How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

It is significant that none of these last named poets and thinkers belonged to the mainland of Hellas, but to the islands and cities of the Ionian group or to the adjacent Cyclades. And what is true of literature is equally true of architecture and sculpture. In fact during the fifth century B.C. and also the three preceding centuries, culture had been more developed in Ionia than in Attica. For, through its commerce with the East, Ionia reached a high state of prosperity and borrowed something of Eastern luxuriousness as well as Eastern thought and art ideals, just as in turn the East borrowed from it. Miletus was for a long time the wealthiest and most luxurious of Hellenic cities, rivalled only by Sybaris on the gulf of Tarentum; one of the flourishing cities of the so-called Magna Græcia in the south of Italy.

Similarly Corinth under the rule of her tyrants, Cypselus and his son Periander (657-581 B.C.), had enjoyed a period of great prosperity. She extended her trade from Asia Minor and Egypt to Magna Græcia in the west, and was also a great industrial centre, famous for its pottery, metal work, and other decorative crafts. Moreover, it was reported to have “invented” painting.

These brief references serve to emphasise two points: first, the wide spread of Hellenic culture; and, secondly, the variety that it exhibited. The most cherished sentiment in Hellas, as we have remarked, was that of autonomy. Even under the hegemonies and empires, individual cities and colonies were permitted self-government and, as its corollary, self-development. Hence the variety in unity that characterised Hellenic culture. The unity was strengthened and the variety diffused throughout the whole by the Festival-contests which were held at regular intervals. These originated in local religious festivals, which in time were thrown open to competitors from all parts of Hellas.

The oldest and the greatest was the Olympic Festival, held in the valley of the river Alphæus in Elis, which was celebrated at intervals of four years. The event became so important in the life of Hellas that the interval of four years between one celebration and the succeeding one, called an Olympiad, became the measure for computing time, the first Olympiad being reckoned as 776 B.C. Originally the festival was held in honour of Hera, to whom a temple—the earliest as yet known in Hellas—was dedicated, 1000 B.C. Later the chief honour was paid to the Olympian Zeus. His temple, which in time contained the celebrated chryselephantine statue of the god by Pheidias, stood in a sacred grove, the Altis, which was adorned with statues of the successful athletes, made by the most famous sculptors. The sacred enclosure was surrounded by walls and colonnades, adjoining which, on one side, were the gymnasium, palæstra, and baths for the use of the athletes, whose training in the sacred precincts lasted for ten months, before they could compete in the stadium. The latter adjoined the Altis on the east side.

From all parts of Hellas, states and cities vied with one another in furnishing competitors and, as the date of the Festival approached, heralds proclaimed throughout the Hellenic world the “Truce of God” under which, for the time being, warlike operations were suspended and safe conduct was guaranteed to all visitors to Olympia.

The influence of Sparta had regulated the character of the contests of endurance: running, leaping, wrestling, boxing, to which in time was added chariot racing. But as the spirit of culture spread the Olympian and the other festivals included musical contests, while the poet declaimed his verses and the painter showed his work for the pleasure and profit of the assembled multitudes.

The Olympic festival, in fact, was the supreme realisation of the Hellenic ideal: perfection of physical development, joined to highest intellectual development and the finest development of the senses. It was an ideal that involved the possible perfection of the whole man, a harmony of body, senses, and intellect—the Hellenic ideal of Beauty.

Olympia, wrote Lysias, is “the fairest spot on earth,” and, surely, in the loveliness of its natural setting, in the embellishments which the architect and sculptor had added, in the glory of the youthful vigour of the competitors and the inspiration of poets and musicians, and, not least, in the joyous enthusiasm of the spectators was realised, as perhaps nowhere else at any time, the Beauty of Life; the idea, as Plato taught, that the Good is the Beautiful, the Beautiful the Good.

Such was the Hellenic ideal. And an ideal, need one add, is not an aim that is actually achieved but one beyond our capacity to achieve wholly, that yet gives continuous incentive to higher and nobler effort. This ideal of the possible perfection of man in all his parts is the highest to which man has ever aspired and the Hellenes of the Great Age came the nearest to achieving it. Hence their example has become to succeeding ages Classic.

Having this ideal, the Hellenes translated it as far as possible into visible form. No athlete could compete at Olympia unless his body and his character were free from blemish; no statue or temple must be erected except as the finest possible expression of organic perfection.