EARLY GRECIAN ARCHITECTS.
In the year 548 B.C. the great temple to Apollo at Delphi, the work
of the legendary architects Agamedes and Trophonius, was destroyed by
fire. Of the four temples to the same deity that had been reared upon
the same site, this was the first in which marble was employed as a
building material. Naturally the question will present itself, how
could a temple built of marble be destroyed by fire? The answer is,
that while the main walls of the cell and the columns, entablatures,
pediments and other exposed parts of the early Greek temples were built
of marble, stone or sun-dried bricks, the roofs were generally of wood,
and were heavily timbered, sometimes calling for great strength to
support marble tiles. Much of the interior building material was also
of wood, as well as the statuary with which the earlier temples were
lavished and enriched. Thus if fire was started within the building,
either by accident or, as not infrequently happened, by the hand of an
incendiary, there was sufficient combustible material for it to feed
upon and to heat the entire structure, reducing the otherwise enduring
marble to crumbling lime.
The temple of Apollo having been thus destroyed, the much revered
and highly respected Oracle was left without shelter and a place of
business. This state of things of course could not long be allowed to
continue, and the Amphictyons, a legislative body, having under its
special care the Delphic temple, at once came to the front and ordered
a new temple built at a cost of about $300,000. One-fourth of this sum
was to be paid by the Delphians and the remaining three-fourths were to
be contributed by the other cities of Greece and those nations which
were in the habit of consulting the Oracle—a very proper distribution
of the expense, considering how extensive and widespread was the renown
and appreciation of the priestess. Amasis, King of Egypt, volunteered
a thousand talents of alumina, thus showing what his feelings were in
the matter, and the Alcmæonidæ, one of the oldest and most aristocratic
families of Athens, undertook the contract, it is hinted, mainly for
political reasons. This may be true, as they were much involved in
local politics, especially with the banishment of Pisistratus, the
tyrant, and they may have seen an opportunity in the rebuilding of
this temple to make themselves very popular. They certainly went about
it in the right way to achieve such a result, and did actually gain
much influence by their generosity and the broadminded manner in which
they disregarded the strict terms of the contract to do handsomer and
better work than it called for. One particular illustration of their
liberality has attracted the attention of the historian: it was the
building of the temple in Parian marble, instead of Porine stone. While
the Alcmæonidæ were prosecuting the work in this generous spirit, they
did not neglect their fallen enemies, the Pisistratidæ, and threw out
occasional innuendoes to the effect that the Pisistratidæ could tell
more about the origin of the fire that destroyed the late temple than
they evidently cared to, thereby intimating a crime as against their
rivals that it might have been difficult to have proved. They even won
the Oracle to their side by similar simple and ingenuous methods, with
the result that ever afterward the Oracle did not hesitate to speak a
kind word for the Alcmæonidæ and favor their native city, Athens.
The architect of this new temple was Spintharus, a Corinthian. As
nothing further seems to be known of him, we have been somewhat
particular to mention the importance of this work, to show that
Spintharus was an artist who stood very high in his profession at
the time. But as the temple was one of the longest in process of
construction, taking about seventy-two years to complete, it is not
likely that Spintharus lived to enjoy the full fruition of his work.
It may be of interest to add that no structure of its kind throughout
all Greece was made the depository of richer or more extensive treasure
than this temple to Apollo at Delphi, a fact not to be marvelled at
if we do not lose sight of the Oracle. We have already seen how it
excited the cupidity of the brothers Agamedes and Trophonius. What they
appropriated to themselves from the rich vaults of its predecessor was,
however, comparatively insignificant to the wholesale robberies that
went on from time to time of the fifth temple designed by Spintharus.
Herodotus says that the wealth of Delphi was better known to the
Persian Xerxes than were the contents of his own palace, and that after
forcing the pass of Thermopylæ he detached a portion of his army to
capture Delphi. It failed to do so, only through the interposition
of the Oracle or some other deity. Many years afterward the Phocians
plundered the temple of what might be represented by $10,600,000 of our
money. Still later the Gauls also made a rich haul, which the Romans
afterward found in their city of Tolosa unexpended, probably because
there was so much of it; and Nero is said to have taken from it five
hundred bronze statues at one time.
