7/7 Pompeii

One of the last stops on our summer tour through Europe was at Pompei, a city which has been so well preserved for our edification, but at the cost of so many lives when a volcano erupted in 79AD, burying the city under a level of ash. I pose this question: would you be willing to bury New York City under a layer of ash and preserve it for future generations to come and observe our way of life and learn from it at the sacrifice of 8 million people? It’s a moral dilemma. If we were to know somehow in advance that in 2000 years the Western way of life would be extinct, would we want some kind of metropolis time capsule that could at least give a glimpse into our ‘advanced’ society? I’m sure the Pompeians, at the time of the height of their city, perhaps might not have wanted their city to be remembered as the one wiped out by a volcano. Nevertheless, it’s here for us to study and observe.

Pompeii was organized along a semi-grid pattern with mixed Greek and Etruscan elements found at the heart of the city which are from the 7^th-6^th centuries BCE. The rest of the city is more recent, as it outgrew its original footprint. It was the Samnites that overtook the city in the 5^th and 4^th centuries BCE and expanded the initial core. As with most every other important ancient city, the Romans overtook the Samnites, but left the city relatively alone in terms of overhauling its fabric, but did re-constitute it as a Colonia, making it a proper part of the Roman world.

The 5^th century BCE Temple of Apollo has a definite resemblance to me of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Ostia, as it has a very tall podium with steps leading up to the cella and it houses the same 3 deities: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. Its Corinthian order is not the odd feature, however; it’s the 1:4 ratio of the metopes to the columns, which gives it very large spans and is evident that the Romans are beginning to experiment with longer spans and more daring structures.

Heading toward the Forum, one of the main buildings adjacent to it is the Roman basilica. Similar to ones found all over the ancient world, this edifice was the law court for the Romans, one of the earliest surviving ones that dates to the 2^nd century BCE. One thing that surprised me about this structure was the remaining columns were made of brick and were FLUTED. I was taken aback by this feature, but soon came to realize that it was probably cheaper and easier to build a fluted column out of brick and cover it with a layer of plaster than to make it out of marble, which was probably more difficult, more expensive, and would have had to come from farther away (more of a logistical headache). It’s interesting to see this development in construction. We think today that construction methods have lost their craftsmanship and that all we care about today is the cheapest and fastest method of construction. Yet, here we have an example of this very same practice from some 2000 years ago. Astonishing. It seems the more things change, the more they do stay the same.

Moving into the proper Forum, the first thing I noticed was that it was delineated from the basilica with a 2-story Hellenistic stoa and is on axis with the Capitolium, or Temple to Jupiter Capitolinus. Around 80BCE, administrative buildings, the curia, meat, fish, and vegetable open air markets, the Eumachia (wool guild), and the Cult of the Emperor all begin to populate the perimeter of the forum. Some of the buildings address its eastern side in a non-orthogonal fashion, a strange feature for a Roman city but one whose explanation could be that it was built on top of the foundations of some older, off-axis building. Pompeii also features a bath complex that takes up nearly an entire city block, whose program is similar to the baths we have seen at Ostia and Rome.

One of the reasons Pompeii is so widely regarded as a model for early Roman life is its well preserved residential areas. While some have undergone heavy restoration, the foundations were such that repair crews probably had enough material with which to work to adequately rebuild the structures. Houses could range anywhere from simple courtyard buildings with a few bedrooms for the middle class to elaborate complexes that would take up nearly an entire city block for some of the wealthier citizens. The House of the Faun and the House of the Vetii were two of these upper-class living facilities that we looked at on this day. The former is famous for its small statue of a dancing faun placed in the center of the courtyard. The sequence of spaces would feature this initial vestibule, followed by a tablenum where the Pater Familias, or head of the household, would host guests and his patrons. Off to the side were located the bedrooms and other storage rooms, but the main features of the house were its two garden spaces. A smaller garden space would be followed in procession by a xystos, or large garden space, which nearly took up an entire city block. This family had to be extremely wealthy to afford this amount of land in such a city. They decorated their floors with mosaics, one in particular being the famous Alexander Mosaic, noted for its life-like and 3D representations of figures in mosaic with accurate shadows and a dynamic, emotional scene. A second copy of this mosaic is located in the Naples National Archaeological Museum.

