THE ARCHITECTS OF THE AGE OF PERICLES.
It is not the intention, in recalling some of the more conspicuous
architects who flourished in the time of Pericles, to confine them to
those only who were directly in his employ, but to group together all
who became prominent factors in the architectural development of that
age, both for some years before and after Pericles’s reign of power.
To have carried forward the many important works which the great leader
instituted, and which were advanced with a precision and rapidity
remarkable for that or any other time, considering their size and
importance, the skill and services of many architects were brought
naturally into requisition. As a result we have the record of an
unusually large number of such artists, and in respect to a few some
little specific data relating to their lives. The architects, however,
of many of the most important works are unknown.
If we approach Athens, like the Attic mariner of old, through the
Piræus, one of its sea gates, we are attracted at once to the beautiful
architectural display which this seaport town, some five or six
miles distant from the Grecian metropolis, presents. The entrance to
the harbor was ornamented with two lions, and the harbor-basin was
fringed with magnificent colonnades and porticos, which disguised the
warehouses and bazaars. Within the town were numerous temples, two
theatres and other buildings of artistic effect and merit.
The road to Athens lay between massive fortified walls having a width
of fifteen feet at the top, and built to a height of sixty feet. They
were known as the “Long Walls,” and they enclosed a space about the
Piræus, said by Thucydides to have been not less than one hundred and
twenty-four stadia in circumference, or about fifteen miles.
It is only just to state that the walls which led from Athens to
Piræus, as well as those which connected it with the other sea gates
of Munychia and Phalerus, were originally planned and partly executed
under Themistocles and Cimon. Themistocles intended to construct these
walls to a height of one hundred and twenty feet; but Pericles deemed
this entirely unnecessary, and cut the height in two, as we have seen.
He also added a third wall between that running to the north of the
Piræan fortifications and that reaching to the Phalerum. Socrates
speaks of having heard Pericles mention this wall to the people.
The architects for much of this massive mural work were Hippodamus
and Callicrates, and because Pericles did not hurry them to the same
extent that he hurried others engaged in perhaps less important, if
more decorative, undertakings, Cratinus, the satirist, ridiculed the
slowness of the work, while aiming a sly shaft of irony at Pericles’s
oratorical gifts:
“Stones upon stones the orator has pil’d
With swelling words, but words will build no walls.”
Hippodamus was one of the geniuses of his day, and has been called
the “Wren of his age.” Perhaps it would be more fitting to speak of
Sir Christopher Wren as the Hippodamus of _his_ time, inasmuch as the
architectural achievements of the Greek were on a much more magnificent
scale than those of the Englishman. Among some of the conspicuous works
credited to him was the grand Athenian Agora, or Forum, which was made
up of a rich assemblage of colonnades, temples, altars and statues, all
taking his name as the Hippodamæa. But whether he is to be credited
with being more especially a civil engineer than an architect may be
inferred from his work at the Piræus and in laying out entire cities.
He was called the “Excentric Architect” doubtless because he mingled
with the practice of his profession a desire to be considered as
thoroughly versed in all the physical sciences, a personal affectation
which caused him to be ranked among the sophists. It is claimed that it
was against Hippodamus that Aristophanes aimed much of his wit.
Hippodamus was the son of Euryphon of Miletus, one of the most famous
of the Greek physicians and among the first to have knowledge of the
difference between the veins and arteries, and the uses of each. As
to his early education and advantages we are not informed, he being
referred to by early writers only in a professional way.
Besides his employment upon the “Long Walls,” the Agora and other
edifices, Pericles engaged his talents, as we have intimated, in laying
out the port of Piræus, which he did, with broad streets and avenues
intersecting each other at right angles across the city. This plan of
street construction he also introduced in other cities of Greece and
her colonies with which he had to do, especially at Thurü on the site
of the ancient Sybaris, which he visited with the Athenian colonists,
and later at Rhodes. This last-mentioned city, which in the age of
Pericles was one of the most beautiful, regular and prosperous of the
times, was almost wholly the work of Hippodamus.
Callicrates, who assisted Hippodamus with the “Long Walls,” was also an
associate of Ictinus, perhaps the greatest architect of his time, in
the building of the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis. The architect
Callicrates should not be mistaken for the Lacedæmonian sculptor of
the same name who achieved great celebrity for his skill in carving
the most minute objects, and of whom it is related that he made ants
and other insects in ivory which were so very small that their limbs
could not be distinguished by the naked eye. This seems all the more
remarkable when it is remembered that the ancients had no magnifying
glasses.
