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In 182 B.C. …[ while still at war], Eumenes founded a great new Panhellenic cultural festival at Pergamon, called the Nikephoria, in honor of Athena. To enhance the inauguration of this festival, the sanctuary of Athena on the acropolis was expanded and refurbished, and the terrace on which the great altar of Zeus was to be built was laid out. Most probably these constructions were the first steps in an overall building program that Eumenes and his architects had begun to formulate at the end of the Bithynian war and that was to continue for forty years. In the end it was to bring an external grandeur to Pergamon that was matched by no other Hellenistic city. Even today, when its history is largely forgotten, the physical remains of the city are widely studied and admired." The Sculpture of Pergamon. P. 82 Architect/sculptors: Epigonos, Antigonos, Pyromachus, Stratonikos Supervise 40 sculptors from around the Aegean, including Athens, Rhodes, Delos, and Pergamon in the creation of 100 figures in a frieze running around the outside of the building's base. The frieze's subject matter can be construed as a "Gigantomachy": the battle between the Olympic gods and the earlier generations of Giants (Gaia and Ouranos' multiple offspring). The base of the altar is surmounted by an ionic colonnade; the roof was potentially decorated with animal figures. Around the sacrificial altar itself, a second smaller frieze depicts the adventures of Telephos, an ancestor of Eumenes, linking him to heroic and divine origins through Hercules, Dionysus, and Zeus.
EAST FRIEZE From L--> R Hecate & Clytius, Artemis & Eros, Leto & Tityos, Apollo, Udaios & Ephialtes, Demeter, Hera, the Winds, Heracles, Zeus & Porphyrion, Athena & Alkyoneus, Gaia, Nike, Ares
NORTH FRIEZE From L--> R Aphrodite, Eros, Dione, Phobos, Deimos, Orion, Enyo, Erinyes? the Fates, gorgons, and Triton
CURRENT CONDITION RECREATED NORTH
CURRENT CONDITION RECREATED NORTH
NORTH : APHRODITE & EROS NORTH
NORTH : GORGONS NORTH
NORTH : GORGONS NORTH
NORTH : GORGONS NORTH