But these robberies fade into insignificance when the insult heaped
upon the Delphians and their Oracle by Constantine the Great is
recalled. This Roman vandal not only removed the sacred Tripod and
Brazen Column which supported it, but degenerated their use to the
adornment of the hippodrome of the new city he built on the Bosphorus.
The Brazen Column may still be seen in Constantinople, but the sacred
Tripod has disappeared forever. There is a little story connected with
a first disappearance of the Tripod that may be worth the telling. It
was lost at sea, but afterward recovered by some fishermen. When Pythia
was asked to decide to whom it should be given, her answer was that it
should be bestowed upon the wisest man in Greece. Accordingly it was
sent to Thales of Miletos. He, however, was too modest to retain it,
and passed it over to Bias as a wiser man; Bias was also embarrassed
by the selection, and presented it to another of the Grecian sages; he
to still another, and so on, until it had made the circuit of pretty
much every person in Greece with any claim at all to superior wisdom.
Finally, however, it came back once more to Thales, who successfully
ended its itinerary by dedicating it to the Delphic Apollo.
One of the earliest of the great temples to be erected in the Ionic
order was that begun in the Ionian city of Ephesus in Asiatic Greece
by Ctesiphon, a Cretan architect born in Cnossus, and his son,
Metagenes. This temple was erected to the glory of the many-breasted
and mummy-like appearing Artemis, a goddess peculiar to the Ephesians,
whom the Greek colonists there doubtless inherited from the Asiatic
races that preceded them in their Ionian settlement. There was nothing
of the graceful, virgin-like characteristics of Apollo’s sister, the
Arcadian Artemis, in this Ephesian goddess, but the Ionian Greeks were
quite partial to her, attended her with eunuch priests, and built in
her honor this temple, so grand and magnificent that it was regarded as
one of the seven wonders of the world.
Before alluding to some of the interesting facts that have been
preserved concerning the early history of this great temple it may
not be out of place to touch upon a custom which prevailed in Ephesus
in respect to the employment of architects, which Vitruvius relates.
He says: “In the magnificent and spacious Grecian city of Ephesus an
ancient law was made by the ancestors of the inhabitants, hard in its
nature, but nevertheless equitable. When an architect was entrusted
with the execution of a public work, an estimate thereof being lodged
in the hands of a magistrate, his property was held as security until
the work was finished. If, when finished, the expense did not exceed
the estimate, he was complimented with decrees and honors. So when
the excess did not amount to more than a fourth part of the original
estimate, it was defrayed by the public, and no punishment was
inflicted. But when more than one-fourth the estimate was exceeded, he
was required to pay the excess out of his own pocket.”
The honest Vitruvius almost sighs as he adds: “Would to God that such
a law existed among the Roman people, not only in respect to their
public, but also of their private buildings, for then the unskilful
could not commit their depredations with impunity, and those who were
most skilful in the intricacies of the art would follow the profession!
Proprietors would not be led into an extravagant expenditure, so as
to cause ruin; architects themselves, from the dread of punishment,
would be more careful in their calculations, and the proprietor would
complete his building for that sum or a little more, which he could
afford to expend. Those who can conveniently expend a given sum on
any work with the pleasing expectation of seeing it completed would
cheerfully add one-fourth more; but when they find themselves burdened
with the addition of half or even more than half of the expense
originally contemplated, losing their spirits and sacrificing what has
already been laid out, they incline to desist from its completion.”
There are, perhaps, some people even at the present time who can be
found to echo these sentiments of Vitruvius, and exclaim: Would to God
that such a law existed among the American people, especially in New
York and Chicago!
Theodorus of Samos, it will be remembered, laid the foundation of the
temple to Artemis of Ephesus in the year 600 B.C. To guard against the
destruction of the temple by earthquakes, a marshy site was chosen,
and Theodorus insured a firm foundation, by using charcoal, which was
rammed down solidly, and then covered with fleeces of wool. Ctesiphon
and his son did not, however, begin the superstructure until about
forty years later.
