Plutarch, in his bibliography of Demetrius I, describes the siege of Athens in 296 BC. Demetrius forced the city to surrender by cutting off all supplies, imposing famine on the people. Plutarch did not mention, however, that during the siege, the tyrant Lachares of Athen removed the gold plating of the statue of Athena in the Parthenon, a work of Pheidias, and struck gold coins from the plates to pay for his soldiers.

I did a little research about this topic. Gorham P. Stevens in his 1961 paper "Concerning the Parthenos" (Hesperia, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 1-7) writes:

"The gold sheets for the original colossal Parthenos were of great intrinsic value, for it is known that the sheets were ca. 3/4 mm thick. [...] If the valuable sheets were lost in a fire, probably more than one ancient write would have mentioned the fact. No such record has come down to us. We do know that Lachares removed the gold sheets in 296 B.C. to pay his troops, but, again, there is no record that he, or anyone else, put the gold sheets back."

The Parthenos, the gold and ivory statue of Athena is of course not seen today in the Acropolis. We know its image only from smaller imitations and from coins. Samuel Eddy wrote in the American Journal of Archaeology, (Vol. 81, No. 1, 1977):

"It is not to be expected that even fragments of the gold and ivory colossal statue of Athena in the Parthenon should have survived the ravages of time. However, a good deal is known about the statue from small copies in the round and from coins, ..."

Here is an Athenian tetradrachm from 190-189 BC, displaying "Athene Parthenos", at least the head of it:

But even more interesting that some gold coins that Lachares made from the gold sheets of the statue are still around! One of them is in the Hunterian museum, a museum in Scotland with a huge coin collection. Please follow the link to see an image of this rare gold coin.

(C) 2007, Zoltan Barczikay.