Problems in Periclean Buildings

by G. W. Elderkin

It must have been the desire for close similarity between the two façades which prevented both Greek and Roman architect from placing four normal courses beneath the western windows. The change from blocks of standard height led to a complication because there were eleven ordinary courses in the western wall instead of twelve which would have given exactly nine courses of the higher blocks. The eastern windows were simultaneously visible between the columns from points in the axis of the door (Fig. 7). It is natural to assume that those of the original west façade were to have been so. The curtailment of the plan which compelled the architect to place a compressed west façade on a high socle, eliminated the door. A natural substitution was a third window.

This theory as to the composition of the west wall suggests an interpretation of the unusual construction at the upper south-west corner of the temple (A. J. A., 1908, p. 191, fig. 2, and p. 194, fig. 6; 1910, p. 297, fig. 3). There the south wall was reduced to one half of its regular thickness, and this thinner wall flanked on the east by the metopon which rested in part upon a square horizontal slab. The purpose of this metopon has remained obscure.

As hitherto remarked, it was the architect's intention to close the southern as well as the northern intercolumniation of the west wall but he was prevented, apparently for some religious reason. Now it seems very probable that the unusual construction at the corner is the result of an attempt to build a substitute wall for that which could not be placed in the southern intercolumniation. Two considerations favor this explanation. In the first place the horizontal slab inclines toward the opening. The certain purpose of this inclination was to shed rain-water. Secondly, traces on the south wall show that the metopon was coextensive in height with the opening and projected along the eastern edge of the horizontal slab. The epistyle of the metopon, which appears in the restoration (A. J. A., 1908, fig. 6, p. 196) is purely a conjecture and may be eliminated. But how far did this metopon project into the building? Was it coextensive in width as well as in height with the opening? The distance which the metopon projected into the building is not certainly known. In the restoration it is given as one foot but this is a calculation based on a combination of probabilities. The obvious provision to keep out rain-water, if it was to be successful, demands the extension of the metopon to the inner corner of the horizontal slab. But this slab unsupported could not have carried a marble metopon. This is a difficulty which seems to compel the assumption that the metopon was in part of lighter material.

Apart from serving the purpose of keeping out rain, the conjectured metopon would also be a counterpart to the northern intercolumniation when the façade was viewed from the west. The increase in weight due to the metopon and the horizontal slab necessitated a counterbalancing reduction in the weight of the south wall because of its insecure foundations. The idea, in short, is simply this. Just as when the architect was not allowed to place the west façade where he wished and retreated to a line at which he was allowed to build it in a necessarily modified form, so when he could not build a wall in the southern intercolumniation of that façade, he withdrew still farther back and built a substitute at the line allowed. The extra weight thus produced was partly responsible for the thinning of the insecurely founded south wall.

It is Prof. Dörpfeld's theory that the Cecropium compelled the architect to place the present west wall 1 m. east of the line at which it was intended in the original plan to stand (Ath. Mitt., 1904, p. 105). He therefore regards that wall as an interior one of the original symmetrical temple. The theory here advanced is that the west wall is the original west façade compressed into one plane and placed at the line up to which the architect was permitted to build. The west wall of the Pre-Persian Erechtheum seems to have stood at about the same line to judge from the representation of it and the olive close by in the archaic pedimental sculpture to which reference has already been made (Petersen, Burgtempel, p. 22, abb. 2). Just as the architect of the Propylaea planned to cut through the Pelasgic wall and to build upon the precinct of Brauronian Artemis, but when he came to lay foundations was stopped at the wall, so the contemporary architect of the Erechtheum planned a symmetrical temple the west part of which was to occupy the site of the precinct of Pandrosus and Cecrops, but when he came to actual construction was stopped by the same religious conservatism. The form of the present west wall is as much like the originally planned west façade as the architect could make it. East and west façades were to be equidistant from the north porch and from the Caryatid Porch which would have served to break the monotony of the long rear wall.

Having discovered in the west wall the compressed façade of an originally symmetrically planned Erechtheum, it is desirable to inquire whether the curtailment of that plan caused a crowding of cults within the temple as finally built. It has already been remarked that the feeling which the north porch creates is that it should be, and was intended to be the porch to an interior of larger dimensions than those of the present plan. Now the thalassa and the mark of the trident were fixed, but the paintings of the Butadae and the three altars were movable. It is altogether probable that the congestion in the west half of the present Erechtheum was due to the crowding in of a chamber with the three altars of Poseidon-Erechtheus, Hephaestus and Butes, and the paintings of the Butadae—a chamber which in the original plan was to be placed at the west end of the symmetrical temple (Fig. 12).

Within the original Erechtheum at the east end marked off by a partition-wall was to be the shrine of Athena Polias. The western chamber of Poseidon-Erechtheus, the exact counterpart of the eastern, was to receive the altars and paintings. The intervening central chamber of proportions in harmony with those of the north porch was to contain the thalassa and the sacred olive, which would require that the temple be in part hypaethral. Furtwängler (Sitzb. Mün. Akad., 1904, p. 371) rightly indeed objects to Dörpfeld's theory that the western cella in the original temple was to be an opisthodomus, on the ground that if the eastern cella contained a divinity, the western ought also. Furthermore, for those who believe that the magnificent north porch determines the front of the Erechtheum, the western cella would have been situated on the side, not at the rear of the temple. The interior wall-pilasters on either side of the doors were intended in the original to carry heavy cross-beams. In the temple as built, the eastern pair were carried up only five courses above the orthostates, i.e. as high as the partition-walls. Their completion was rendered unnecessary when the builders decided to put in the καμπύλη σελίς.

When this original plan had to be abandoned, not only was the large central chamber reduced in breadth, but was divided into a front and rear cella. In the first of these, which one entered immediately from the north porch (ἐσελθοῦσι) were placed the three altars and on the walls, the paintings of the Butadae. In the inner cella (ἔνδον) were the trident-mark and the thalassa. It is perfectly clear why Pausanias found no door leading from the first chamber of the διπλοῦν οἴκημα into the ναὸς τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς. In the original plan, the cella of Athena and the large central chamber of the tokens were connected by a door in the middle of their partition-wall, while the cellae of Athena and Poseidon-Erechtheus were not to be in immediate connection. These relations were preserved in the curtailed plan. The meaning of the door in the west wall is also simple. In the original plan the sacred olive tree and the thalassa were to stand in the large central chamber, but in the curtailed plan the sacred olive was left outside the temple and in the Pandroseum. A closed wall between the two tokens would have separated them completely. They belonged together, and a door was a poor substitute for a common chamber but it was the only means of connection possible.