The dimensions of the building were very extensive, and although
the architecture was full of grandeur, grace and beauty were not
sacrificed. The length was four hundred and twenty-five feet; the
width two hundred and twenty feet. One hundred and twenty-seven
Parian marble columns, each sixty feet in height, surrounded the cell
in double rows, sixteen appearing in the front and rear façades, and
forty each on the sides. Herodotus states that most of these columns
were presented by the rich Crœsus, and some by other kings. The cell,
according to some authorities, was devoid of a roof, but Mr. Wood,
in his “Discoveries at Ephesus,” indicates otherwise. The whole
edifice, both exteriorly and interiorly, presented great richness and
elaboration of carving. The shafts of the columns in front of the
building were carved in relief, in three broad bands, to nearly half
their height, and those in the rear, in one band, to about one-quarter
of their height. The frieze and pediments were also worked out by the
chisel of the sculptor in designs of great and imposing beauty.
Many of the stones used in the building were very massive. An idea
of how huge some of these blocks were may be gathered from the fact
that the architrave alone contained pieces of marble thirty feet
long, and that Ctesiphon and Metagenes were forced to invent special
machinery and contrivances to convey the stones for the columns to the
building from the quarry eight miles distant. Vitruvius explains these
contrivances as follows: “He [Ctesiphon] made a frame of four pieces
of timber, two of which were equal in length to the shafts of the
columns, and were held together by the two transverse pieces. In each
end of the shaft he inserted iron pivots, whose ends were dovetailed
thereinto, and run with lead. The pivots worked in gudgeons fastened
to the timber frame, whereto were attached oaken shafts. The pivots
having a free revolution in the gudgeons, when the oxen were attached
and drew the frame, the shafts rolled round, and might have been
conveyed to any distance. The shafts having been thus transported, the
entablatures were to be removed, when Metagenes, the son of Ctesiphon,
applied the principle upon which the shafts had been conveyed to
the removal of those also. He constructed wheels about twelve feet
in diameter, and fixed the ends of the blocks of stone whereof the
entablature was composed into them; pivots and gudgeons were then
prepared to receive them in the manner just described, so that when the
oxen drew the machine the pivots, turning in the gudgeons, caused the
wheels to revolve, and thus the blocks, being enclosed like axles in
the wheels, were brought to the work without delay. An example of this
species of machine may be seen in the rolling stone used for smoothing
the walks in palæstræ. But the method would not have been practicable
for any considerable distance. From the quarries to the temple is a
length of not more than eight thousand feet, and the interval is a
plain without any declivity. Within our own time, when the base of the
colossal statue of Apollo in the temple of that god was decayed through
age, to prevent the fall and destruction of it, a contract for a base
from the same quarry was made with Pæonius. It was twelve feet long,
eight feet wide, and six feet high. Pæonius, driven to an expedient,
did not use the same as Metagenes did, but constructed a machine for
the purpose by a different application of the same principle. He made
two wheels about fifteen feet in diameter, and fitted the ends of the
stone into these wheels. To connect the two wheels he framed into them,
round their circumference, small pieces of two inches square, not more
than one foot apart, each extending from one wheel to the other, and
thus enclosing the stone. Round these bars a rope was coiled, to which
the traces of the oxen were made fast, and as it was drawn out the
stone rolled by means of the wheels; but the machine, by its constant
swerving from a direct, straightforward path, stood in need of constant
rectification, so that Pæonius was at last without money for the
completion of his contract.” The uninitiated who have speculated as
to how the ancients succeeded in moving and transporting considerable
distances such huge blocks of stone, without the assistance of our
modern machinery and contrivances, are given in this quotation from
Vitruvius some hint as to the ingenuity and inventive ability of the
early architects and builders.
The temple, however, was slow in building, and Ctesiphon and Metagenes,
after writing a book on their great architectural work, passed away in
due course of time. Their places were filled by other architects, of
whom there is no record, but Demetrius, a priest of Diana, together
with Daphnis and Peonius, Ephesian architects, finally completed
the work some two hundred and twenty years after it was begun by
Ctesiphon and his son. In the course of that long interval, Scopas, an
architectural sculptor of Paros, of whom there will be more to relate
as we go on, contributed one column, which was regarded as so beautiful
that it was accepted as a model for those that followed.
