Of ICTINUS, we know almost nothing, except that he was the architect of the Parthenon, and of an almost equally celebrated temple of Apollo, near Bassæ in Arcadia. He must have been the contemporary of Pericles, Phidias, and Sophocles. His great work, the Parthenon, was erected between 448-438 B.C., under the administration of Pericles, on the site of the temple of Athene Parthenos, or the Virgin, destroyed by Xerxes in the Persian war. It was by universal consent the most perfect example of a Greek temple. Down to 1687 it remained almost entire. In that year the centre was destroyed by an explosion in the siege by the Venetians, during their war with the Turks.

The temple stood on the highest point of the Acropolis, clear of the walls, Propylæa, and the other temples. It was 101 feet in breadth, by 228 in length, being 66 feet to the top of the pediment; it was surrounded by 46 columns, each 34 feet high, and was externally throughout of the Doric order. The pediments at the eastern and western ends were filled with 50 colossal figures; the 92 metopes, between the triglyphs above the architrave of the external columns, and the frieze, 523 feet long, running around the internal walls under the portico, were all filled with sculptures under the direction of Phidias. When complete, it was the great art-centre and art-school of the ancient world; and, even in its ruin we can recognize it as a faultless embodiment of the highest conceptions of Greek architecture.

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