A methodological enquiry: the Great Bronze Athena by Pheidias

Abstract

The ‘Great Bronze Athena’, or the AthenaPromachosby Pheidias, was a famous statue on the Akropolis of Athens, according to the literary sources. Numerous attempts have been made in the 19th and 20th centuries to reconstruct the image of the statue based on various sources: coins, gems, lamps, Byzantine miniatures, and sculpture. However, some of these attempts have revealed a number of inconsistencies in treatment and interpretation of the various sources. This article, therefore, endeavours to separate the valid from the invalid through a careful assessment of all the available evidence relating to the AthenaPromachosas the Pheidian statue rather than the iconographic type.