A walk of five or six miles under the shadows of the tall walls of
Hippodamus and Callicrates to view the greater architectural glories
of the city of Athens in the time of Pericles will doubtless repay us.
While this queen city of the ancient world is enrobed in many triumphs
of the builder’s art, we will probably pass them all by for the time
being to examine more carefully the gems that stand forth from the
Acropolis, glittering under the blue Grecian sky like white jewels in
the proud city’s coronet.
This magnificent citadel, protected by Pelasgian walls and dedicated
to the pagan deity Minerva, could be entered but upon one side, the
western, where the massive gate or vestibule of the Propylæa occupied
the centre. Fragments of this great gate still give evidence to the
modern traveller of its former stately splendor.
“Here,” says Bishop Wordsworth, “above all places at Athens, the mind
of the traveller enjoys an exquisite pleasure. It seems as if this
portal had been spared in order that our imagination might send through
it, as through a triumphal arch, all the glories of Athenian antiquity
in visible parade. It was this particular point in the localities of
Athens which was most admired by the Athenians themselves; nor is
this surprising; let us conceive such a restitution of this fabric
as its surviving fragments will suggest—let us imagine it restored
to its pristine beauty—let it rise once more in the full dignity of
its youthful nature—let all its architectural decorations be fresh
and perfect—let their mouldings be again brilliant with their glowing
tints of red and blue—let the coffers of its soffits be again spangled
with stars, and the marble antæ be fringed over as they were once with
delicate embroidery of ivy-leaf ... and then let the bronze valves of
these five gates of the Propylæa be suddenly flung open and all the
splendors of the interior of the Acropolis burst upon the view.”
If this imaginative restoration of the sublimities of the Propylæa
is not sufficient to excite some interest in the building and the
slave-born architect who was its creator, let the glowing words of
Symonds be added, which refer not only to the grand vestibule itself,
but to the Panathenaic processions which were wont to pass its gates.
“Musing thus upon the staircase of the Propylæa we may say with truth
that all our modern art is but as child’s play to that of the Greeks.
Very soul-subduing is the gloom of a cathedral like the Milanese Duomo
when the incense rises in blue clouds athwart the bands of sunlight
falling from the dome, and the crying of choirs upborne on the wings
of organ music fills the whole vast space with a mystery of melody.
Yet such ceremonial pomps as this are but as dreams and shapes of
visions when compared with the clearly defined splendors of a Greek
procession through marble peristyles in open air beneath the sun and
sky. That spectacle combined the harmonies of perfect human forms in
movement with the divine shapes of statues, the radiance of carefully
selected vestments with hues inwrought upon pure marble. The rhythms
and melodies of the Doric mood were sympathetic to the proportions of
the Doric colonnades. The grove of pillars through which the pageant
passed grew from the living rocks into shapes of beauty, fulfilling by
the inbreathed spirit of man nature’s blind yearning after absolute
completion. The sun itself, not thwarted by artificial gloom or tricked
with alien colors of stained glass, was made to minister in all his
strength to a pomp the pride of which was a display of form in manifold
magnificence. The ritual of the Greeks was the ritual of a race at one
with nature, glorying in its affiliation to the mighty mother of all
life, and striving to add by human art the coping stone and final touch
to her achievement.”
The Propylæa stretched in all about one hundred and seventy feet across
the western side of the citadel, and was entirely built of Pentelic
marble. In the centre was a portico sixty feet broad of six fluted
Doric columns, each column thirty feet in height, and all supporting
a noble pediment. From this portico projected on either side a wing,
entered through three Ionic columns. Six Ionic columns assisted in
supporting the roof of the vestibule. The marble beams of this roof
were from seventeen to twenty-two feet in length and correspondingly
solid. The ceiling was richly carved and ornamented. Immediately in the
rear of the Ionic columns and at the end facing the Acropolis stood
the terminal wall, with its five bronze gates, the centre one, which
was the largest, being sufficiently broad to allow the passage of a
chariot or other such vehicle. Beyond this wall and its gates was the
posticum, adding eighteen feet to the depth of forty-three feet which
the building otherwise possessed. The temple of the “Wingless Victory,”
and the “Painted Chamber,” containing the finest works of the painter
Polygnotus, as they have been named, formed the wings, which presented
unbroken walls to the front, relieved only by the four Ionic columns
that supported the graceful entablature and pediment of the temple of
Niké Apteros on the right.