The House of the Vetii was built 150 years after the House of the Faun and has a notable programmatic change: there is no tablenum for the Pater Familias to receive guests. This says that the people who owned this house were either not aristocratic, did not participate in the tradition of the Pater Familias, or didn’t regard it as an important custom. This further means that the traditional role of the family must have been changing at this time. Perhaps power was shifted away from the family and more toward the aristocracy, or perhaps the collective nature of the community was so strong that individual Pater Familiases were not needed. In any case, it does feature some recognizable features of Roman houses, namely the compluvium (opening in the atrium) and the impluvium (space below on ground which would collect water). The Romans seemed to be green even before it was fashionable, or perhaps it was because there was little running water to spread to the whole community. You could also say they were trying to remain in harmony with nature the same way the Pantheon tried to connect to nature through its oculus. The Roman forum would often feature an umbilicus, which was a figurative connection from the ground to the heavens. In order to carry these traditions to the household, open air courtyards were probably introduced to reinforce these ideals.

As we wrapped up the summer semester, one final presentation was given, this time on language (specifically Latin and Greek). I have always been somewhat interested in the implications of language and what it really is: a barrier between people that stands for the same universal concepts that we all understand in our minds but just come out a little differently through our mouths. Would it help if we all spoke the same language, or are people so attached to their cultural identities that this would be a near impossible feat to accomplish? Could we all speak the same language AND our own regional dialects, or is this too much to ask to add another set of words to our memories? Another aspect that fascinated me while discussing the differences between Greek and Latin, besides the obvious aesthetic ones, was the fact that Greek really hasn’t changed over thousands of years, whereas Latin has died out and been morphed into the Romance languages (and English). Was it that the Greeks had such a strong cultural identity that they were unable or unwilling to relinquish their grasp on their language and let it change into something else? Or was the fact that the Roman Empire collapsed a main impetus for it dying out and mutating? Latin never truly died out, as it was retained in the Middle Ages by those monasteries who were bastions to a great many aspects of western culture; although it is rarely used today but in Catholic mass at the Vatican and for scientific terms (I find us using Latin for naming animals to be sort of a strange and antiquated practice). Language is what binds vast numbers of people together. If we didn’t have a way to communicate through speech or writing, the entirety of my thoughts in this journal would be impossible to explain to someone else. If we didn’t have language, transferring our ideas would be an impossible task; architecture, science, anthropology, medicine, psychology would not exist. It is probably the single greatest tool that our mind can utilize, which is one reason we have come to dominate this planet as a species.

7/6 Paestum

Originally settled by the Greeks and named Posedonia (in honor of Poseidon), Paestum showcased a wonderful opportunity to study early Doric Greek temples in their entirety. Before we could get to a true introduction to the city, however, a presentation was made on the Sea and Technology of Greece.

Due to its rough terrain, the Greeks were forced inevitably to become masters of sea travel. In addition, because the Greek mainland was not exactly ideal for growing crops, the Greeks had to find some way to bring in food from outside sources and produce goods and services at home with which to trade. Some obvious dangers of sea travel were pirates, storms, and sickness, but these dangers were inevitable sometimes and the benefits often outweighed the negatives. The Greeks could easily travel by sea, much faster than over land, could get to remote locations to set up colonies, and could trade much faster. The trireme, or main battleship, was the principal way in which the Greeks defended their empires. The front of the ship featured a ram which would be used to cripple other ships. This would produce combats at sea that were often very close together, and since they hadn’t been introduced to gunpowder yet, were able to fight at such a close range.