Together with its architectural glories, the interior was made a
depository for many of the finest works of the great artists of
antiquity, and Scopas is said to have introduced Caryatides here. This
is doubted, but he certainly furnished a very grand statue of Hecate;
and Praxiteles, with his almost equally gifted son, adorned the shrine.
Tradition relates that upon the very night that the great Alexander was
born, the Ephesian temple was destroyed by fire, through the rapacious
greed for notoriety of one Herostratus. This antique fire-bug, when
put to the torture for his crime, confessed that his only object was
to gain immortality for his name, an ambition which he succeeded in
accomplishing through the stupidity of the states-general of Asiatic
Greece. They decreed that the name of Herostratus should never be
mentioned, and of course it always was, as all the contemporary
historians felt impelled to record the fact that a man by the name of
Herostratus was not to be mentioned, and to give the reasons therefor,
and much more about Herostratus which, had there been no decree, might
have been left unsaid. The result was and has been that a crank of
antiquity has lived by name for twenty-five hundred years, and is quite
likely to live for as many more.
When Alexander the Great reached maturity, doubtless feeling the
depression consequent upon having his advent into the world which
he was destined to dominate, associated with the destruction of so
magnificent a temple to the Asiatic Diana, offered, it is said, to pay
the cost of its restoration, provided—there is frequently a proviso
coupled with these liberal offers—provided his name should be inscribed
on the new edifice. While the Ephesians were made glad by the offer,
they did not readily fall in with the proviso. The cleverness of
their diplomatic reply, however, appealed to the susceptible side of
Alexander’s human nature, and effected a compromise. They told the
Macedonian that “it was not right for a god to make offerings to gods.”
The architect for the new temple was the great favorite of Alexander
and his fellow-countryman, Dinocrates, who it is said rebuilt the
edifice on even a more extravagant scale than was the first. Much of
the marble and sculpturing of the old temple entered into the new,
and the painters, statuaries and sculptors of the time again lavished
upon it their best art. The walls were embellished from time to time
by Parrhasius and Apelles; and Timarete, the first female artist of
note of whom there is any record, contributed a picture of the honored
Artemis. It is related that the folding doors or gates of this new
temple were made of cypress that had been allowed to season for four
generations, and that when the pieces of cypress wood were glued
together the glue was allowed to remain for four years to harden.
Mutianus, a Roman architect, states that when he found them, which was
four hundred years afterward, they were as fresh and beautiful as when
new.
Some remains of the splendor of this pagan temple are still doing
architectural duty. The great dome of the beautiful Byzantine church
of Santa Sophia in Constantinople, now a Turkish mosque, is supported
by columns of green jasper, brought from the Ephesian temple by the
Roman Emperor Justinian, and two of the pillars in the cathedral at
Pisa are also from the same source.
There is some confusion as to the works of art and decorations
associated respectively with the two temples just described which
it would be vain to attempt to clear up, believing that it matters
but little, inasmuch as it is not likely that Herostratus could have
destroyed completely the first temple, and that the services of
Dinocrates were engaged more in the line of making good the damage
done than in erecting an entirely new edifice. The upper colonnades of
Corinthian columns, however, which Mr. Wood shows as appearing in the
interior of the temple, are clearly the work of Dinocrates.
Demetrius, the priest of Diana, and his associates, Peonius and
Daphnis, the three architects who completed the first Artemesian
temple, having flourished over two hundred years after the foundation
of that structure was laid, are not, of course, to be classed among the
earlier of the Grecian architects, and, properly, should not be treated
under this heading; but as they are all grouped together in the
erection of another great Asiatic-Greek temple, and are not further met
with, it may be just as well to add what there is in respect to them at
this time.