As the building was begun in the year 437 B.C., and was entirely
completed within a period of five years, and was one of the most
imposing structures of its day, Pausanias is led to reflect that, “in
felicity of execution and in boldness and originality of design, it
rivalled the Parthenon.” Lübke’s comment on the structure is: “Thus in
this building the idea of fortress-like defence, as well as festive
welcome, was equally expressed. Especially admirable, however, was
the rich ceiling of the great three-naved court, both on account of
the bold span of its beams and the magnificent decoration of the
spaces between them (the coffers), which were brilliant with gold
and colors.[3] The Ionic form of the columns in the interior also
corresponded with this festive, cheerful character; while the two rows
of columns on the outside, together with the rest of the exterior of
the building, exhibited the seriousness and dignity of the Doric style.”
Thus has much been quoted in description and eulogy of this noble piece
of architecture; would that as much might be quoted in respect to the
talents and career of its gifted designer, but of him there is only the
shadow of comment, from which it is possible to weave but the faintest
fabric of certainty concerning his life.
His name was Mnesicles, and we are told that he was a slave born in
the household of Pericles. That he should have been chosen to create
so important an architectural work speaks for the privilege which the
humblest born might hope to attain in rising to positions of trust and
prominence in the days of that great leader. Mnesicles early manifested
an aptitude for architecture, and was permitted by his illustrious
patron and owner to exercise his talent in the erection of buildings
of inferior consequence before being entrusted with more ambitious
works. The Propylæa was not the only work of magnitude upon which
he was engaged, nor was it the most beautiful, in the judgment of some
critics, although the most important, for he was the architect as well
of the graceful Doric temple of Theseus, which has always been regarded
as one of the finest architectural conceptions the ancient city of
Athens possessed.
[Illustration: THE FALL OF MNESICLES FROM THE PROPYLÆA.]
An incident in his life which awakened the affectionate interest of
Pericles and the solicitude of the goddess Athene, whom he was serving
so well, is told by Plutarch and other early biographers. It is in
effect that while inspecting the almost completed work of the Propylæa
he fell from the summit of the pediment and was most severely injured.
He was taken at once to the house of Pericles, where he received the
personal attention of the great ruler. It was while he lay at death’s
door that it is said Minerva appeared to Pericles in a dream, and told
him to administer to Mnesicles a medicine distilled from the wall-plant
pellitory. This was done, and the life of the architect was spared.
The only other fact associated with the life of Mnesicles which has
been preserved to us is one mentioned by Pliny to the effect that the
sculptor Stipax of Cyprus made a statue of the architect which became
very celebrated in its time, and which was called _Splanchnoptes_.
It was given this name because it represented a person roasting the
entrails of the victim at a sacrifice, at the same time blowing the
fire with his breath. There is nothing suggestive of the architect in
question or his profession, but it is supposed to have been a statue
of Mnesicles, from the fact that Pliny speaks of the subject as having
been a slave of Pericles, who was cured of the wounds received in a
fall from the Propylæa by an herb which Minerva had suggested should be
given as a medicine. It is unfortunate that the statue has not survived
to give us some idea of the features of at least one of the great
architects of antiquity. Some recent discoveries on the Acropolis have,
however, brought forth fragments which are supposed to have been parts
of the base.
If there is any one of the Greek architects of the time of Pericles
who can be said to have secured for himself a degree of popular
notoriety throughout subsequent ages it is the accomplished Ictinus,
the chief architect of the Parthenon and the designer of at least two
other conspicuously beautiful buildings of which we know—namely, the
temple of Apollo Epicurus, near Phigalia in Arcadia, and the temple of
Ceres and Proserpine at Eleusis. It is, no doubt, due, however, to his
connection with the Parthenon that his fame has so long endured.
As already stated, Callicrates assisted in the building of the
Parthenon, and Phidias contributed the designs for the relief carvings
in the pediments and metopes, executing much of the work with his own
hands. Although Vitruvius says that “both Ictinus and Callicrates
exerted all their powers to make this temple worthy of the goddess who
presided over the arts,” it is not likely that Callicrates’s share in
the work was equal to that of Ictinus, but was confined more to the
heavy masonry, and in offering to Ictinus such advice as he might seek
in giving to the building the greatest substantiality and permanency.
