Problems in Periclean Buildings

by G. W. Elderkin

IV
THE ERECHTHEUM AS PLANNED

The question as to the original plan of the Erechtheum follows naturally the interpretation of the building as built. That the west wall was planned for its present place seems improbable for a number of reasons. The north porch is out of proportion to the room into which it opens, and by reaching beyond the west wall of the temple becomes in part porch to an open precinct. The west front has columns and Caryatids at different levels (Dörpfeld, Ath. Mitt., 1904, p. 101). The displeasing effect of this difference could not have been concealed by the walls of the Pandroseum, the south one of which reached as high as the parapet of the porch of the maidens. The latter porch illustrates the skill of the architect in concealing differences of level. The unique closed wall on which the maidens stand was his device for concealing from view from without, a door which was below the level of the porch and which belonged to the interior whereas the porch belonged to the exterior. The architect, by placing the entrance to the porch at the north east corner close to the wall, completely concealed the presence of the low door. With this care to conceal a difference of level, the west side of the temple is in marked contrast.

The north-west corner of the western cella is peculiar in two ways. The western jamb of the door cuts 3½ cm. into the west wall of the temple. This suggests crowding and is satisfactorily explained by the condition of the foundations below. The foundation of the west wall does not key into that of the north wall (Fig. 11), a fact seeming to prove that when the latter foundation was laid, it was not the intention of the architect to place a foundation in the line of the present west wall, and to crowd the door jamb into that wall.

Of the symmetrical exterior proposed by Prof. Dörpfeld there lies a suggestion in the fact that the north and south doors have the same axis, although the Caryatid porch has not. The porch seems to have been moved a little to the east of its intended place that it might not project beyond the west wall, but not far enough to prevent the cornice of the porch from so projecting.

The west wall itself offers evidence of a curtailment of the original plan. By way of introduction let us compare the east façade, which is Greek with the west façade, the part of which above the closed wall is Roman (Arx Athenarum, Pl. XXV, D, and A. J. A., 1906, Pl. VIII). The windows in the east wall which Stevens has determined with accuracy were placed at the height of four ordinary courses above the base moulding and two courses from the top of the wall, just as were the Roman windows in the west wall. The second course above the eastern windows was a moulding, the corresponding course above the western windows is plain probably because of the adjacent capitals. Below both sets of windows were three courses of blocks. In the east wall orthostates were justifiable, in the west wall they would have been illogical because on neither side was there a floor, but three courses equal in height to four ordinary courses were placed there. Stevens has shown that the eastern windows were seven courses high including the lintel. The western windows are five courses high. The explanation of the difference of height is simple. The eastern wall was thirteen courses high, the western eleven. The western windows were two courses shorter in order that they and their counterparts, the eastern windows, might be equidistant from the base of the wall, namely four ordinary courses, and from the top of the wall, namely two courses. The fact that the sills of the Greek windows were one meter lower than the Roman windows is of no consequence whatsoever. The fact of great importance is that the east and west windows occupied the same relative position in the façade. The stylobate of the western façade could not be placed so low as the eastern because of the door and the necessity of a heavy block three courses high at the south end of the wall. This block could not be placed lower because of the Cecropium (= temple of Pandrosus?) which crossed the line of the wall, to judge from the cuttings in it beneath the heavy block. Had the architect wished equality of height for the eastern and western colonnades he would have been compelled to place the stylobate of the western two courses lower. This would have made it impossible to place a door in that wall which was necessary probably for a reason of cult.

In Roman times therefore the western windows were placed with careful reference to the eastern. Between the columns in each case appeared windows, two in the eastern wall with door between, three in the western where a door was impossible. Both façades were surmounted by epistyle, frieze and pediment. The wall below the western colonnade was a substitute for the higher ground level of the east side. The Romans who repaired the wall repaired it with reference to the east front. For them the west façade was simply a combination of wall with windows, and colonnade. Unless the Greeks had a western façade of columns and wall with windows essentially like the Roman restoration, we are forced to make a strange assumption. The Greek architect conceived the idea of combining wall with colonnade in one plane and then instead of carrying his idea to its conclusion put in a wooden grille in the intercoluminations above a low wall of three courses, a grille which answers to nothing in the east façade, and then left it to the Romans to exploit his idea by placing there three windows.

The only obstacle to the perfectly natural assumption that the Romans restored the essential features of the west wall as it was in Greek times is the testimony of a contemporary inscription (I. G., I, Suppl., 321. col. III, 18) that one Comon a carpenter was paid a sum of 40 dr. for "fencing" (διαφάρχσαντι) four intercolumniations on the wall toward the Pandroseum: διαφάρχσαντι τὰ μετακιόνια τέτταρα ὄντα τὰ πρὸς το͂ Πανδροσείο. The accepted interpretation of the passage is that a wooden grille was the final form of the west wall and remained so until Roman times. The objection to this interpretation is that we must then believe that the Greek architect planned a wooden grille for a marble building in a wall exposed to the elements where repair would be necessary from time to time and that only in the Roman period did the change to more enduring marble take place. It is probable that the wooden grille was only temporary and was soon replaced by a wall with windows. Whatever the interpretation of the inscription, the fact remains that the present form of the west wall is a restoration made with deliberate reference to the east façade. It is a studied restoration which far from being an arbitrary creation of the 4th century A.D., as Penrose (op. cit., p. 93) regarded it, is too original for a Roman period. The imitation is Roman, the idea is Greek. The very same idea is expressed in the Sidon sarcophagus of the mourning women, an Attic work of about 350 B.C. The illusion produced by the sarcophagus is that of female figures standing between the columns of the peristyle of a temple (Hamdy Bey-Reinach, Une Nécropole Royale à Sidon, p. 241). The west façade in Greek times as in Roman was simply a compression together in one plane of colonnade and wall—a combination to which the architect was forced by the curtailment of his plan.

It is almost certain that the original plan of the architect was for a building with an east and west portico equidistant from the north porch as Prof. Dörpfeld has maintained. The east and west façades were to be exactly alike, but, prevented by religious conservatism from building upon the sites of the Cecropium and Pandroseum, and thus compelled to abandon the western half of the original building, the architect sought still to save the similarity of the east and west façades. Since he was unable to build his projected west portico at the line to which he was forced back, he evolved as a substitute the idea of placing all the essential features of his west portico in one plane—column bases and base moulding of wall, columns and wall with windows, frieze and pediment. The low wall in the southernmost intercolumniation which for some reason was not completely closed was three courses high. The northern intercolumniation was completely closed as in Roman times and in the central ones, the windows rested on three courses equal in height to four normal Greek courses.