Parthenon Marble Block I South Frieze

Marble relief, fragment (Block I) of the South frieze of the Parthenon. The frieze shows the procession of the Panathenaic festival, the commemoration of the birthday of the goddess Athena. The southern branch of the procession follows a similar pattern to the northern. While the North frieze has sixty horsemen carved over nineteen blocks, the South frieze, however, features the same number carved over twenty-four blocks. Ten groups of six in the South cavalcade, defined by dress, probably represent the division of the Athenian cavalry itself into ten tribal units. The horsemen of the south frieze are less well preserved than those of the north, and the composition is less varied. The explosion of the Parthenon in 1687 damaged the South frieze the most. This block shows a horseman, wearing a chlamys, a tunic, knee-length boots and a type of animal skin cap with ear- and neck-flaps (alopekis). A fragment preserving figure 4 was presented to the British Museum by C.R. Cockerell in 1830.