The temple referred to was that dedicated to Apollo in the Ionian city
of Miletus, not far distant from the scene of the joint labors of
these architects at Ephesus. Its order was also Ionic, and although
not as large as that to Artemis, it could have been very little, if
any, inferior to it in columnar effect and general impressive beauty,
if not grandeur. It was three hundred and two feet in length by one
hundred and sixty-four feet in width, and, like the temple at Ephesus,
was surrounded by double rows of columns, each column, however, being
sixty-three feet in height. Indeed, Strabo, the celebrated Roman
traveller and geographer, who visited the ruins of the temple during
the first century before the Christian era, testifies that “it is the
greatest of all temples,” and adds that it remained without a roof
“in consequence of its bigness”; but this allusion to its roofless
condition is probably due to the fact that the building was never
wholly completed. Pausanias also gives it high praise, and speaks of
it as one of the wonders of Ionia, and Vitruvius numbers it “as one of
the four temples which had raised their architects to the summit of
renown”[2]—a renown, it would seem, that has been very much begrudged
them, as the literature of their time furnishes practically no data in
regard to them personally, and what estimate can be formed of them is
wholly based upon the importance of their works.
Peonius, we are told, was an Ephesian, but as to even the nativity
of the other two architects we are in the dark, although Daphnis is
supposed to have been a Miletian. There is also some little uncertainty
as to the exact date when they exercised their profession, but it is
probably safe to say that it was sometime within the first half of the
fourth century before Christ.
Two columns of the great temple to Apollo have stood proudly against
the attacks of time, and although scarred by their long battles, are
yet evidencing the glories of a structure of which they were once but
an insignificant part.
In the year 555 B.C. there lived four architects, to whose skill was
entrusted the building of a temple that should be in all respects
worthy to stand for the respect due the dignity, power and extreme
longevity of the great Olympian Zeus—the king-god of the Greeks.
The foundation for this shrine was laid in the time of Pisistratus,
a tyrant of Athens, who contributed several architectural works to
that city, but whose several banishments greatly interrupted their
building. This was particularly the case with the great temple to Zeus.
However, it was sufficiently advanced for Pisistratus to dedicate
it before he fell from power. It has been stated that it was due to
the genuine dislike which the Athenians felt for Pisistratus and his
sons, who succeeded him, that four hundred years were allowed to flow
by before the temple was finished. This is hardly just to a ruler of
great loyalty to his native city, and of unquestioned integrity in the
discharge of his public duties. It is more probable that the delay
was due to the animosity of the rival Athenian family of Alcmæonidæ,
who, piqued by jealousy, fanned a flame of opposition to the works of
Pisistratus that continued for several centuries.
Antistates, Antimachides, Calleschros and Porinus were the four
architects engaged by Pisistratus, who, like their professional
brothers employed on the temples of Diana, Apollo and Ceres, were,
according to Vitruvius, entitled to immortality for the grandeur of
their works, but about whom there is no other information to be given.
This temple to Jupiter was not built upon the Acropolis at Athens, like
that to the patron goddess of the city, Minerva, but upon a raised
peribolos within the city below, and on the site of an earlier temple
to the same god, erected in the time of Deucalion, but which had
perished from the ravages of ages.
It was like most of the early Doric temples, of peripteral
construction, or surrounded by columns on all four sides. Aristotle,
who saw it before it was finished, was so much impressed by its size
that he compared it to the Pyramids; and one of his scholars remarked
that “though unfinished, it called forth astonishment, and when
finished would be unexcelled.”
Perseus, king of Macedonia, and Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria (176-164
B.C.) finally finished the cell and placed the Corinthian columns of
the portico, employing for the purpose a Roman architect of great skill
by the name of Cossutius. It was then, probably, that Livy made the
remark “that among so many temples this is the only one worthy of a
god.”
Sylla, however, when he laid siege to Athens, some forty years later,
robbed the temple most unmercifully, carrying away with him many
of the columns to Rome. But his work of destruction was more than
compensated for by his successor, Hadrian, two hundred years still
later, under the immediate direction of the celebrated Roman architect,
Luigi Cannia. Hadrian, in his love of great architectural effects, was
inspired to beautify the peribolos with a peristyle one hundred rods
in length, and his architect contributed a new section to the temple
itself, and added three grand vestibules.
The sacred enclosure, after Hadrian had finished it, which had a
circumference of about twenty-three hundred feet, was ornamented by
statues, contributed in great numbers by different cities. The length
of the temple at this time, according to Stuart, was, upon the upper
step, three hundred and fifty-four feet, and its breadth one hundred
and seventy-one feet. The columns, which surrounded the cell, now all
Corinthian, numbered one hundred and twenty-four, all of Pentelican
marble, of which there are sixteen still standing. In the pronaos, or
inner portico, Hadrian caused to be placed four statues of himself, two
in Thracian and two in Egyptian marble, which were, perhaps, three more
than a moderately modest man might have felt necessary.