We found out the reason that Paestum developed was through a process called Apoecism – the splitting up of a population, as when it gets so large that colonies have to be founded elsewhere in order to maintain a stable population in the original city (metropolis, or “mother city”) and not use up all of its natural resources. Paestum was one such instance of a colony and was established in the 6^th century BCE. Oddly enough, the original city of Posedonia was set up much like a Roman colony: a strict outline of the city wall, or pomerium, was established and then divided up 3 ways into two housing blocks separated by a public area with temples and civic buildings. The city blocks in the residential area were of proportions 1x8 so as to use up maximum area for living. Unfortunately, much of the city is still yet to be excavated, and only the main public area is visible today.

Yet, what is excavated and standing today is one of the best remaining examples of an early Doric temple. One of the main reasons this area was untouched was that after the population had declined to a specific amount, a period of malaria-carrying mosquitos began to inhabit the area, rendering it virtually useless as a town. This, plus the fact that it was a low seismic zone contributed to the 3 temples being so well preserved. The northern sanctuary, or Temple of Athena as it’s referred to today, is a hexastyle Doric (exterior) and Ionic (interior) one which was built in 510 BCE. The Greeks’ architectural efforts at this temple represent a time when they were a bit more daring in their designs, incorporating elements that they would otherwise not have if they were back in the mainland of Greece such as not having a back entrance or room to the temple, and adding an extra layer of stones on its entablature to give it more height and prominence.

The Temple of Hera, as it is referred to today, is the south sanctuary and was constructed between 550-510BCE. No marble was used in this structure as it was built completely out of local stone. What gets me about this particular temple is the use and combination of entasis (exaggeration of a bulge in the middle of the column) and miosis (the reduction in diameter from the lower to upper drums). In later iterations of temples, the Greeks would become more daring in how far they were willing to span between columns. Here, however, they seemed to still be experimenting with these different elements of the temple, and therefore the columns are closer together than the Parthenon, and their entasis/miosis factors are a big embellished. It almost seems like an early form of parametric design: change one factor and the entire aesthetic of the structure changes. The Greeks, however, changed these factors ever so slightly in their temples over the years, and the look of them slowly evolved into the masterpiece at the Parthenon, which gets each of the factors just right (at least for some people). You can tell that this temple is archaic by simply noting that the miosis here is extreme and that the swelling at the capital embodies this same characteristic as well. The Greeks knew they wanted their temples to be in harmony with nature and therefore exemplify natural forces within their structures. Therefore, the capital looks like it was made out of some plastic material that, when the entablature was applied, sagged under the weight to receive the upper portion of the temple.

A series of discussions took place at these temples that simply asked: why was there a desire for columns to surround a temple in the first place? There are myriad of possible responses to this question, and a few of them included:

- Old accounts of animal or enemy sacrifices is represented in the repetition of the column

- They are anthropomorphized figures as a leg would hold up a body or a body itself holding a weight

- A temple is a work of thresholds, from outside to inside, and the transparency of the temple gives the common person somewhat of a relation to the house of the deity, but not a complete one as they were not allowed in the inner sanctuary

- A frozen procession that honors the god within, its people protecting and guarding the inner house

- To be a purely sculptural element, one that turns inert stone into something that embodies forces within to make it seem like it will burst under the weight of the entablature at any time

Any of these answers could be the right one. None of them could be the right one. We know that it probably has to do with the Greeks’ relationship with nature. We know that it probably has to do with the relationship of the human body to the temple to the deity, and its proportions that would be pleasing to the eye. I think that ambiguity is what makes architecture such a wonderful profession. It raises all kinds of societal questions and, while it doesn’t always give an answer to them, reaffirms the fact that we are a collection of people who have our own subjective experiences of the world. It’s that interstitial space left over between the creator and his creation that excites me. If the architects had written a manifesto after completing the temple saying “this is why we built this structure”, it would have taken some of the mystery out of life. I wouldn’t have liked that, we still need some in our world.

