The Parthenon is the most famous temple on the acropolis of Athens, but I’ve always been partial to the little ionic temple of Athena Nike, which stands out on a projecting bastion facing west, just above the entrance to the acropolis. Dedicated to Athena the Victorious, its scale is more human, but its position sticking out into space gives it a vista towards Piraeus and the port of Greece, as if Athena is looking out to the sea that made Athenian civilization great. It’s an amphiprostyle temple, which means it had columns on only two sides rather than all the way around, like the Parthenon (which is a peristyle temple). The bastion upon which the temple stands, though clad in marble in later centuries, was originally built by the Mycenaeans, a culture the classical-period Greeks saw as heroic. For them, the Mycenaeans were ancient (about 1000 years old) just as the Greeks are to us (about 1400 years old). So the victories of the Athenians, expressed in this diminutive and elegant temple were literally ‘based’ on their heroic Mycenaean heritage.