The Parthenon frieze has stimulated more discussion and controversy than any other monument of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Resistant to verifiable interpretation, the frieze continues to generate scholarly effort and stir interest among the general populace, for not only its aesthetic appeal but also its powerful potential as a cultural and political icon. Anyone who writes about the Parthenon frieze invites criticism and controversy, so it is to Jenifer Neils’s great credit that she takes on this behemoth. In a lively written and highly intelligent book, Neils lays out all that is known or hypothesized about the Ionic frieze of the Parthenon and offers her own interpretation of this extraordinary relief. This is not a scientific study, with the measurement of every block or the analyses of its marble. Rather it is an interpretive one, based on careful observation and a thoughtful consideration of the place of the frieze in contemporary religious ritual and its social context.

Unlike previous monographs on the frieze, this study endeavors to be comprehensive in its approach. An introduction provides a brief history of the frieze’s reception and study from 1436 onward (no ancient author mentions the frieze) and the evidence for the frieze—drawings, plaster casts—beyond the sculptures themselves, which do not survive intact. Here, Neils states the book’s purpose: “a reconsideration of the Parthenon frieze from a variety of points of view—first and foremost that of an art historian—but also those of a fifth-century visitor to Athens, of a designer, of a sculptor, of a cultural historian, and perhaps what might seem most remote, of an ethicist” (8–9). The author wishes to decode the “artistic language” of the frieze before assessing its meaning. The seven chapters that follow discuss the social, religious, and physical context for the frieze; consider the design of the frieze itself—its predecessors in sculpture and painting, its innovations, and its strategies (Neils accepts Manolis Korres’s argument that the frieze was a late modification to an original plan); the technical aspects of the quarrying, transport, and carving of the marble slabs; detailed stylistic and iconographic investigations of the frieze and its predecessors and successors in sculpture and other media; the meaning of the frieze; and the impact of the frieze on later art from antiquity to the nineteenth century. The book concludes with a chapter likely to arouse strong opinions: the question of the legacy of the frieze and its cultural patrimony. Neils lays out the issues and decisively argues for the return of the Elgin marbles to Athens. Those not sympathetic to her position will question the appropriateness of including this chapter in the book. But because The Parthenon Frieze is a complete history and interpretation of the frieze, its presence is not unjustified, particularly since Neils voices opinions on other issues as well. Considering the complexity of the issue and the hot tempers it can inspire, Neils’s tone is notably mild. Chapter 7, on the impact of the frieze both immediately after its completion and later, is one of the most intriguing of the book, particularly the further one moves away from antiquity. Some of these perceived reflections or resonances will be more convincing than others, but her discussion of the dissemination and influence of casts of the frieze is fascinating, as is the delightful and indisputable revelation at the end of the chapter regarding Paul Gauguin’s familiarity with the frieze and its influence on his painting. A brief epilogue follows the text, together with a chronological table listing salient events connected with the Parthenon and its frieze, and a concordance of slabs (Ian Jenkins’s renumbering from Adolf Michaelis’ earlier work). Extensive notes, a glossary of Greek terms—a helpful concession to the nonspecialist—a bibliography, and a subject index conclude the book.

