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‘Shadowy megara’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Hugh Plommer
Hugh Plommer
Affiliation:
Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge
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Extract

The recent little book by Heinrich Drerup, Griechische Baukunst in geometrischer Zeit, is considered by the fashionable school of Homer's interpreters to be the one and only study of the Homeric House. Thus, for M. I. Finley, in ‘The World of Odysseus Revisited’, his presidential address to the Classical Association for 1974, it ‘replaces all previous accounts of the subject’; and it seems to him particularly refreshing because it sees, in the rude buildings of c. 800 B.C., sufficient material for all the true descriptions that Homer may give of architecture. If Drerup is right, we shall need no recourse to the Bronze Age to explain anything; and in Drerup's own words, as translated by Finley (p. 21), ‘the over-worked Mycenaean palace has probably played out its rôle in Homeric archaeology’. Our initial feelings, that it was rather tendentious to include a work on Geometric Baukunst in a series on Homeric archaeology, are thus to be rudely brushed aside.

Now I must agree that the end of the Bronze Age does mark a great, if ragged break in building science. The Mycenaean range of materials was never recovered in Classical Greece; and certain technical achievements of the Bronze Age were not repeated either in Classical Architecture or at any time since. One of my favourite examples, though one to which the textbooks give little attention, is the neat design of ceremonial doorways during the later Bronze Age.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 97 , November 1977 , pp. 75 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1977

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References

I should like to acknowledge the help of the editor and the very useful criticisms of Prof. A. Snodgrass and Dr J. J. Coulton.

1 Printed as Archaeologia Homerica II ch. O (Göttingen, 1969).

2 Proceedings of the Classical Association 71 (1974) 13–31.

3 Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 6 (1964) 5 ff. I am not inclined to see, with J.-P. Michaud, a copy of the Delphi Temple of beeswax in the building BC at Eretria, also of the eighth century (BCH 1972, 759 and 761). For Michaud, ‘ľextérieur est circulaire comme une ruche et ľintérieur polygonal comme un rayon de miel’. But the interior is an irregular decagon in plan—a shape that I do not associate with honeycombs—while the elliptical plan of the exterior does not remind me of hives, e.g. those figured in BSA 69 (1973) 443 ff.

4 One is here working with many uncertain premises. One does not wish to rest too heavy a roof, with rafters at a steep angle, upon the centre of a horizontal framed roof rather than upon the outer walls of the megaron. This is the chief danger in Marinatos' reconstructions. On the other hand, I believe that in Greece at this time carpenters could still dispose of some hefty timbers. Not long before, the walls of Bronze Age buildings had been strengthened every few feet by long horizontal beams of their own thickness—a technique familiar to every student of the Palaces and House-Models: and in their own way the earliest Greek temples exhibit a carpentry just as wasteful. So the analogy with the earliest Italic atria need not be out of place.

5 Here I subscribe to the opinions of Cook, R. M.. See e.g. BSA 46 (1951) 50 ff.Google Scholar

6 She is puzzled (loc. cit.) by the survival of the Homeric megaron to so late a date. But she assumes that the megara of Priene and Homer are in one line of descent; for each of them has a secondary door in its side (the orsothyre). But since the houses of Priene are not real megara, only Classical houses curtailed, side-doors are the most natural thing imaginable and very common. See Wiegand, Priene, pl. XXI (‘Westviertel von Priene’).

7 Apparently a thwart across the ship, midway between prow and stern, with a hole for the mast in its centre (Morrison, J. S. and Williams, R. T., Greek Oared Ships 52–3)Google Scholar.

8 This, does not, of course, mean that I doubt the existence of the triangular windows in actual buildings of the time—only that they would have pierced the main vertical supports of the structure. Such openings are found in Cypriot huts to this day (Perachora I fig. 6a); and Prof. Snodgrass adduces for me a good Geometric example at Zagora, (Praktika 1972, 264)Google Scholar.

9 As Dr J. Coulton reminds me, even the broadened ground-course of the second Samian Heraion is not considered a suitable support for recurrent posts in the side wall, even by Drerup himself (p. 126 n. 149).

10 ‘Echoing’ in Odyssey iii 309, where Telemachus and Peisistratus sleep in its shelter.

11 See not only the general interpretation of such words as βαλανειόμϕαλος, used by Cratinus, but also the capacious and frequent cold baths in gymnasia—not to mention Cleon's fate at the end of the Knights.

12 This spiral is everywhere in Mycenaean: e.g., on the doorway of the Treasury of Atreus (Wace, Mycenae pll. 49–51). Rodenwaldt, Korkyra I pl. 23 shows it well on revetments of the early sixth century at Corcyra. Its appearance on the Treasure of Vix, (Monuments Piot 1954, p. 12Google Scholar, pll. 7 ff.) helps to suggest to me that this, too, is Corinthian work, perhaps of the mid-6th century. For the Naxian volute see Amandry, P., La Colonne des Naxiens (1953)Google Scholar, pll. XI and XII. This volute is interesting, because at first sight, its design could have no point of connection with a Mycenaean (or Corinthian) spiral frieze. Yet the interlocking pattern at the very centre, where later capitals would have an eye, seems to me to show the connection clearly. Contrast the lame ending of the roll in the volute at Ephesus (D. S. Robertson, Greek and Roman Architecture, fig. 40). I have not the space to discuss here the capital from Arkades in Crete, most recently treated by Wesenberg, B., Kapitelle und Basen (Düsseldorf, 1972) 93 ffGoogle Scholar. The spiral is carved rather carelessly along its abacus. It seems to me a provincial, perhaps earlier attempt to effect a synthesis of Bronze Age wreckage. The attempt of the Central Greeks seems to me more successful, although still short-lived.

13 Pausanias (vi, 19) makes it clear that they belong to recognisable Orders of architecture, however keenly he may wish to put them back into the seventh century and assign them to the tyrant Myron.