Athena

It had been a long time since I'd been to Nashville, where I went to college for four years and had a job for three, ending back in 1987. Old friends of mine still live there. Strictly speaking, passing through Nashville wasn't the most direct way to the Smokies from the Chicago area -- our return route through central Kentucky was more so -- but I wasn't about to bypass an old home town.

Besides, I wanted to see her:

That's the face of the Athena Parthenos at the Parthenon in Nashville's Centennial Park. At nearly 42 feet tall and weighing nearly 12 tons, Athena dominates the interior space of the structure with her commanding presence:

"In the 1920s the Parthenon was rebuilt as a full-scale replica of the ancient Parthenon with one large exception," Nashville's Parks & Recreation web site tells us. "The colossal statue of Athena from ancient times was not in this replica. In 1982, the city commissioned Alan LeQuire to build a full-scale replica of Athena Parthenos. Soon after, a group of concerned citizens formed the Athena Fund. Starting with funds accumulated over the years from the nickels and dimes of school children and tourists, the Athena Fund grew rapidly through private and commercial donations..."

I myself donated some coins on various visits to the Parthenon to support LeQuire and his worthwhile efforts, but the final statue wasn't complete by the time I left Nashville, and I didn't see it during my last visit, sometime before Lilly was born.

Parks & Rec continues: "After exhaustive research, LeQuire created two small-scale versions of the statue out of clay. First, he created a 1:10 model from clay. Later, he sculpted a 1:5 scale model. From this later model LeQuire spent about three years enlarging and casting the full-size Athena Parthenos. Athena was cast out of gypsum cement in many molds and assembled inside the Parthenon. Each section was attached to a steel armature for support.

"The Athena statue was constructed from 1982 to 1990. It stood in Nashville’s Parthenon as a plain, white statue for 12 years. In 2002, the Parthenon gilded Athena with Alan LeQuire and master gilder Lou Reed in charge of the project. The gilding project took less than four months and makes Athena appear that much closer to the ancient Athena Parthenos..."

I've read that some consider the gilding "gaudy." But I want to see Athena as close to Pheidias' design as possible, including colors. Classicists have known for years that the ancient Greeks and Romans preferred brightly colored artwork, or at least that's what the late Ned Nabors, classics professor at Vanderbilt, told me years ago, and I believe it.