These questions and more could also be grouped under the heading “philosophy”, which is interesting because we had a presentation on that topic as well in front of these temples. A philosopher, or lover of wisdom, sought actual explanations as opposed to religious explanations for both the banal and the supernatural; explanations with a historical viewpoint based in reality, not based around Gods and myths. We were each paired off and tasked to debate a certain topic. Mine had to do with there being another planet somewhere in the solar system that balances out our planet and moves the number up to 10. I thought this was a reasonable hypothesis, as the Chinese liked to observe the yin and yang of the universe. As well, the universe does tend to balance itself out and favor equilibrium, so somewhere out there must be a planet where everything we do is of the exact opposite nature on that planet, like a bizzaro world. What a preposterous load of garbage you say? I say prove it! Just because we haven’t found it yet, does not mean it doesn’t exist. That’s at least what my line of reasoning was.

7/5 Olympia

At the confluence of two rivers, the Alpheios and the Kladeos, and in somewhat of an inland and semi-remote location lies the ancient city of Olympia. It is by far the most important cultural and ritualistic pilgrimage site for the Greeks. All of Greek civilization and worship can be dated to a singular, zero point in time: 776 BC, when they began counting their years forward. What has been uncovered here is the same typical pattern as other ancient cities: the classic/archaic civilizations are built on top of the prehistoric civilizations’ foundations. An interesting figure from the ancient record books whom I had never heard of before was Pelops, the mythical king of this area from which we get the name Peloponnesian. Legend has it that the previous king before Pelops, Oinomos, received a message from the oracle that said someday his son-in-law will kill him. Stunned by this news, he institutes a chariot race (manifest destiny?) in which the winning prize is his daughter’s hand in marriage. As Oinomos also participated in this race, if he won the race he would get to keep his daughter. According to the story, Oinomos never had lost this race; his horses were practically invincible. However, Pelops somehow wins the race, takes the daughter, Hippodamia, as his wife and kills the incumbent king. What is true and what is mythic about this story can sometimes be a blurred line. What does survive out of this is a sense of competition; who is individually better at something.

Another myth associated with Olympia is the story of Hercules, who diverts the rivers as part of his 12 labors. What arises from this legend is the allegorical nature of mankind being able to cultivate the land. With all of these myths surrounding this ancient location, it is fairly evident that Olympia played such a significant role in the lives of ancient Greeks. Mount Olympus takes its name from this very spot, as well as it being the location of the Temple of Zeus, the supreme deity.

Laying low on the land instead of high upon a mountain overlooking a dramatic landscape, the Temple of Zeus evokes for the Greeks a feeling of permanence, power, stability, and thus is built on flat ground, near the people. Built during the 4^th century BCE by Libon, a local to Olympia, it is considered a masterpiece and model of Doric temple architecture. The key module here as opposed to other temples is the module of the column + its intercolumnation length. Every temple in antiquity had its own module from which it worked, and as a result it is very hard to find two temples that are exactly alike in all aspects. This particular temple is unique in that aspect and also because of the statue which was contained inside. The giant statue of Zeus, standing 42’ tall and designed by Phidias (who also designed the statue of Athena at the Acropolis), was one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. The parts of Zeus body that were exposed outside his toga were made of gold and ivory, the rest being a wooden scaffolding.

