We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 October 2013
This article continues my observations on the temple of Poseidon published in BSA xlv (1950) 78 ff. I begin with what I have recently noticed of the architectural detailing and decoration of this temple. Zschietzschmann (AA 1929, 223 f.) noticed a painted pattern of a very unexpected design on the inner taenia of the architrave. It is a well-kept rule in Greek architecture that the decoration of a moulding should echo its profile. So a taenia of rectangular section, assuming that it needed decoration at all, should have had some sort of Greek fret (for which see below). At Sunium, however, it has the Oriental Coil, an ornament which, in any case, is oftener seen on Ionic buildings than on Doric. In Doric, indeed, it is known to have established itself in only one position, on a certain type of flat clay cornice-revetment, probably invented in Corinth, found in a primitive form, and not quite, perhaps, in its canonical position, on the temple of Artemis at Corcyra, and thereafter stereotyped on the monotonous, sub-Corinthian clay cornice-revetments churned out in Sicily during the century down to 480 B.C. At Sunium one can only suppose that the Oriental Coil brought the Doric architrave of the side ptera into greater harmony with the Ionic of the east pteron.
1 See Korkyra i, Abb. 75 ff. On the evidence of Abb. 79 the Oriental Coil is to be restored along the lower part of the sima—rather higher up the revetment than was usual in Sicily. For cable-patterns on actual tile-edges, see Perachora i. 114, and, for an unusually late example, Buschor, , Die Tondaecher der Akropolis ii. 10 f.Google Scholar
2 See Koch, , Studien zum Theseustempel in Athen (1955)Google Scholar Taf. 13B and Abb. 94.
3 They are also right, as against Blouet, on the relative heights of the moulded band and the plain fascia below it. This is clear on several modern photographs. See, e.g., Rave, , Griechische Tempel (1924) pl. 31Google Scholar; Warner, and Hurlimann, , Eternal Greece (1953) 11.Google Scholar
4 Chapter VI, pl. 6. So far as I know, the anta-capitals of Rhamnous have quite disappeared. But Gandy's drawings are plausible and circumstantial.
5 For the tiers of mouldings on fifth-century Ionic anta-capitals, compare the Erechtheum, or the Ionic temple of Locri.
6 Penrose, , Principles pl. xxii.Google Scholar
7 Whom I must thank here for putting freely at my disposal the evidence in his book The Woodwork of Greek Roofs (1960), before its publication.
8 BSA xlv, pl. 8.
9 Published by Orlandos, op. cit. 225, fig. 19.
10 Cf. BSA xlv. 80.
11 Cf. Penrose, op. cit. 16. After describing the unequal architrave-blocks of the Parthenon, Penrose concludes: ‘We may infer that stones of fourteen feet long and upwards were very rare’, and shows that the Parthenon reached the limit with the blocks available.
12 Not, perhaps, all. Hodge tells me he has seen one block of side-cornice without the marks for the beams—clearly a block from one side of the end peristyles.
13 Stones levelled to receive such a wall-plate could, I think, be called 
See the Delian Account of c. 280 B.C., quoted by Robert, in Délos xx, Trois sanctuaires sur le rivage occidental (1952) 100Google Scholar: 
Euthynteria ‘dans ce texte ne peut guère désigner qu'une assise appartenant aux parties hautes de l'édifice, et contribuant au maintien de la toiture’ (Robert). See also his p. 96.
14 The unbroken backs of coffers and frames could, however, be quite rough. See, e.g., Koch, op. cit. pl. 14.
15 Uned. Antiqu. of Attica chap, vi, pl. ix.
16 Lethaby, Greek Buildings fig. 33.
17 Coffer-lids have normally bands of egg and tongue, coffer-frames of bead and reel. The carved coffers of the Epidaurian tholos show this well (Lawrence, , Greek Architecture pl. 88bGoogle Scholar), as does the ceiling of the Nereid Monument, now in the B.M. See also the Erechtheum inscription, quoted below, n. 25.
18 See Orlandos, , ADelt 1915, 22Google Scholar, fig. 27. And see now the full discussion in Kleemann, I., Der Satrapen-Sarkophag aus Sidon (1958)Google Scholar, for whose theories, however, on the in fluence of an Asiatic Ionian School I can see no convincing reasons.
