f Lemnos, Athena appeared invested
with milder attributes, and with a graceful and winning type of
beauty.

In their invasion of Attica the Persians had destroyed the city of
Athens, and the people, who had fled to all quarters of the peninsula
to seek refuge from the enemy, returned after the victory at Salamis
and the flight of the Persians, to find their homes a heap of ruins.
The dwelling-houses of the Greeks were everywhere, even in their
largest cities, built of mean materials: walls of stubble overlaid
with stucco and gayly painted. It was not long, therefore, before
Athens resumed something of her old appearance, with such improvements
as always follow the rebuilding of a city. The most important change
effected was that brought about in the character of the great plateau,
the fortified rock of the Acropolis. Here, as in many Greek cities,
the temples of the gods had been erected, and about them, as about the
cathedrals of the Middle Ages, there had grown up a swarm of houses
and other buildings built by generations of people who sought there at
once the protection of the stockade which enclosed the almost
inaccessible site, and the still further safeguard of the presence of
the divinities in their temples. The destructive hand of the Persian
invaders had swept this platform clear of all these multiplied
incumbrances, and in the rebuilding of the city it was determined to
reserve the Acropolis for military and religious uses alone.

The work of improvement was begun by Cimon, who, however, confined his
attention chiefly to the lower city that clustered about the base of
the Acropolis. Here, among other structures, he built the temple of
Theseus and the Painted Portico, and he also erected, near the summit
of the Acropolis, on the western side, the little gem-like temple of
the Wingless Victory, Nike Apteros, in commemoration of the success of
the Athenian arms at the battle of the Eurymedon. It was from Cimon
that Phidias received his first commission for work upon the
Acropolis, where later he was to build such a lasting monument to his
own fame and to the fame of his native land. The commission given him
by Cimon was to erect a bronze statue of Athena which was to stand on
the citadel, at once a symbol of the power of Athens and a tribute to
the protecting goddess of the city. The work upon the statue was
probably begun under Cimon, but according to Ottfried Mueller it was
not completed at the death of Phidi