A mule that helped build the Parthenon earned lifelong care at Athens’ expense after returning voluntarily to the construction site, according to an anecdote preserved by ancient Greek historian Plutarch.
In Life of Cato the Elder, 5.3, he writes that the Athenians released their hardest-working mules to graze freely. One returned and ran beside the animals pulling wagons up to the Acropolis, sometimes going ahead as if encouraging them. The people then voted to maintain it at public expense until its death.
The account is a great evidence for historians about this animal’s place in Athens’ building traditions.
The Acropolis and the story of the mule
The ancient Greek text calls the building the Hecatompedon, rendered as the Parthenon in the English translation of the work. That identification connects the story with Athens’ most famous temple, but the wording deserves care because the Acropolis had earlier temples and a complex building history that is mostly unknown to the general public.
The Parthenon itself was dedicated to Athena, the city’s patron goddess. Construction began in 447 BC under Pericles’ building program. The main temple was built by 438 BC, with its sculptural decoration completed in 432 BC.
Architects Iktinos and Kallikrates designed the monument, while the sculptor Pheidias supervised the project. Its Pentelic marble architecture required the work of many artists and brilliant craftsmen.
The story of the mule is important because it shifts attention from those celebrated figures to the animals involved in moving materials uphill.
Inside the temple, the main eastern chamber housed Pheidias’ gold-and-ivory statue of Athena Parthenos. A separate western chamber held precious objects and tribute collected from Athens’ allies in the Delian League. The Acropolis Museum notes that some of that tribute helped finance Pericles’ construction program. The building therefore brought together civic religious devotion, artistic ambition, and the financial resources of a powerful city.
Why Plutarch included the anecdote
Plutarch introduces the mule while criticizing Cato’s practice of selling enslaved people after they had grown old in service. He argues that kindness should extend beyond usefulness, including care for aging horses and dogs.
“πλὴν τὸ τοῖς οἰκέταις ὡς ὑποζυγίοις ἀποχρησάμενον ἐπὶ γήρως ἐλαύνειν καὶ πιπράσκειν ἀτενοῦς ἄγαν ἤθους ἔγωγε τίθεμαι, καὶ μηδὲν ἀνθρώπῳ πρὸς ἄνθρωπον οἰομένου κοινώνημα τῆς χρείας πλέον ὑπάρχειν.”
“Yet I regard his using enslaved people to the utmost, like beasts of burden, and then driving them away and selling them in their old age as evidence of an exceedingly hard-hearted character—one that recognizes no bond between one human being and another beyond usefulness.”
In this context, Athens’ reported generosity gives Plutarch an ethical argument to make his case. His interest in the treatment of animals gives the story its purpose: service should not end in abandonment.
Related versions, with different details
British linguist Jane Ellen Harrison mentions this story in Primitive Athens as Described by Thucydides. She notes that Aelian also places it during construction of the Parthenon and cites Aristotle. Aristotle’s version, she explains, refers more generally to the building of a temple at Athens.
Harrison also discusses a version attributed to Tarantinos in which an exceptionally old mule is associated with construction of a temple of Zeus. She questions that identification and considers the Parthenon the more likely setting for the story.
Her discussion concerns the location of the ancient fountain Enneakrounos, showing how an animal anecdote could become evidence in a completely different subject such as Athenian topography. Harrison warns against relying on a retelling whose identification of the temple she considers mistaken. Her examination makes the setting itself part of the question, alongside the story’s memorable account of public generosity.
These differences may seem irrelevant but are actually important for us to understand the context of these sources. Related retellings show that the story circulated, but they should not be combined into a single account or treated as independent confirmation of every detail. The public provision for the animal is part of Plutarch’s narrative yet its precise historical circumstances remain uncertain.
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