Problems in Periclean Buildings

by G. W. Elderkin

The theory of one level within the Erechtheum seems to contradict and to be contradicted by the evidence which Stevens has found of a door in the east wall (A. J. A., 1906, p. 58 ff.). The contradiction is not necessary, for a flight of steps at the east end of the cella of Athena is perfectly possible. The construction of an apse for the church at the east end of the temple necessitated the removal of a number of foundation-blocks which might have given evidence of steps. However it is quite possible that the foundations for the steps which had no need to rest in rock cuttings were simply laid against, not keyed into the foundations of the east wall. The stairs are drawn in the plan (Fig. 7). The idea of a stair-case at the east end of a cella is illustrated by the temple at Didyma. The eastern door of the Erechtheum was not the normal, not the intended entrance to the cella of Athena, but served as the traditional eastern entrance toward which the xoanon faced. Pausanias like other visitors entered by the πρόστασις ἡ πρὸς τοῦ θυρώματος, the main entrance to the temple.

It is interesting to note some evidence which shows that in the period before the Erechtheum was converted into a Christian church there was no difference of level within the building, namely, the masses of rubble masonry which were placed close to the north wall at approximately equal distances from the eastern cross-wall. They are firmly founded on the rock and reach up nearly to the base of the orthostates. They have no counterparts along the south wall. The screen-wall of the north aisle of the church stood directly over one of the masses. The threshold of it is still in place. These heavy foundations and the interior longitudinal walls of the church cannot be contemporary. The latter were sufficient to carry the weight of the roof of the church; and the screen-wall in the aisle, since it rests partly on a filling of earth, shows that the heavy foundation of rubble masonry underneath had ceased to serve any purpose after the church was built. It was there before that time and therefore must have been laid in a Roman period when the level within the temple was the same.

Any discussion of the workmanship of this mass of stones and mortar has no bearing on the question of its date and that of the threshold above. The point is, the masonry is earlier than the Christian church, and quite embarrasses the advocates of a higher level for the eastern cella in the period before the conversion of the temple into a Christian church. This foundation then is perfectly intelligible in the light of the theory that in Greek times there was but one level within the temple. What the purpose of this rubble masonry was is uncertain. The substantial and solid character of the masses leads one to believe that they were foundations for piers or pillars which reached to the top of the adjacent wall and together with it supported heavy cross-beams which spanned the cella from north to south. The idea may have come to the Romans from the Greek pilaster which as noted above lay approximately midway between the masses of rubble masonry. This was, then, apparently a device for reducing the span from the north to the south wall. The fact that this masonry was laid before the period of the church is of far greater importance than its purpose.

The new plan of the Erechtheum is interesting in the light of the Chandler inscription. If one feels that the magnificent north porch determines the front of the building, then the first room is a satisfactory προστομιαῖον and lies in front of (πρό) the * στομιαῖον in which was the important object of cult, the φρέαρ (στόμιον). The following proportion may be set down: πρόναος : ναός :: προστομιαῖον: * στομιαῖον. Προστομιαῖον and * στομιαῖον are conjectured to have been the official names in the fifth century for the two chambers of the διπλοῦν οἴκημα of Pausanias.

The order followed by the commissioners in their report upon unfinished interior walls was as follows: In the first room entered from the θύρωμα, the προστομιαῖον, 12 tetrapodies were ἀκατάχσεστα. The phrase ἐν τῷ προστομιαίῳ favors the theory that more walls than one are meant. Then in the inner chamber 3 tetrapodies of the παραστάς,[7] i.e., that part of the partition-wall east of the door in the west cella. Then in the third room 6 (?) tetrapodies of the wall πρὸς τὀγάλματος. The order in which the chambers were examined for unfinished walls was that of Pausanias in describing their contents.

Again the new plan fits the treasure list of 306/5 B.C. (I.G., II,² 733). The remarkable feature of the inscription is that it mentions three παραστάδες, first an isolated one, and then a pair of them, one on either side of a door. The single παραστάς, the first to be mentioned is again that part of the partition-wall east of the door in the west cella. This door was near the west end of the wall, so that the space between it and the west wall of the temple was negligible. Thus for one entering by that door there was a παραστάς on the left, but none on the right. When however he passed into the ναὸς τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς through a door which stood a little south of the middle of the wall (and opposite the door in the west wall of the temple) he had a παραστάς upon his left and also upon his right. The παραστάδες are interior walls on either side of a door which in the Erechtheum reached up only five courses above the orthostates. The paintings which Pausanias found in the first room favor the opinion that the treasures which hung on the parastas were on the south side of that wall—i.e., in the second room of the διπλοῦν οἴκημα. Whether or not there is any order in the enumeration of the treasures is a question. If there is, then it naturally begins with treasures first seen after entering from the πρόστασις ἡ πρὸς τοῦ θυρώματος, just as the record of the commissioners in the case of interior walls begins with walls in the first room, just as the description of Pausanias begins with the contents of the first room. This coincidence is remarkable, and is true of no other theory about the temple.

