενών; Modern Greek: Παρθενώνας, Parthenónas) is a former temple, on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. 


Parthenon today and as it probably appeared in ancient times,  In the mid-5th century BC, when the Athenian Acropolis became the seat of the Delian League and Athens was the greatest cultural centre of its time, Pericles initiated an ambitious building project that lasted the entire second half of the century. 

The most important buildings visible on the Acropolis today -the Parthenon, the Propylaia, the Erechtheion and the temple of Athena Nike- were erected during this period. 


The Parthenon was built under the general supervision of the artist Phidias, who also had charge of the sculptural decoration. The architects Ictinos and Callicrates began their work in 447 BC, and the building was substantially completed by 432, but work on the decorations continued until at least 431. Some of the financial accounts for the Parthenon survive and show that the largest single expense was transporting the stone from Mount Pentelicus, about 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Athens, to the Acropolis. 


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 origin of the Parthenon's name is from the Greek word παρθενών (parthenon), which referred to the "unmarried women's apartments" in a house and in the Parthenon's case seems to have been used at first only for a particular room of the temple; it is debated which room this is and how the room acquired its name. 
The Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon states that this room was the western cella of the Parthenon. Jamauri D. Green holds that the parthenon was the room in which the peplos presented to Athena at the Panathenaic Festival was woven by the arrephoroi, a group of four young girls chosen to serve Athena each year. 

The colossal statue of Athena by Phidias, was not related to any cult and is not known to have inspired any religious fervour. It did not seem to have any priestess, altar or cult name. According to Thucydides, Pericles once referred to the statue as a gold reserve, stressing that it "contained forty talents of pure gold and it was all removable". 
The Athenian statesman thus implies that the metal, obtained from contemporary coinage, could be used again without any impiety. The Parthenon should then be viewed as a grand setting for Phidias' votive statue rather than a cult site. It is said[by whom?] in many writings of the Greeks that there were many treasures stored inside the temple, such as Persian swords and small statue figures made of precious metals.

The first known photograph of the Parthenon
was taken by Joly de Lotbinière in October 1839.
This is an engraving made after the original daguerreotype

Architecture - Floor plan of the Parthenon,  

The Parthenon is a peripteral octastyle Doric temple with Ionic architectural features. 
It stands on a platform or stylobate of three steps. In common with other Greek temples, it is of post and lintel construction and is surrounded by columns ("peripteral") carrying an entablature. There are eight columns at either end ("octastyle") and seventeen on the sides. There is a double row of columns at either end. 
The colonnade surrounds an inner masonry structure, the cella, which is divided into two compartments. At either end of the building the gable is finished with a triangular pediment originally filled with sculpture. The columns are of the Doric order, with simple capitals, fluted shafts and no bases. Above the architrave of the entablature is a frieze of carved pictorial panels (metopes), separated by formal architectural triglyphs, typical of the Doric order. Around the cella and across the lintels of the inner columns runs a continuous sculptured frieze in low relief. This element of the architecture is Ionic in style rather than Doric.

Entasis refers to the slight swelling, of 1/8 inch, in the centre of the columns to counteract the appearance of columns having a waist, as the swelling makes them look straight from a distance. 

The stylobate is the platform on which the columns stand. As in many other classical Greek temples, it has a slight parabolic upward curvature intended to shed rainwater and reinforce the building against earthquakes. 
The columns might therefore be supposed to lean outwards, but they actually lean slightly inwards so that if they carried on, they would meet almost exactly a mile above the centre of the Parthenon; since they are all the same height, the curvature of the outer stylobate edge is transmitted to the architrave and roof above: 
"All follow the rule of being built to delicate curves", Gorham Stevens observed when pointing out that, in addition, the west front was built at a slightly higher level than that of the east front.
It is not universally agreed what the intended effect of these "optical refinements" was; they may serve as a sort of "reverse optical illusion". 

As the Greeks may have been aware, two parallel lines appear to bow, or curve outward, when intersected by converging lines. In this case, the ceiling and floor of the temple may seem to bow in the presence of the surrounding angles of the building. Striving for perfection, the designers may have added these curves, compensating for the illusion by creating their own curves, thus negating this effect and allowing the temple to be seen as they intended. 
Ιt is also suggested that it was to enliven what might have appeared an inert mass in the case of a building without curves, but the comparison ought to be according to Smithsonian historian Evan Hadingham with the Parthenon's more obviously curved predecessors than with a notional rectilinear temple.

Only a few of the sculptures remain in situ;

Μost of the surviving sculptures are today (controversially) in the British Museum in London as the Elgin Marbles, and the Athens Acropolis Museum, but a few pieces are also in the Louvre, and museums in Rome, Vienna and Palermo.Metopes of the Parthenon, Some of the metopes are located at the Acropolis Museum, others are in the British Museum, and one is at the Louvre museum.

 ELEGHOS... at history