Corner slab I from the frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike is decorated in relief on its south and west sides. The south side features four fragmentarily preserved human figures. On the viewer’s left a Greek hoplite, possibly an Athenian, fights against a Persian archer. In order to protect himself, the Greek raises his left arm which is wrapped in his himation and prepares his final blow against his enemy. On the right another Greek armed with shield and spear strikes a Persian rider forcing him thus to fall from his rearing horse.

The south frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike most probably depicts the Greeks’ victorious battle against the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC, where the Athenians played a leading role.

The frieze consists of fourteen blocks overall that depict different scenes on each of its sides. Today nine of these blocks are in the Acropolis Museum, one has been lost and four of them are in the British Museum in London after they were forcibly removed by Thomas Bruce, lord of Elgin, in the beginning of the 19th cent.

In 1687 the temple and the parapet of Athena Nike were dismantled by the Ottomans and the material was used for the reinforcement of a gun emplacement and the fortification of the west side of the Acropolis against the attacks by the Venetians under the command of the general Francesco Morosini. Between 1835 and 1836 the gun emplacement was demolished and the Temple of Athena Nike was restored for the first time under the supervision of Ludwig Ross, the administrator of antiquities at the time. A second reconstruction was carried out in 1940, while a third was completed in 2010.