He is said to have originally been a painter. It is around his involvement with the Parthenon project, however, that any reconstruction of his career must be built.
Phidias's early works, that is, those done before about 450 B.C., all mentioned by Pausanias, include a gold-and-ivory image of Athena at Pallene, Achaea; the Apollo Parnopios on the Acropolis, Athens, commemorating Athens's salvation from a horde of locusts (thought by some scholars to be the Kassel Apollo type); and the bronze dedicatory group erected by Athens at the beginning of the Sacred Way at Delphi from one-tenth of the spoils of the Battle of Marathon. The motley lineup of figures in the Marathon group included gods (Apollo, Athena), the eponymous heroes of the Athenian tribes (Erechtheus, Kekrops, and so on), mythical Athenian kings (Theseus, Kodros), and the contemporary military hero Miltiades. The arrangement, to which Hellenistic rulers (Antigonos, Demetrios, Ptolemy) were added later, was probably side by side on a long rectangular base, similar to the monument of the eponymous heroes on the west side of the Athenian Agora.
Three Athena Statues
Three other important single statues loom large in any discussion of Phidias's style and career.
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