The Parthenon, which, among the several masterpieces of the Acropolis,
must be acknowledged the greatest, stood upon a rocky elevation in the
citadel, which so far elevated the structure as to bring the pavement
of the peristyle upon a level with the capitals of the columns of the
eastern portico of the Propylæa. This was the same site which had been
occupied formerly by an earlier temple to Minerva, known among the
Athenians as the Hecatompedon on account of its proportions.
The Parthenon of Ictinus is said to have cost one thousand talents, or
what would be equal to about $1,100,000 of our money. It was begun the
year 422 B.C., and completed at the expiration of sixteen years. It
conformed to the usual shape of the Greek temples, being rectangular
and peripteral. The length from east to west was two hundred and
twenty-seven feet and seven inches, the width a little over one
hundred and one feet. The Doric order was employed for the exterior,
the columns which surrounded the cell on all sides being thirty-four
feet in height, with a diameter of six feet at the base. There were
forty-six of these columns, springing directly from the stylobate or
steps, all fluted with twenty channels, and each carrying its share of
a very beautiful entablature. The gables or pediments at each end of
the temple were of flat pitch. The total height of the building from
the steps to the top of the gables was sixty-four feet. White marble
from Mount Pentelicum, “wrought,” as Mr. Kinnaird expresses it, “with
the exquisite finish of a cameo,” was the material employed for the
entire structure, with the exception of the supporting timbers of the
roof, which were wood covered with marble tiles.
The interior, to quote Mr. Kinnaird again, “enshrined the
chryselephantine colossus with all its gorgeous adjuncts, and comprised
sculptural decoration alone for one edifice exceeding in quantity that
of all recent national monuments; consisting of a range of eleven
hundred feet of sculpture and containing, on calculation, upward of
six hundred figures, a portion of which were colossal, enriched by
painting and probably golden ornaments. Here has been really verified
the prediction of Pericles that, when the edifices of rival states
would be mouldering in oblivion, the splendor of his city would be
still paramount and triumphant.” In respect to the richness of its
interior treasures, very much the same idea is expressed by Bishop
Wordsworth, who says, in the course of his description of the building:
“It would, therefore, be a very erroneous idea to regard this temple
which we are describing merely as the best school of architecture in
the world. It was also the noblest school of sculpture and the richest
gallery of painting.”
The cleverness of the architects in insuring to the Parthenon, after
its completion, the appearance of absolute harmony of proportion in
all its outward lines, is one of their best claims to that celebrity
which they have justly earned. As it goes so far toward illustrating
their great professional skill, the reader may be interested in reading
the language used by Professor Roger Smith of London in explaining the
measures adopted by Ictinus and possibly Callicrates also, to correct
the optical defects which the Parthenon might otherwise have possessed
when completed.
“The delicacy and subtlety of these [optical illusions] are extreme,
but there can be no manner of doubt that they existed. The best known
correction is the diminution in diameter or taper, and the _entasis_
or convex curve of the tapered outline of the shaft of the column.
Without the taper, which is perceptible enough in the order of this
building, and much more marked in the order of earlier buildings,
the columns would look top-heavy; but the _entasis_ is an additional
optical correction to prevent their outline from appearing hollowed,
which it would have done had there been no curve. The columns of the
Parthenon have shafts that are over thirty-four feet high, and diminish
from a diameter of 6.15 feet at the bottom to 4.81 feet at the top.
The outline between these points is convex, but so slightly so that
the curve departs at the point of greatest curvature not more than
three-quarters of an inch from the straight line joining the top and
bottom. This is, however, just sufficient to correct the tendency to
look hollow in the middle.
“A second correction is intended to overcome the apparent tendency of
a building to spread outward toward the top. This is met by inclining
the columns slightly inward. So slight, however, is the inclination,
that were the axes of two columns on opposite sides of the Parthenon
continued upward till they met, the meeting point would be 1952 yards,
or, in other words, more than one mile from the ground.
“Another optical correction is applied to the horizontal lines. In
order to overcome a tendency which exists in all long lines to seem as
though they drop in the middle, the lines of the architrave of the top
step and of other horizontal features of the building are all slightly
curved. The difference between the outline of the top step of the
Parthenon and a straight line joining its two ends is at the greatest
only just two inches.”
Still another correction which Professor Smith alludes to, in respect
to the vertical proportions of the building, he does not discuss more
than to say: “The small additions, amounting in the entire length of
the order to less than five inches, were made to the heights of the
various members of the order, with a view to secure that from one
definite point of view the effect of foreshortening should be exactly
compensated, and so the building should appear to the spectator to be
perfectly proportioned.”