19 A. W. Lawrence has now broached the theory (Greek Architecture (1957) 180) that the columns were excessively high at Sunium, so as to look right from the sea, and that they were given fewer flutes, so as to appear thicker than they really were to a spectator at close quarters. I cannot agree with this. Vitruvius, admittedly comparing internal with external columns, says that, to increase the apparent thickness of a shaft, one increases the number of flutes (‘Sin autem videbuntur graciliores, cum exterioribus fuerint striae XXIIII, in his faciendae erunt XXVIII aut XXXII’: De Architectura iv. 4. ii). My eye seems to confirm Vitruvius, at least to me, and to make a column of constant diameter seem thicker, the more flutes it is given (see Fig. 7).
20 To see the different shapes of the flutes, and their greater shallowness at Sunium, compare Blouet iii, pl. 33 (Suniurn) and Koch, op. cit., pl. 54 (the Theseum). For the mathematical construction of Classical Greek flutes, comprising for the most part arcs of circles, see Penrose, op. cit. 51 and pl. 21. See also Stuart and Revett, i, ch. 2 pl. 10, and iii, ch. 1 pl. 12. (The curve of the centre of each flute is usually an are on a radius equal to the width, or chord, of the whole flute. But towards the arris the curve varies widely between temple and temple.) I find that when I compare the drawings of Koch and Bloues, the flutes of Sunium, though wider, seem to be shallower than those on the Theseum; see my Fig. 3. But this is because my figure is taken through the top of the shafts, and, according to Blouet, the flutes towards the top become shallower at Sunium. This, I believe, shows that the designer wished with this marble to keep the same shallow figure all the way up the flute. The peculiarities of Sunium are due, I think, largely to the softness of the marble and the exposed nature of the site. To make his building more durable, the architect resorted to many tricks.
21 For the fragment of coffer-slab from the ceiling of our end peristyle, see above, p. 221.
22 The traces seem to show that the coffer-lids could have formed the modelled soffit of two boards, with a joint over the centre of the ceiling-span. This would make each 9 inches wide and nearly 3 feet long.
23 Paton and Stevens, Erechtheum, Inscription no. xi, col. ii, line 31.
24 Defrasse, and Lechat, , Épidaure 118 f.Google Scholar
25 See, e.g., Paton and Stevens, Inscription xi, col. ii, lines 19–21:
26 As Mr. Lacey has reminded me, the gales that rage on this site may well have persuaded the architect to set his ceiling-beams close to one another, and to fasten the coffers tightly.
27 AE 1917, p. 226.
28 BSA xlv. 82.
29 Stuart and Revett iv2, ‘Further Elucidations’ (Jenkins), 1.
30 BSA xlv. 104. My words, however, are not clear there. I was surprised to find this architect observing the unit at Rhamnous even in the ceilings of the end peristyles. For those of the side peristyles he now seems to me to have observed it in all three temples.
31 ADelt 1915, 17.
32 The temple of Aphaia on Aegina is an exception. See Fiechter in Furtwaengler, , Aegina, pl. 35.Google Scholar
33 Aegina and Bassae, Bassae pl. iv. In my ignorance, I did not examine this feature when I visited Bassae. My photos of cornice-blocks seem to make against Cockerell. Stuart and Revett iv, Bassae pl. iii, shows a cornice jointed on the principal façade in a normal way.
34 ADelt 1915, 19, fig. 3.
35 Orlandosi illustration (op. cit. fig. 13) in fact ignores the relation of rafters and ceiling-beams. His drawing of the rafter-cutting in the ceiling-beam (AE 1917, 226), while obviously wrong in some points, yet agrees with my photos, and Hodge's drawing of a beam (left-hand side of his picture, as opposed to the reconstructed ceiling and rafter of the right-hand side) shows that the cutting was high and the slope shallow, implying a rafter thrown forward on the cornice-block.
36 Here, however, I face another inexplicable difficulty. Assuming that the rafters onlyjust cleared the ceiling-beams, I cannot legitimately get their lower end as far out as these cuttings on the geisa. See Fig. 6.
37 Clemmensen, and others, Tegée, pl. 44.Google Scholar
38 These Mainland Greek temples, unlike those of Magna Graecia, seem seldom to have had at this point a staircase in the thickness of the wall.
39 AE 1917, 220, nos. 11 and 12.
40 Whether of marble or timber, who knows? I still hesitate between Miss Lorimer's timbers and Dinsmoor's marble. On p. 154 of my Ancient and Classical Architecture I have decided for timber.
41 Architecture of Ancient Greece 202, fig. 76.
42 Ar. Clouds 398–401.