The thoroughly adept treatment of iconography (chapter 5), which examines the frieze group by group, is tremendously useful and instructive. Neils’s powers of keen observation and sensible interpretation illuminate numerous small details of the frieze, easily overlooked by more superficial inspection and clearly important to our comprehension of composition and meaning. I have learned much by looking at the frieze through her eyes. The chapter on iconology (chapter 6) will generate yet more scholarly prose. Neils acknowledges the problems with the prevailing view that the frieze represents the Greater Panathenaic procession and proposes some solutions. Starting with the basic and surely uncontroversial premise that the frieze must concern Athena in some way, Neils articulates the arguments made by others that the frieze portrays some event in the heroic past, the recent historic past, or the ideology of contemporary Athens. Neils, a noted expert on the Panathenaia, then reveals her hand and offers her views about how the ancient spectator was meant to read and interpret the frieze, particularly the problematic east frieze. According to Neils, the frieze presents select aspects of the Panathenaic procession taking place over an expanse of distance and time from its beginnings at the Dipylon Gate, across the Agora, and up the Akropolis to the temenos of Athena (50). Building on an observation made by Brunilde S. Ridgway that the frieze offers a generic message of Athenian victories, itself echoing the assessment of Cyriacus of Ancona writing in 1436, Neils argues that the Olympian gods on the east frieze are grouped by their association with the land or sea (188) and refer not only to Athens’s past glories in the war with the Persians, but also to its present power as head of the Delian League. This binary division of land/sea reflects policies set forth in Perikles’ funeral oration and finds resonances in the west pediment and the western portion of the Parthenon frieze. By contrast, the eastern half of the Parthenon is largely given over to Zeus and his relationship to his daughter Athena, and the eastern part of the frieze, devoted to religious procession, specifically the Panathenaia, is a “visual embodiment of piety and sophrosyne,” a “votive relief writ large” (193). Neils upholds the idea, articulated by A. H. Smith in 1892, that the Olympian deities on the east frieze sit in an invisible semicircle around the peplos scene so as to greet the processions and to watch the manipulation of the cloth (62–63; see fig. 49, a computer reconstruction of this arrangement). Neils believes the cloth is being folded, that is, this is the end of the presentation of the peplos ceremony, and that E31 and E33 are arrephoroi (67–68). She asserts that the gods are to be understood as present at the Altar of Athena on the Akropolis, where they participate in, and witness, the rites held in honor of the goddess (200). At the end of the chapter, the author considers the dominance of youth on the frieze and in contemporary Athens, arguing for East 28’s identity as Hebe.

The spatial arrangement advocated here is attractive and may have some precedents in vase painting, as the author suggests (64–65). Neils’s thematic understanding of the frieze’s meaning and her reading of its place in the larger Parthenon program are also compelling; barring elucidation from any new evidence, we will never know the “meaning” of the frieze with certainty, but Neils surely is moving in the right direction when she regards it is part of a larger physical, religious, and visual landscape. Some minor carping: some will find the visual connection posited between W30 and E34 implausible (51–52). In her treatment of the well-known list of objections to interpreting the frieze as the Panathenaic procession, Neils explains away each problem, often by dismissing the literary tradition that attests to something that is absent or by recruiting literature to explain the presence of something that would otherwise be regarded as inconsistent or puzzling. For example, the presence of the cavalry, in spite of the vexing silence of ancient sources, conforms to the norm: equestrian parades were common sights in Classical Athens (though they are not mentioned in connection with Panathenaia), according to Xenophon, who wrote decades after the completion of the frieze. Likewise, the hydriaphoroi are problematic since literary sources mention that the hydria carriers in the Panathenaia were female metics, not male. Here, Neils dismisses the late sources for the hydriaphoroi as inaccurate, although she is willing to accept postfrieze testimony on other points. This problem of chronological dissonance between visual and written evidence is a common one, which should at least be acknowledged. And Neils does not actually need Xenophon: as she herself points out, the cavalry was a new phenomenon in the Athenian military (134) and dramatically increased in numbers during construction of the Parthenon. The cavalry was organized by tribes, and scholars similarly posit that the horsemen of the frieze are so arranged. The author concludes, in fact, that it would be unusual if the Panathenaia did not include some public display of horsemanship (134–35). My copy of the book had repeated lines on pages 15–16 and 121–23. There is a misprint in the heading on page 154: the women are E2–17, not 2–27; and on page 170, the figure labeled as N134 on fig. 26 is N136 on the accompanying chart. With the exception of a distracting instance on page 191, the few other typographical errors are inconsequential.

The excellent plates are printed throughout the book, making for easy viewing. But to make matters even better, the text is accompanied by a handy chart, which documents the figures with their conventional numbers on each side of the frieze. Because the chart is not bound in the book but removable from a sleeve in the back, one can easily follow points made in the text without flipping pages. More innovative is a CD-ROM, which presents a continuous image of the frieze so that the reader can see the entire frieze while perusing the text, so long as one is working in front of a computer.

Neils has done us a great service by collating the vast body of material on the frieze thus far, and by providing new and stimulating ways to think about the frieze in its visual and historical context. All this is achieved in an inviting format, which is a pleasure to read and to which I will return again and again.