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The Parthenon is a Doric temple --

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that's its architectural style.

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And one of the things that defines a Doric temple

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is that it has triglyphs.

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And in between the triglyphs, are metopes.

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I love those words, triglyphs and metopes.

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So, triglyphs just mean sort of a mark of three

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and it's a little three lines. -- A kind of ridges.

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Mhm, exactly. And in between,

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these squares with really deep relief carving,

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they're about five feet square.

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These would have been in an area right above where the capitals are.

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That's right, and below the pediment.

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And the metopes that we're looking at

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depict a battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs.

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And I think we'd better talk about

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who they were and why they were fighting.

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This is a story that would have been a kind of mythic story

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even for the fifth century Greeks, who were depicting them.

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And the story tells of a wedding, a Lapith wedding.

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Now the Lapiths were a tribe of Ancient Greeks

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and they lived near the forest.

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Now, in the forest, were these creatures

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that were only sort of half human--

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the Centaurs, half human half horse.

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And the Greeks would have looked at them as kind of monstrous creatures.

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You know, for the Greeks, there was a whole hierarchy of kinds of beings.

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The gods at the top, then there were heroes,

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and heroes were the result of a union between a god and a human,

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and then, of course, there were humans themselves.

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And then, below that, there were these sub-humans or monsters, and the centaurs were certainly that.

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So, they were not quite human, still part of the animal world.

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And not entirely to be trusted.

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Nevertheless, the Lapiths were feeling extremely generous

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and really wanted to celebrate this wedding.

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And so, they invited the Centaurs to the wedding.

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That was a big mistake. It was a big mistake.

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They had a little bit too much to drink, didn't they?

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They did, and they (the centaurs) took advantage.

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In fact, what they did is[was], all at once,

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they began to abduct the Lapith women.

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So, what's being depicted is the Lapith women being made off with,

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and the Lapith males fighting with the Centaurs,

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who are really quite formidable --

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not only do they have six limbs,

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but you know they have all of the brute strength of a wild animal.

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The one we are looking at is of a lapith struggling against a centaur.

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It looks like he's grabbing him by the neck and pulling him.

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You can just see his fingers wrapping around behind that neck,

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even though the neck and the head itself are gone.

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He's pulling him back, though.

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Look at that -- it's almost like a bow, a spring...

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You can feel the tension of that body as it's being pulled back,

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and the strength of the Centaur--

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that's really trying to pull away and free himself.

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It looks, actually, like the Centaur is holding on with his right hand onto something,

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and struggling against being pulled by the Lapith.

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Look at the kind of composition-- it's so complicated.

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You have a couple of opposing arcs:

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the arc of the Lapith's body,

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and then the arc of the Centaur's as well.

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Yeah, so it's almost a circular composition, in a way.

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And look how deep that carving is!

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It's amazing.

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It's really almost freestanding.

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It's actually remarkable to me that more of this did not break off than did,

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because it's in such high relief it's almost freestanding.

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And marble is really soft stone.

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I also love the fact that those broad plains of the body

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are played against the more complex sort of backdrop of the cloth.

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I mean this is, in some ways, incredibly naturalistic.

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So naturalistic that we almost believe...

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-You don't notice the artifice.

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Well, not only the artifice of the perfectly draped cloth in the background,

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but, how about, the artifice of the fact

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that we almost believe that a Centaur could exist.

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In other words, it is almost a believable union of a human and a horse's body.

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That's true. What's really striking to me is the way

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our eye is drawn to the anatomical structure of the Lapith's body.

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In the chest, in the ribcage,

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and the abdominal muscles, the pectoral muscles.

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And those same structures in the body of the Centaur,

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you can see its ribcage and veins.

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So, there's a kind of mirroring of these figures.

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There is a kind of mirroring. I think that is exactly right.

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But there's also a kind of subtle distinction,

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which is that the tension that the artist has constructed

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because of the bowing of the Centaur's body

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is not seen in the exertion of the Lapith.

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In other words, look at the Lapith,

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even though he is exerting tremendous power to pull back this horse,

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the Centaur. -- He's in control.

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He is in total control, total balance.

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And in fact, the body is almost relaxed,

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remains almost completely sort of perfectly noble and perfectly balanced,

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even within this battle.

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Look at the difference in the way

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that the Centaur and the Lapith's heads, their faces, are represented.

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First of all, you've got the sense of age.

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You've got the beautiful noble face of the Greek, of the Lapith.

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And even as his neck is being crushed,

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even as he is being choked,

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there is a sense of rest and nobility,

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there is no anguish in that face whatsoever.

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In contrast, we have this gnarled, bearded, long-haired, older figure,

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with a kind of knit brow, a kind of wild open eye,

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and with a kind of broken nose,

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all of which is looking rough and pretty much

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not the kind of noble mien that the Greeks give themselves.

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It's almost as though the human has superhuman strength,

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and doesn't need to draw on the brute physicality

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that the Centaur has to draw on.

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Well, I think that the Greeks were making a real distinction.

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They were noble and they were distinguishing themselves

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from the brutish barbarians beyond their borders.

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In fact, a lot of our historians look at this

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and say that the Lapiths are, in fact, the Greeks. Of course.

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But the Centaurs are those that are not Greek.

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And the Greeks themselves were looking towards

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for instance, the Persians, their great enemy,

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with real fear as barbarians,

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as kind of almost animals, as almost centaurs.

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Representing a kind of chaos.

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And, in fact, this art really represents, through its balance,

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through its perfections, through this kind of idealism,

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that sense of control that was so important to the Greeks.

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It's no wonder that for so many hundreds of years after this, thousands of years,

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we have looked back to this moment as this

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sort of extraordinary, and precious, and rare moment.

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Not only because it was a moment of limited democracy,

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but of the first democracy,

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but it was a moment when the mind and the body

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were both cherished and seen as extraordinary and beautiful.