Another gorgeous temple to the great Jupiter was begun about five
years later than that at Athens by the architect Libon, an Eleian, in
Olympia, which Lysias speaks of as “the fairest spot in Greece.” In
Olympia the spiritual and physical natures of the Grecian people may
be said to have combined in the perfection of development. Here the
glories of the body, the capabilities of the finest muscular strength
and athletic action, were exhibited in gymnasium and stadion, and here
the religious spirit of the people arose to the fullest intensity, and
as though doubly inspired by the action and strength of the perfect
body, found expression in temple and sanctuary.
So great was the reward, so enthusiastic the reception accorded the
champions in the athletic games of Olympia, that they call forth a
protest from the sensitive Vitruvius, who seems to feel that the honors
conferred upon them should have been reserved for the literary lights
of the time. “The ancestors of the Greeks,” he complains, “held the
celebrated wrestlers who were victors in the Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian
and Nemean games in such esteem that, decorated with the palm and
crown, they were not only publicly thanked, but were also, in their
triumphant return to their respective homes, borne to their cities and
countries in four-horse chariots, and were allowed pensions for life
from the public revenue. When I consider these circumstances, I cannot
help thinking it strange that similar honors, or even greater, are
not decreed to those authors who are of lasting service to mankind.
Such certainly ought to be the case; for the wrestler, by training,
merely hardens his own body for the conflict; a writer, however, not
only cultivates his own mind, but affords every one else the same
opportunity, by laying down precepts for acquiring knowledge and
exciting the talents of his reader.”
So attractive was this spot on the banks of the Alpheus in Ellis, in
natural charm, as well as in the purposes for which it was visited,
that it is here, as nowhere else in Greece, with the possible exception
of the Acropolis at Athens, the Grecian architects lavished their
best skill and best illustrated their appreciation of the fact,
that the effect of fine buildings is greatly augmented by grouping
them gracefully together in one place, producing, as it were, an
architectural picture. “Many objects,” says Pausanias, “may a man see
in Greece, and many things may he hear that are worthy of admiration,
but above them all the doings at Eleusis and the sights at Olympia have
somewhat in them of a soul divine.”
The worship of Zeus was an old worship in Olympia, so that when Libon
was entrusted with authority to erect a new temple to that deity, out
of the spoils taken in subjugating the Pisans and other neighboring
cities which had revolted from the Eleans, he gave free reign to his
art, and produced a Doric temple which rivalled that in Athens, though
not as large.
Pausanias informs us that the Olympian temple was two hundred and
thirty feet long, ninety-five feet wide and sixty-eight feet high;
that it was surrounded by marble columns and covered with marble cut
in the form of tiles. The front and rear pediments were adorned with
sculpture, as well as the metopes of the frieze. The interior was of
two orders of columns supporting lofty galleries, through which there
was a passage to the throne of Jove “glittering with gold and gems.”
It was this temple of Libon’s that became, soon after its completion,
the casket which held the _chef d’œuvre_ of Phidias, the colossal
statue of Jupiter carved in ivory and gold, of which Quintilian
observes that it added a new religious feeling to Greece. The story is
well known how Phidias, being asked by his nephew Panænus, a painter,
who assisted him in the decoration of the temple, how he could have
conceived that air of divinity which he had expressed in the face
of this noble statue, replied that he had copied it from Homer’s
description of the god. Jupiter was presented naked to his waist,
but draped from his girdle down. The significance of this was that
the great Jove, knowing himself to be of heavenly origin, thought it
best to conceal himself in part only from man. He was also given a
beard for the reason that the Greeks, clinging to the Oriental notion,
believed that beards carried with them an air of majesty; an idea, by
the way, which was not shared in by the Romans, who spoke with derision
of their bearded forefathers, and permitted the wearing of beards
only to those who were in disgrace, and to poor philosophers, who
probably, like our poor modern poets, found a visit to the barber’s an
unnecessary and expensive luxury.
