Corner block I from the frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike is decorated on its west and south sides in relief. On the west side two human figures are fragmentarily preserved. A naked Greek hoplite, possibly an Athenian, fights against another Greek warrior who wears a short chiton and helmet. The two men set before them their shields which thus occupy the scene’s centre.

The west frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike featured the battle of Greeks against other Greeks. It is a historical event which has been identified either with the battle between the Athenians and Spartans in Amphilochia in 426/5 BC or the Athenians and Corinthians in Megara in 458 BC. Both ended with the victory of the Athenians.

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.