The frieze from the temple of Apollo at Bassae in southwestern Greece is in the British Museum, around the corner from the marbles that Lord Elgin took from the Parthenon at Athens. Both temples were designed by the architect Iktinos. Both were adorned with a Centauromachy (a battle between humans and creatures who were half-horse, half-men) and an Amazonomachy (a battle between men and Amazons). Both lost their marbles in the early 1800s, when British connoisseurs cut deals with Greece’s Turkish proprietors. The Parthenon marbles overshadow the Bassae frieze, but its rough power tells us more about the paradoxes and origins of the ancient Greek mind.
The frieze originally ran around the top of the walls of the temple’s cella, the inner room or “cell” containing the cult statue of Apollo. Each panel of the frieze is around 2 feet tall, and the 23 panels combine to just over 100 feet in length. Their original sequences remain disputed, and their makers are unknown. Modern scholars dismiss an attribution to Paionios, who made the statue of Nike at nearby Olympia, and detect the hands of at least three sculptors.
