Plutarch’s "Life of Pericles", 13.4–9, informs us “the man who directed all the projects and was overseer for him [Pericles was Phidias... Almost everything was under his supervision, and, as we have said, he was in charge, owing to his friendship with Perikles, of all the other artists”. The description was not "architekton", the term usually given to the creative influence behind a building project, rather "episkopos". But it is from this claim, the circumstantial evidence of Phidias’s known work on the Athena Parthenos and his central role in the Periclean building programme that he is attributed authorship of the frieze. The frieze consists of 378 figures and 245 animals. It was 160 meters (524 ft) in length when complete, as well as 1 meter in height, and it projects 5.6 cm forward at its maximum depth. It is composed of 114 blocks of an average 1.22 meters in length, depicting two parallel files in procession. It was a particular novelty of the Parthenon that the cella carries an Ionic frieze over the hexastyle pronaos rather than Doric metopes, as would have been expected of a Doric temple. Judging by the existence of regulae and guttae below the frieze on the east wall this was an innovation introduced late in the building process and replaced the ten metopes and triglyphs that might otherwise have been placed there.