THE PARTHENON, ATHENS     The Parthenon, the temple of Athene Parthenos ("the Virgin"), at Athens, is built of Pentelic marble, and is a peripteral, or, as it may be called, a pseudodipteral octastyle, with seventeen columns on the sides, the pronaos and the opisthodomos within the peripteros, having each a portico of six Doric columns.
    Its length is 228 feet, its width 101 feet, and the height to the apex of the pediments was 65 feet. It was badly shattered in 1687 by the explosion of a magazine of gunpowder which the Turks had placed in it during the siege of Athens by the Venetians.
    The Parthenon, which was completed about 438 B.C., was the most perfect work of art that had been produced— its construction and its sculptured decoration in the round, in both low and high relief, and in color, embodying the best genius and skill of Athens at the pinnacle of her glory.