Comparison Of Ancient Greece's Parthenon And The Roman Pantheon

The ancient Greek and Roman civilizations can be considered in many ways as parallel societies that they lent and borrowed structure, philosophy, and art from one another. In religion, for example, it can be clearly seen that the Roman breakdown of deities is a carbon-copy to that of Greece’s. Many of the ideas and inventions that the Roman Empire is famous for are based on early designs developed in Greece so it is no wonder that there are similarities in their art forms as well as architectural design. A clear example can be seen in Greece’s Parthenon and the Roman Pantheon – even the names are direct copies of one another.

STYLE

The Parthenon was inaugurated in 432 BC, it was a Doric peripheral temple, had a rectangular shaped floor plan

A typical arrangement of the columns was 6 in the front and 13 in the back.

However, for the Parthenon, the arrangement was 8 in the front and 17 in the back. These style of columns were most commonly used for Greek buildings because they work well for horizontal buildings, creating a powerful-looking design. The frieze section above the columns consist of simple designs within the metopes, which sometimes depicting Gods and heroes – separated by triglyphs (3 vertical lines), angular or pointed cornices. (Schulman, 2015)

The Pantheon was completed in 128 AD, it is a circular building, with large granite Corinthian-style columns (see description below), and had a coffered concrete dome center, that opened to the sky. (Wikipedia.org, n.d.) The Pantheon consists of two principle parts, the porch – 450 m2 surrounded by marble covered Corinthian pillars, lending itself to the classical Greek design, and the rotunda measuring 42.3 m in diameter equal to the height of the dome. (Cartwright, 2013) Fletcher, B.,

It is a name given to an internal chamber of temples in 5th century BC that held the cult statue. The Parthenon was built as a religious temple to honor the goddess Athena and the new statue was created by Pheidias. Which towered at 12 meters sculpted from ivory and lavishly adorned with gold. It was created to project to the world the success of Athens for uniting Greek forces that defeated the invading Persian armies of Darius and Xerxes. (Cartwright, 2012). They dedicated the temple to Athena, to stand as a reminder of Greek success against the Persian army, which was appropriate to be that Athena was the God of