History 221 Greek Architecture and Engineering

Lecture with Some Illustrations of Greek Architecture and Engineering

History 221, University of Richmond/Stevenson

How can Greek architecture be tied into an investigation of the development of the polis and pan-Hellenic unity? This lecture will only establish the problem and then, to propose a tentative avenue for exploration, focus on the role that architecture plays in political chauvinism (ancient and modern).Problems in understanding monumental architecture in the polis

Classic Athenian temple: T. of Hephaistos

where to get the money to build these?
who built them?
who were the architects?
how did they develop the "refined" look?
how were they planned (extant plan)?
how were the plans translated into building?

Political Chauvinism

The world of the metropoleis was vaunted by all our leading sources, Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon in antiquity (and by imperialist historians in, for example, Britain, France and Russia, in the modern period). But the evidence of engineering indicates that the colonized poleis of Sicily outstripped their mother cities in monumental architecture.

Problem of Greek Monumental Architecture: Roofing

Monumental Architectural comes from Egypt and the Near east: Portico of Temple of Anubis (ca. 1500 BC)
How were early Greek roofs made? Model from Perachora (ca. 725 BC)
What would spur production of low pitch roofs (as in T. of Hephaistus above)?
Terracotta tile production appears to have begun in Corinth around 700 BC.
How to build a tile roof? Reconstruction of traditional roof plan.
How big can such a roof be?
How big do you want your temple? Modern examples: Big Example 1; Bigger Example 2; Yet Bigger Example 3

Solutions

Egypt/Near East: lots of columns in middle of space (e.g. Valley Temple at Giza, ca. 2500 BC)
Limits of traditional Greek roofing: monumental roofs in Paestum (Reconstructed elevations of temples at Paestum)
Longest span to roof in Aegean Greece: 11 meters (Parthenon)
Longest span to roof in Sicily: 18 meters (temple of Apollo at Selinus)
How could the Sicilians top the Parthenon?
Compare with the roof of the temple of Demeter at Gaggera (cp. Reconstruction of traditional roof plan)
Selinuntines used a truss? Cf. Trevor Hodge, The Woodwork of Greek Roofs, Cambridge, 1960, pp. 41-42:
"We are forced to admit that whatever the outside evidence, the direct evidence of the buildings themselves points logically and inexorably to only one conclusion: the Sicilian architect was acquainted with the principle of the truss, and employed it regularly from about 550 onwards.
The objections to this view are obvious. The chief one is that Sicilian architecture is so imitative and backward relative to that of the mainland that it seems incredible that it could invent for itself a principle so complex; and knowledge of the truss was certainly not, at that date, derived from Greece. This is the dilemma that has tormented many scholars: how could the Sicilians know about the truss if the Greeks did not?"
Supporting evidence: Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, 5.6.2
"The wood of the silver-fir may be called the stongest of all. But for the carpenter's purposes fir best takes glue because of its open texture and the straightness of its pores; for they say that it never by chance comes apart when it is glued."
Supporting evidence II: Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, 5.8.1
"But largest of all, they say, are the trees of Corsica; for whereas silver-fir and fir grow in Latium to a very great size, and are taller and finer than the silver-firs and firs of south Italy, these are said to be nothing to the trees of Corsica."

Conclusions

Political pride of polis requires the largest possible monument, which displays the wealth, power and technological ingenuity of the city.
Literary texts and modern historiographical trends have focused art historians on the eastern half of ancient Greece.
Archaeological remains of Sicily show us that the western poleis won this battle of political prominence.