The Parthenon was not, as is popularly supposed, a temple for the
worship of Minerva. The sanctuary for that particular purpose was
in the Erechtheum, a triple temple, located upon the Acropolis not
very far distant from the Parthenon, and having wings dedicated
respectively to Minerva Polias, to Erechtheus or Neptune, wherein was
a well of salt water, and to the Nymph Pandrosus, daughter of Cecrops.
The Parthenon, however, served as a national treasury and repository
for the valuable offerings to the goddess, as well as “a central point
for the Panathenaic festival,” where prizes might be distributed to
the victorious competitors. Indeed, the decorations of Phidias would
tend to corroborate this inference, as the sculptured low relief of the
frieze represented the Panathenaic procession. The rich relief carvings
in the tympanums of the front and rear pediments of the building, also
by Phidias, the designs of which may be found described in almost any
work on Grecian art, have been reproduced in some of the vignettes of
this book.
In alluding to the Erechtheum, which, like the Parthenon and the
Propylæa, still presents shapely and beautiful ruins to grace the
Acropolis, attract the tourist and lend to the lover of art the best
criterion of the ideal age of Grecian architecture, we must mourn the
fact that the architect who designed this magnificent example of the
Ionic order is not known, and it is not likely that he ever will be.
The building was not finished at the time of the death of Pericles.
Because of an inscription found in the Acropolis, and now in the
British Museum, containing the particulars of a minute professional
survey of the unfinished parts, made by an Athenian architect named
Philocles, in the year 336 B.C., this architect has been given by some
the credit of having been the author of the entire structure; but that
he could not have been is clearly proven by the known fact that much of
the temple was constructed, as we have stated, in the time of Pericles,
or about one hundred years earlier. Nothing further, by the way, is
known of Philocles than is here given.
About two thousand years had passed without that great leveller Time
or the corroding influences of the elements marring to any very
serious extent the beauty and completeness of the Parthenon, during
which period it had suffered two changes most antagonistic to its
original purpose, having been transformed at one time into a Christian
church and at another into a Turkish mosque. In respect to the first
transformation, it is well to note that the significance of its name
was not wholly lost in the change. Parthenon means Virgin, and the
Christians called the church into which they turned it the Church of
the Blessed Virgin. It was seen entire by Spon and Wheeler in 1676. But
when the Venetians, in their war with the Turks, eleven years later,
besieged the citadel, they threw a bomb upon the roof of the noble
structure, which, passing through it, ignited the powder which had
been stored in the building by the Turks. The result was an explosion
which divided and reduced the temple to its present condition, save for
further depredations which seem hardly creditable. The iconoclastic
Turks found this pride of Pericles most useful as a quarry upon which
to draw for much of the material used in their own buildings, and it
is to be regretted also that Lord Elgin should have found it necessary
to enrich a distant museum in London with many of its most beautiful
carvings, adding further desecration to “what Goth and Turk and Time
had spared.” Vitruvius informs us that Ictinus, in collaboration with
another architect, not otherwise mentioned, wrote a book upon the
Parthenon, his greatest masterpiece.
After searching the world over for her dear, lost daughter, the
beautiful Proserpine, who had been spirited away to the realm of Pluto,
Ceres finally gave up the quest and mournfully settled down at Eleusis,
a city in fertile Bœotia, about fourteen miles from Athens. Here was
erected in her honor and in memory of Proserpine an Ionic temple by the
people for whom she became sponsor. The Persians, during their invasion
of Attica, burned the temple, but Pericles caused it to be rebuilt,
and selected Ictinus as the architect. He erected a handsomer structure
in the Doric style, which, it is said, was without exposed columns.
Whether Ictinus lived long enough to complete the temple to Ceres and
Proserpine or not, or was called away for other purposes, is not known,
but it appears that other architects were associated with its design
and erection, both before as well as after his connection with it.
Corœbus is mentioned also as an architect, in the employ of Pericles,
who began the work on the mystic cell, but that his sudden death
resulted in the substitution of Ictinus. It is more probable, however,
that Ictinus had previously furnished the design of the building and
that Corœbus had been merely acting under his supervision. Following
Ictinus was another Athenian architect appointed by Pericles, and
the designer of the demos of Cholargos. He is said to have built
the pediment of the temple with the timpanum open, according to an
ancient fashion, in order to light the cell, which, if Strabo is to be
believed, was capable of accommodating thirty thousand persons.
In the time of Demetrius Phalereus, the immediate successor of
Alexander, Philo, or Philon, as his name is sometimes written, a
very eminent architect, also of Athens, was engaged to add a portico
of twelve Doric columns to this temple of Ceres. That Metagenes of
Xypete, and son of Ctesiphon, who has already been discussed in our
allusion to the temple of Diana at Ephesus, should be mentioned as the
architect who completed the entablature and an upper row of columns to
this Eleusian temple, is probably a mistake. The time of Metagenes was,
as we have seen, much earlier (about 560 B.C.), and while he might have
been engaged upon the first temple to Ceres at Eleusis, it is quite
impossible for him to have been employed by Pericles in the building of
that with which Ictinus had to do.
When Alaric, the German, made his angry invasion into Greece in 396
B.C., because refused command of the armies of the Eastern empire, he
destroyed very many works of Greek art, and this temple among them was
one of the unfortunates that assisted to satiate his wrath.
The third important work with which Ictinus is reported to have been
connected was the Doric temple to Apollo in the village of Bassæ, near
Cotylion, in Arcadia, which was known as the temple to Apollo Epicurus
(the Preserver). Pausanias speaks of this as being next to that at
Tagea, the finest temple in the Peloponnesus “from the beauty of its
stone and the symmetry of its proportions.” This temple is still a
beautiful ruin, thirty-four of the original thirty-eight columns of the
peristyle standing. The structure, which in the interior possessed two
rows of columns in the Ionic order, was originally admirably planned
for sculptural decoration and statuary and held many fine specimens of
the handiwork of Phidias and his school. Some of the carvings of the
frieze and other parts of the building, which are to be seen in the
British Museum, are spoken of by Lübke as the boldest and most animated
compositions among all that is preserved to us of the productions of
Greek art.
On the southeast slope of the Acropolis Pericles caused to be erected
a building which departed broadly from the prevailing rectangular
construction of the time. In was oval on plan, Doric in order, and its
portico was enclosed by thirty-two columns. The most original feature
of the building, however, was the roof, which was constructed in the
shape of a cone and was supported by rafters formed of the masts of the
ships captured in the Persian wars. From just above the cornice of the
drum there projected around the entire roof a row of windows which may
possibly be credited with being the archetypes of our modern dormer
windows. This building was called the Odeum, or, as it is now termed,
the Odeon, and was devoted to music.
Cratinus, the comic poet, who had levelled his satire at Pericles when
building the “Long Walls,” found in the roof of the Odeon, the idea
for the cone shape of which, by the way, it is claimed the architects
borrowed from the pavilion of the King of Persia, another mark for his
shafts of ridicule. He sings:
“As Jove, an onion on his head he wears;
As Pericles, a whole orchestra bears;
Afraid of broils and banishments no more,
He tunes the shell he trembled at before.”
The allusion to an onion by Cratinus is explained when it is remembered
that on account of the peculiar, long shape of his head the poets
of Athens called Pericles _Schinocephalos_, or squill-head, from
_schinos_, a squill, or sea-onion. Another version of Cratinus’s satire
is given thus:
“So, we see here,
Jupiter Long-pate Pericles appear,
Since ostracism time he’s laid aside his head,
And wears the new Odeum in its stead.”
Music received a considerable share of attention in the education
of the Greeks, and such was the influence which it is said to have
possessed over the physical as well as the mental nature of the
people, that it was credited with being an antidote for many of the
infirmities of the body as well as the mind. The Odeon was therefore
an institution of considerable importance in Athens. Here Pericles
conducted in person the musical contests between the Choruses which
the wealthy citizens of Athens instituted, and awarded to the
winners the tripod-trophies, which as marks of special honor they
were permitted to place upon their monuments. A street in Athens was
devoted almost entirely to these choragic monuments, many of which were
architecturally most beautiful.
The architect of the Odeon of Pericles is not known, but after its
destruction by Aristion in the Mithridatic war, it was rebuilt by
Ariobarzanes II, Philopator, king of Cappadocia, in the original
form, who employed for the purpose the brother Roman architects,
Caius and Marius Stallius, together with a third architect by the
name of Menalippus, who recorded their connection with the building
upon the base of a statue which they erected in honor of their patron
Ariobarzanes. It is said that on certain days this later Odeon was used
as a grain market.