My final presentation took place today, this time the topic being the Ancient Olympic Games (and quite the appropriate location). While we can’t always verify the veracity of the ancient myths we’re told, we can derive from them some aspect of truth that has ingrained itself into our society. The story of the Olympic Games has many mythologies attached to it. It ran for around 1000 years, from 776BCE to 400AD. One story has the games evolving from funerary games that were held to honor local gods and heroes. Instead of mourning a life, the Greeks would tend to celebrate it and make the occasion as joyous as it possibly could. Another creation myth states that Hercules performed a job for Augeas, and when he refused to pay him, Hercules kills Augeas. Hercules then took the spoils from Augeas’ empire and set up an annual competition to be held every 4 years to win ‘prizes’ from these spoils. This latter tale is taken from the poet Pindar, who lived around 300 years after the start of the original games. In any case, the games evolved into a series of competitions that were intended to praise Zeus, Father of the Gods and God of Thunder. Remember, the Greeks were highly competitive, as shown through the earlier myth I recounted about Oinomos and Pelops. The question was always, who is better at this one activity? Who can run faster? Who can throw a stone farther? Who is stronger? Ad infinitum. The citizens’ main goal was to honor Zeus at his Altis, which was the site believed to be where Zeus hurled his thunderbolt from Mt. Olympus.

As a result, the entire stadium is arranged so that the participants in the 200m dash would run toward this sacred place, thus reinforcing their shared reverence for him. People would come from all over the ancient world to be a part of this competition. Eventually, Olympia would be populated with various temples, monuments, statues, and treasuries that would be a constant reminder of achievements of the past and a veritable trophy case of past victories. These ancient games also had a spirit of togetherness and peace, parallel to the Modern Games. Every 4 years, a group of heralds would go around to the different Greek city-states and announce the Olympic Truce: a written agreement to end any hostility between warring neighbors for the brief time of the Olympics in order to have a peaceful competition. Similar to today where the symbolic 5 rings, representing the original 5 continents to participate in the games, are the main symbol of togetherness and peace, the goal of any Olympic games is to realize our common humanity if just for a brief moment in time. Eventually, the popularity of these games spread to other parts of Greece. A circuit of other games included:

1. Pythian Games @ Delphi in honor of Apollo

2. Isthmian Games @ Corinth in honor of Poseidon

3. Nemean Games @ Nemea, also in honor of Zeus

Of course, I was disappointed not to win the ancient Stadion running race that we recreated on this day, as I was a member of the track team in high school. Even so, it was quite an experience to re-enact one of the most famous foot races in all of the ancient world IN OLYMPIA, running in the same stadium as some of the famous ancient athletes (none of which I can name). I can honestly say that visiting Greece was a one of a kind experience. The differences and similarities between Greek and Roman cultures are innumerable, but one difference that stood out to me was the food. Italy is all about the pasta and pizza, with less of an emphasis on protein and meat. The Greeks, on the other hand, love their gyros made of either lamb or chicken. The dining experience is somewhat similar though, as restaurants in both countries would theoretically let you sit there for hours on end if you wanted to.

Aside from the food, architecturally the two cultures are vastly different in terms of their conceptions of their citizens and the manifestations of their citizens. The Greeks as a people don’t have a verifiable starting date to their civilization; the concept of being a citizen is ingrained within their culture. The Romans, on the other hand, have a definite starting date to civilization: April 21, 753 BC. There were no “Romans” before this date. In terms of their cities, The Romans were much more systematic and rigid in the making of their urban fabrics. The Greeks’ cities were more fluid; they didn’t find the need to lay out their cities in such inelastic arrangements. They found the best sites for their cities and laid buildings out according to an unwritten doctrine that stressed the need to experience important civic and religious structures, like temples, as a complete three-dimensional construct.

7/2 Delos

Similar to Ostia, Delos was a major port city and critically important to the Greeks because it was the supposed birth place of two giants in their belief system, Apollo and Artemis, and because it is centrally located in the Aegean Sea, leaving it to become a major trading hub. It was also part of the Cyclads, a circular group of 40 islands that make up a major archipelago of Greece. Delos features all of the layers of history we have encountered so far: a Neolithic, Mycenaean, Classic/Archaic, and Hellenistic layer, and all of the typical building types as well. The carbon copy nature of this island and many others we have visited is not lost on me, as you can connect the dots and realize this was a completely interconnected series of settlements that just happened to take place across a vast sea featuring many different islands. The entrance port to the city leads, of course, to the sanctuary of Apollo, the key deity of the island. As you enter the gate of the city, the principal building which is adjacent to the entrance is the Oikos of the Naxians, an L-shaped structure that can essentially be understood as a temple because it hosted rituals, was made of marble, and built in the Ionic order.