Rome during these early times, and before she had awakened to the
cultivation of the arts at home, was prone to borrow from Greece the
talent of which she was in need. It was about this time that we find
the first record of such a call made by Rome upon her eastern neighbor
for architects. The demand was answered by the two architectural
sculptors Damophilus and Gorgasus, who were imported by the Dictator
Posthumius to erect two temples in Rome, one to Castor and Pollux
or, as some authorities assert, to Liber and Libera (Bacchus and
Proserpine), which stood near the Forum and Temple of Vesta, and the
other to Ceres, on the slope of the Aventine hill, near the Circus.
These temples were vowed by Posthumius, in his battle with the Latins,
496 B.C., and were dedicated by Viscellinus some years later.
Before closing this chapter, in which the attempt is made to gather
together some of the earlier architects of Greece, it may be as well to
include within it a number of such artists who though not rising to the
highest fame, or who were not connected with the most elegant buildings
of their time, nevertheless had the good fortune to have their names
preserved in history.
Pliny tells a rather amusing and interesting account of such an
architect by the name of Bupalus, who probably flourished about the
year 524 B.C. He is said to have come from a very old family of
artists who exercised the art of the statuary from the beginning of
the Olympiads; but as Pliny simply speaks of him as an architect and
artist, but does not mention any building attributed to his skill, he
becomes a subject for notice only in connection with the Iambic poet
Hipponax, whom he used his art to torment. Pliny relates that Bupalus
and his brother Athenis amused themselves by making caricatures of the
satirical poet. Hipponax was undersized, thin and ugly, and probably,
like the modern poet Pope, suffered his physical defects to give him
a cynical view of life. The caricatures of the playful Bupalus and
Athenis naturally affected unpleasantly his _amour propre_, and he
employed the weapon at his command, his ironical pen, to strike back at
his tormentors, with the result that he gave them a good pen lashing
in a satirical poem, in which he also chastised his Ionian brethren for
what he considered their effeminate luxury. In the same poem, also,
he did not spare his own parents, and it is said that he even had the
temerity to ridicule the gods.
There is, of course, always some one to start the story that a woman is
at the source of all the infirmities that any particularly conspicuous
man suffers from, and there are those who claim that Bupalus did not
originate the trouble, but that it started through the fact that the
architect had a very beautiful daughter of whom Hipponax was greatly
enamored. Like the earlier Iambic poet Archilochus, who got into a
similar scrape, the girl’s father refused to permit his daughter to
marry a poor little withered poet, with the result that the poet’s life
was ever after embittered. How very bitter Hipponax became, especially
against the ladies, is illustrated by a remark which is attributed
to him: “There are,” he said, “only two happy days in the life of a
married man—that in which he receives his wife, and that in which he
carries out her corpse.”
After his death Leonidas of Tarentum, in an elegant epigram, warned
travellers not to pass too near his tomb, lest they rouse the sleeping
wasp. The grave of Hipponax, by the way, instead of being covered with
ivy and roses, like that of a mild poet, was planted with thorns and
thistles.
Pausanias mentions several of these more obscure architects. Agnaptus
was one, who built a porch in the Altis, or wall at Olympia, called
afterward by the Eleans the “porch of Agnaptus,” and Antiphilus,
Pothæus and Megacles were three other waifs on our sea of oblivion.
They were responsible for the Treasury of the Carthaginians also
at Olympia. Pyrrhus, with his two sons, Lacrates and Hermon, built
the Olympian Treasury of the Epidamnians. There were ten of these
Treasuries, by the way, raised by different states, which were not only
architecturally very beautiful, but which contained statues and other
offerings of great value.
Strabo mentions an architect and sculptor by the name of Hermocreon,
who designed a gigantic and beautiful altar at Parium on the Propontis
in Asia Minor; and Eurycles, a Spartan architect, who built the baths
at Corinth, and “adorned them with beautiful marbles,” must not be
overlooked, although he may have been of a much later date.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] The other three temples which Vitruvius praised thus highly were
those to Diana at Ephesus, Jupiter Olympus at Athens, and Ceres at
Eleusis.