The layout of the south frieze is very similar to that of the north. Sixty horsemen are shown arranged in ten groups of six. In front of the horseriders were ten chariots, the first moving at speed; the ones nearer the front are being reined in because of the slower traffic ahead of them — elders, musicians, and the slow walking sacrificial oxen.
Unfortunately the south side of the Parthenon was one of the most seriously damaged parts when the temple was hit by a bomb during the war between the Venetians and Ottoman Turks in 1687. These two surviving slabs, though badly damaged and weathered, show two horsemen and two oxen. One slab is pictured
London, British Museum 327
Purchased in 1884 from Brucciani
Smith: Catalogue of British Museum Sculpture I (1892), 183-
Smith, AH: Sculpture of the Parthenon, pls. 79 & 90
Jenkins, I: Annual of the British School at Athens 1990, 85-114, esp.105
Removed from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin
