Parthenon - Akropolis - Athens - Greece (3)

2011-06-05 1

The origin of the Parthenon's name is from the Greek word "παρθενών" (parthenon), which referred to the "virgin's apartments" in a house and in the Parthenon's case seems to have been used only for a particular room of the temple; it is debated which room this is and how the room acquired its name. The Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon states that this room was the western cella of the Parthenon. Jamauri D. Green holds that the parthenon was the room in which the peplos presented to Athena at the Panathenaic Festival was woven by the arrephoroi, a group of four young girls chosen to serve Athena each year.Christopher Pelling asserts that Athena Parthenos may have constituted a discrete cult of Athena, intimately connected with, but not identical to, that of Athena Polias. According to this theory, the name of Parthenon means the "temple of the virgin goddess" and refers to the cult of Athena Parthenos that was associated with the temple.The epithet parthénos (Greek: παρθένος),