Greece Architecture Part 4

The Ionic order prevails: Ionic is the temple of Athena Poliade in Priene, perittero, hexastyle, with 11 columns on the long sides; there is the absence of the zoofóros. The Artemisium of Ephesus and the Didimeo near Miletus are reconstructed. Chirocrate and Dinocrate were the architects of the Artemisio, diptero, octastyle, with thirty-six columns, high m. 18, adorned, as in the old Artemisius, with reliefs (columnae caelatae). Under the leadership of Peonius of Ephesus and Daphni of Miletus it was begun around 330 BC. C. the reconstruction of the colossal Didimeo of m. 132 times 73: it was diptero, decastyle, with twelve columns in the pronaos, and with an uncovered courtyard (ipetral temple), a character which must also have been in the more ancient Didimeo, in imitation of the Egyptian sanctuaries. The building was not finished and remained, as Strabo (XIV, 634) says, without a roof.

According to sunglassestracker, the architect Ermogene, towards the end of the century. III, united elements of the Attic variety of the Ionic order with elements of the Asian variety; thus we reached the last expression of Ionic architecture: the typical buildings of Hermogenes were the temple of Artemis Leucofriene in Magnesia (220-206 BC), the temple of Dionysus in Teo, that of Zeus Sosipoli in Magnesia. The Doric order is represented in the Hellenistic age by the Athenaïon of Pergamum and by the temple of the mysteries of Samothrace (about 260 BC), with a double front porch of 6 columns, with the cell divided into three naves and finely decorated with a raised apse and a crypt, which seem to precede the Christian basilica. The Corinthian order is represented by the grandiose temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, carried out by order of Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria,

In the Hellenistic period, capitals of various shapes appeared: archaic or Aeolian, with crowns of leaves falling outside the Aegean of Macedonia; the palm capital of the portico of Athena in Pergamum; the capital with a simple crown with ovules from the buleuterium of Miletus; the Corinthian capital with busts in relief between the volutes of the Doric-Corinthian temple of Pesto; the capital with rich racemes and tendrils with winged taurine protomes of the propylaean of Eleusis, etc.

Rarer than the rectangular one is the circular sacred edifice, that is the thólos, which dates back to the shape of the primitive hut. Truly the thóloi were in the Archaic age buildings intended for musical agonis, always however in a sacred environment: so was the skiás raised in Sparta by Theodore of Samo in the sixth century, and so was the Pericleus oideīon in Athens later on. At the beginning of the century VI a thólos is attested to by the remains of buildings under the already supposed treasure of Sicyon in Delphi: it is a building with ptéroma and Doric entablature. But you have to go down to a later age to come across a thólosof great importance, the one already mentioned from Epidaurus: here too the external ptéroma is Doric, with 26 columns, while inside it was a colonnade of 14 Corinthian columns. The thólos of Olympia follows, which Philip had built after the battle of Chaeronea (338 BC); here the external ptéroma was Ionic with 18 columns, while in the interior 9 Corinthian half columns rose on high plinths.

In the Hellenistic age the type of round building is known to us especially from the Arsinoe ĩ on of Samothrace (prior to 281 BC); it was divided into two floors, the lower one consisting of a wall, the upper one with 44 pillars, through which niches were formed; half Corinthian columns corresponded internally to the external pillars. The type of the building recalls the Roman imperial mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian. Hellenistic is also the graceful temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, with pteroma originally 18 Corinthian columns.

The tholos of Olympia was like a votive solemn; circular votive monuments were in fact already in use in the century. IV. Thus the monument of Lysicrates (334 BC) in Athens can be adduced which, located near the sacred enclosure to Dionysus, must have supported a tripod sacred to the god: on a high rectangular base stands the closed Corinthian colonnade; in the capital the crown of acanthus leaves is replaced by a crown of marsh reeds; in the entablature there is the zoofóros, and on the convex roof rose the tripod above a support. This type of construction is linked to the type of the trophy, which then passed to the Romans, with a circular plan and external colonnades, as in the trophy of Ephesus and in the one near Magnesia.

In front of the temples were the altars, that is, elongated constructions in the shape of a large parallelepiped, on which sacrifices were made. Naturally these altars were covered with ornaments, like Fr. for example, the altar of Posidone near Didime (6th century BC), which had a large border of pearls and ovules on the top, with a strip above it, which ends at the corners in mighty volutes with palmettes. To the sec. VI dates back to the first construction of the great altar of Apollo in Cyrene, which in the century. IV was magnificently covered with marble. In the Hellenistic period the altar was a building in itself; the most notable example is the altar of Zeus Soter and Athena Nikefóros, on the acropolis of Pergamum, erected by Eumenes II between 183 and 174 BC. C. Of grandiose proportions (37.70 m by 34.60 m; height 10 m), the Pergamum altar rested on a crepidoma of three steps; there was a high plinth, adorned with a long relief representing the gigantomachy, and it opened to the west in a wide staircase, which led to the floor, in the middle of which was the actual altar; above the plinth there was a double Ionic colonnade all around. The altar of Gerone II in Syracuse, built in the century. III, is a basement of m. 198 in length by 24 in width.