If in the Parthenon on the Acropolis the acme of Doric magnificence
was reached by Ictinus and Callicrates, there was another temple
located below the Acropolis, which by many is ranked as the peer of the
Parthenon, in its perfection of Doric symmetry and grace. This was the
building to which allusion has already been made as another example of
the genius and skill of Mnesicles, the slave-architect of the Propylæa.
It was dedicated to the founder of Athens, the adventurous Theseus, and
stood not only as a temple in his honor, but as a mausoleum for his
ashes.
Wordsworth, whose words of praise for the Propylæa have been quoted, is
also enthusiastic in his admiration of this second example of the skill
of the talented Mnesicles: “Such is the integrity of its structure and
the distinctness of its details that it requires no description beyond
that which a few glances might supply. Its beauty defies all; its solid
yet graceful form is, indeed, admirable; and the loveliness of its
coloring is such that from the rich, mellow hue which the marble has
now assumed it looks as if it had been quarried not from the bed of a
rocky mountain, but from the golden light of an Athenian sunset.”
Although the temple of Theseus was one of the more modest Athenian
temples in point of size, it has always ranked as one of the most
perfect of the Attic-Doric order, and stands to-day as one of the least
dilapidated among all that have existed of the beautiful edifices of
ancient Greece. Indeed, as it was supposed to have been begun before
the Parthenon, or in the time of Cimon, it is claimed by some writers
that Ictinus took it for his model, although the Parthenon was about
twice as large.
The Theseum was surrounded by columns, six at the front and rear and
thirteen on either flank. It was forty-five feet wide by one hundred
and four feet long. The building material was Pentelican marble,
which in the course of the centuries has taken on the soft yellowish
tinge which Bishop Wordsworth refers to. Ornamental sculpturing was
more sparingly employed than upon the Parthenon or some of the other
structures of the time, but such as was used was so judiciously handled
as to give the very noblest results. The sculpturing in the metopes of
the frieze and on the pronaos was the work of Phidias.
It was built after the battle of Marathon, and, it would seem, after an
awakening on the part of the Athenians to that high sense of obligation
toward their early hero, Theseus, which had slumbered for centuries.
It was due to the Delphic Oracle that his remains were brought back to
Athens from their long banishment in the island of Scyros, and given
honorable burial, the son of Miltiades being selected to execute the
Oracle’s decree. The occasion was made one of festivity and rejoicing,
and the entombment in the beautiful new temple one of sacrifice and
solemnity.
In closing this brief reference to the Theseum, the graceful lines from
Haygarth’s Greece, which so beautifully applaud it, may well be quoted:
“Here let us pause, e’en at the vestibule
Of Theseus’s fane—with what stern majesty
It rears its pond’rous and eternal strength,
Still perfect, still unchang’d, as on the day
When the assembled throng of multitudes
With shouts proclaim’d th’ accomplish’d work and fell
Prostrate upon their faces to adore
Its marble splendor. How the golden gleam
Of noonday floats upon its graceful forms,
Tinging each grooved shaft, and storied frieze
And Doric triglyph! How the rays amidst
The op’ning columns glanc’d from point to point
Stream down the gloom of the long portico;
Where, link’d in moving mazes youths and maids
Lead the light dance, as erst in joyous hour
Of festival! How the broad pediment,
Embrown’d with shadow frowns above and spreads
Solemnity and reverential awe!
Proud monument of old magnificence!
Still thou survivest, nor has envious time
Impair’d thy beauty, save that it has spread
A deeper tint, and dimm’d the polished glare
Of thy refulgent whiteness. Let mine eyes
Feast on thy form, and find at every glance
Themes for imagination, and for thought;
Empires have fallen, yet art thou unchang’d;
And destiny, whose tide engulphs proud man
Has roll’d his harmless billows at thy base.”
In the brilliant galaxy of great architects and sculptors of this
age, none shines more deservedly conspicuous by reason of true merit
and noble purpose than Polycletus of Argos, who is remembered more
as a statuary than by reason of his achievements in architecture. He
exercised his art between the years 452 and 412 B.C., and, like his
distinguished contemporaries, Myron and Phidias, was a pupil of the
Argive sculptor, Agelades. His celebrity has been compared to that
of his most famous brother pupil, Phidias, for the reason that while
Phidias gave the ideal standard in the portrayal of deities, Polycletus
created for all ages the perfect canon of the human form in art. This
he expressed in the figure of a youth holding in his hand a spear,
which was called the Doryphorus. In this figure the sculptor laid down
the rules of universal application with regard to the proportions of
the human body in its mean standard of height, breadth of chest, length
of limbs and so on. Socrates, according to Xenophon, went so far as to
place Polycletus on a level as a statuary, with Homer, Sophocles and
Xeuxis in their respective arts.