It is a necessary consequence of this interpretation that some treasures were in the west part of the Erechtheum. Perhaps then something may be said for the scholiast on Aristophanes, Plutus, 1183 (reading οἶκος for τοῖχος and keeping in mind the διπλοῦν οἴκημα of Pausanias's description): ὀπίσω τοῦ νεὼ τῆς καλουμένης Πολιάδος Ἀθηνᾶς διπλοῦς οἶκος (τοῖχος) ἔχων θύραν, ὅπου ἦν θησαυροφυλάκιον. The words ἔχων θύραν suggest that the scholiast wished to distinguish between a διπλοῦς οἶκος the two parts of which were connected by a door and another type the two parts of which were not so connected but separately entered from without. Pausanias seems to give an instance of the latter in II, 25, 1. White (Harvard Studies, Vol. VI, p. 39) refers the scholium to the restored west part of the Hekatompedon but does not discuss the meaning of ἔχων θύραν, which Michaelis was unable to explain. In White's so-called opisthodomus, to which door of three possible ones does the scholiast refer? The three chambers of his opisthodomus do not satisfy the requirements of a διπλοῦς οἶκος, the reading which he accepts (op. cit., p. 4, note 3). More reasonable is the interpretation that the scholiast had in mind the west cella of the Erechtheum in which some treasures seemed to have been placed, and that he used the words νεὼς καλουμένης Πολιάδος Ἀθηνᾶς in the stricter sense, just as Pausanias called the east cella ναὸς τῆς Πολιάδος (I. 27. 1), and regarded the διπλοῦς οἶκος as lying behind it. The νεὼς τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς was oriented east, and what was immediately west was behind it. But it is not to be supposed that the west cella of the Erechtheum was ever called an opisthodomus. The scholiast seems however to have the oldest Athena temple in mind.

There is a point perhaps of slight moment which deserves a word. One of the paintings, that of Erechtheus driving a chariot, was painted, according to the scholiast on Aristides, I, 107, 5, behind the goddess. A possible interpretation is that the painting was in the cella of Athena on the wall behind the xoanon, but the paintings of the Butadae were in the first room which Pausanias entered. Unless the painting of Erechtheus was separate from those of the Butadae, then the new arrangement of the interior permits a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. For the east wall of the room in which were the paintings of the Butadae was behind the goddess. According to the old plan, Pausanias found the paintings in the western chamber of the διπλοῦν οἴκημα, that is, between them and the wall against which stood the xoanon, was a chamber. The passage may mean that in a painting Erechtheus appeared behind Athena driving a chariot (Petersen, Jb. Arch. Inst., 1902, p. 64; Burgtempel, p. 110). In the sequence of words in the sentence, ἐν τῇ ἀκροπόλει ὀπίσω τῆς θεοῦ, the second phrase seems to be a closer definition of the place than is given in the first. Furthermore, position was determined by reference to the xoanon. An interior wall was located with reference to it, τὸ πρὸς τὀγάλματος. The scholiast on Aristophanes, Equites, 1169, is interesting in this connection because he shows what part a statue might play in the designation of a temple: δύο εἰσὶν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀκροπόλεως Ἀθηνᾶς ναοί, ὁ τῆς Πολιάδος καὶ ἡ χρυσελεφαντίνη.

In the light of the new arrangement within the Erechtheum, the reference of Vitruvius (IV, 8, 4) to the temple becomes clearer. Speaking of it and other temples he says: "cellae enim longitudinibus duplices sunt ad latitudines uti reliquae, sed is omnia quae solent esse in frontibus ad latera sunt translata" (Petersen, Burgtempel, p. 144). If the cella of Athena was completely separate from that of Erechtheus and at a higher level, he could not have said reasonably of the cella of the temple that it was twice as long as wide like other temples. For the cellae of Athena and Erechtheus ought then to have been considered separately. In the new plan such a statement applies with greater force because the low partitions might be readily disregarded. The second statement shows that Vitruvius regarded the east façade of a temple as the front, and normal place of entrance, but that this and the more elaborate porch were transferred in the case of the Erechtheum to what would be the side of other temples. As Petersen, (op. cit., p. 143) says, the words "columnis adjectis dextra ac sinistra ad umeros pronai" are a clear reference to the north porch. This too seems to be the πρόναος which Lucian refers to in Piscator, 21: ἐνταῦθά που ἐν τῷ προνάῳ τῆς πολιάδος δικάσωμεν. Ἡ ἱέρεια διάθες ἡμῖν τὰ βάθρα, ἡμεῖς δὲ ἐν τοσούτῳ προσκυνήσωμεν τῇ θεῷ. This interpretation is perfectly consistent with the fundamental contention that the πρόστασις ἡ πρὸς τοῦ θυρώματος determines the front of the building.

The theory set forth in the above pages is in perfect accord with the description in Pausanias. It is confirmed by the evidence of the inscriptions and of the building itself so far as that evidence goes. The serious criticism of the accepted plan of the Erechtheum is that all theories based upon it disagree with the written evidences, not with one written record of a later period like the simple account of Pausanias, but with another record centuries earlier, namely the contemporary official inscription. Investigators attempt the solution of the problem after accepting the restored interior as certain. The keynote of the present theory is that the interior of the temple has been too far destroyed to make any one restoration absolutely certain on the basis of the evidence of the building alone, and that all available evidence must be used simultaneously to determine the correct restoration.