Acclaimed as a pinnacle of western civilization, a shining example of the Greeks’ genius for beauty, the Parthenon (Fig. 1) is a natural subject of inquiry into architectural proportion. We associate its aesthetic appeal with precision, technique and rigor as well as subtle artistic inflections that in its straining for perfection make it not mechanical but human, almost divine. Poetry permeates its mathematics and mathematics its poetry. But is this really the case? In spite of a plethora of analyses of the Parthenon there is little scholarly agreement about the ancient design procedures involved, or the unit of measure utilized. And from a modern standpoint there are existential doubts about the relevance of mathematics and proportion to its beauty, indeed to the beauty of any building.

The primary purpose of this contribution is to highlight aspects of the design of the Parthenon of striking and surprising proportional coherence—surprising only in the sense that they have so far eluded detection. But before prosecuting this claim let us first address the contemporary crisis of confidence in proportion, or the beauty-inproportion problem, as Matthew Cohen defines it in the Introduction to this volume. I would like to present a fresh stance on the value of proportion, briefly recruiting the Parthenon as an example.

Beauty and dedication

Taking a methodological standpoint as he outlines diffuse emotional and even mystical convictions that condition scholarship, Cohen sets out fault lines that challenge readers to question their assumptions. Extending a skeptical tradition that goes back via Perrault and others at least as far as Michelangelo, Cohen explains why ratios cannot determine, let alone guarantee, beauty. Therefore those who continue to identify proportion with beauty do so out of enthusiasm or belief. So while historians may study meanings behind the use of proportion in the past, they should, he argues, avoid conferring on it any perennial aesthetic value. Here is a cogent academic analysis that complements the popular adage that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and is ultimately relative.

I agree there is no evidence to sustain that a perfect root-2 rectangle is more beautiful than a rectangle stretched or squashed with respect to that ideal. All the hocus-pocus about the aesthetic inevitability of golden section rectangles is nothing more than that.