A similar anecdote to that told of Phidias, when he listened to the
criticisms of the public upon his colossal statue of the Olympian Zeus,
is also related of Polycletus. He is said to have made two statues,
one of which he perfected according to his own ideals, and the other
he exhibited to the public and altered according to the suggestions
volunteered. In due time he exhibited both publicly side by side. The
one he had himself made was universally admired, while that which he
had changed to suit the popular fancy was condemned. “You yourself,” he
exclaimed, “made the statue you abuse, I, the one you admire.”
One of his most celebrated works was the chryselephantine statue
of Hera, executed in his old age to rival the Athene and Zeus by
Phidias. Strabo considered that this statue equalled in beauty those
of Phidias, though it was surpassed by them in costliness and size. In
the respect that Polycletus followed the Homeric description of Hera,
and presented the goddess clothed from her waist down, he may be said
to have followed the precedent of Phidias; in other respects, however,
he drew upon his own fancy. Juno was seated upon a golden throne; her
head was crowned with a garland on which were worked the Graces and the
Hours; in one hand she held the symbolical pomegranate and in the other
a sceptre surmounted by a cuckoo, a bird sacred to Hera on account of
having herself been changed into that form by Zeus.
As an architect Polycletus will be found as the designer of the
theatre at Epidaurus, where was also located the beautiful temple
dedicated to Æsculapius, and which Pausanias pronounced to be superior
in symmetry and elegance to every other in Greece and Rome. It was
capable of accommodating twelve thousand spectators, and its ruins, as
well as those of the white marble circular Tholus, by the same artist,
are still to be seen in an unusual condition of preservation.
Among the other architects who have been variously mentioned as having
pursued their profession toward the close of this century, but who can
hardly take equal rank with those already alluded to, may be mentioned
Eupolinus, an Argive artist, who rebuilt the great Heræum at Mycenæ
after its destruction by fire in the year 423 B.C., the entablature of
which was ornamented with sculptures representing the wars of the gods
and giants and the Trojan wars; Cleœtas, who was one of the assistant
architects under Phidias, and whose chief claim to distinction is based
upon his construction of the starting place in the Olympian Stadium,
and Democopus Myrilla, who built the theatre at Syracuse. Vitruvius
also speaks of an architect and author of about this time—namely,
Silenus—who wrote on the Doric order.
It is difficult to close this chapter, in which but very superficial
reference has been made to the architectural lights of the golden
age of art in Greece, without glancing back at the magnificent city
of Athens, the grand product of much of their creative skill, with
feelings of regret that with all her numerous and noble monuments,
dedicated to gods and men, there is not one that bears the imprint of
its creator. We see in this glance forest-like colonnades of glittering
white columns; we see the House of the Five Hundred Senators, the
Tholus, the Hall of Hermæ, the Agora, the Pnyx, “where the Athenian
orator spoke from a block of bare stone;” the Stoic Hall, in which
philosophy was taught; the Prytaneum, where the loved laws of Solon
were preserved; the Lyceum, with its hundred columns from Lydia;
the Theatre of Bacchus and the Mausoleum of Tolus. We see temples
innumerable, the grandest of all those to Jupiter and Theseus; but
others of fascinating merit, those of Ceres and of Cybele and of Mars,
and of Vulcan, of Venus, of Æacus, of the Dioscuri, of Hercules, of
Diana Agrotera, of Bacchus Lunnæus, of Æsculapius, of Eumenides, and
that to Glory, erected with the booty from the glorious field of
Marathon, wherein stood the Venus of Phidias; and we see the Acropolis
towering above all, lending other magnificent architectural triumphs
to the ensemble; and although we see slabs among them “inscribed with
the records of Athenian history, with civil contracts and articles
of peace, with memorials of honors awarded to patriotic citizens or
munificent strangers,” we find no monument, whether in the time of
Pericles or later, inscribed with the name of Ictinus, or Hippodamus,
or Callicrates, or the poor slave, Mnesicles, who was saved by Minerva
to be forgotten by man.
[Illustration: Decoration]
FOOTNOTES:
[3] The decoration referred to was the work of the distinguished
painter Protogenes.