One of the trademarks of more archaic Greek architecture, it has a row of columns running down the center that splits the central cella into two parts. The early Greeks were unable (or maybe just unsure of themselves) to span large spaces, so the central column would allow them somewhat larger spans and larger spaces. A 27’ tall statue of Apollo stood outside the Oikos. 3 additional temples to Apollo flank the Oikos and run down the main street. All of them have a different orientation than typical temples (which are east facing), as they face west toward the Altar of Apollo.

One of the architects that we have seen before, Kallikrates, builds the temple of Athena Nike, which is another example of Greek mannerism in that there have been so many iterations of temples from the Classical Era, that it has morphed into one which is not of the hexastyle peripteral type. The Romans also took advantage of the strategic location of the island and used it to trade slaves in the Agora of the Italians, which saw nearly 10,000 slaves bought and sold daily. More superstitions about Apollo abound on the island of Delos. The Lion Street sought to symbolically protect his birthplace by lining the street with statues of lions. Did the lions actually protect the island from harm to Apollo? I mentioned this similar debate at the Lion’s Gate in Mycenae. But again, does it matter as long as the island was thriving and the people were fat and happy?

In order to better understand and appreciate the Greeks’ eternal search for universal harmony in their structures, one only needs to look at the design of their houses. Imagine taking a square with size measuring 1, then using the diagonal of that square to construct a larger square around the original, this one measuring √2. The figure ground relationships between the inner square and the outer square are what they based their courtyard houses around. People typically didn’t tend to invest in private property. However, this island being one of the wealthier in the Greek system, people did start to invest in private domicile property. They wanted their houses to act like their private temples, harmonious and proportional. Often times it would feature a hole in the center of the roof for rain collection and for smoke to escape, a dual function that was quickly duplicated throughout the ancient world. Some of the more affluent clients built their houses with marble columns, mosaic floors, and stucco + paint walls, materials that weren’t common to domicile construction but fit the people’s lifestyles.

6/30 Samos

As we continue our journey through some of the islands around Greece, we come to Samos, which was also part of the Ionian League, as was Ephesus. Understanding of this part of the Mediterranean is understood through the deciphering of the ancient Hittite records, as both Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements have been uncovered here. It experienced the same type of collapse that a lot of the ancient Greek cities experienced in the 12^th century BCE, which resulted in a large migration of the population. Persians would come to conquer this area and use their vast naval force to control much of the Eastern Mediterranean.

One of the major figures in Samos’ history was Polycrates, who was a tyrant that ruled over this area and other parts of the Mediterranean. After acquiring much of his wealth, he would eventually com to build 4 important infrastructure projects:

1. Defense walls that ran from the beach to the mountains, 6 kilometers worth of protection

2. Aqueducts to bring water to the city, as well as a tunnel through a mountain that brought water to the occupied side of the island via a spring

3. A harbor that would enable him to have a strong naval presence

4. The Temple of Hera, another attempt to build the largest temple in antiquity, although not much of it remains. (Excavations have begun, but our visit did not prove very fruitful as most of it was still overgrown with grass, fitting as that may be because Hera was the Goddess of the Earth.)

We were also able to take a look at part of this subterranean aqueduct that was dug into the mountainside at Samos. It was originally built by Eupalino, who was the chief engineer on the project in the 6^th century BCE. The tunnel was considered an unheard of engineering feat, and had to be accomplished rather quickly because it was in an undefended area of the island. The term that’s used to describe this type of tunnel in the ancient world was ‘amphistomon’, amphi = both, stom = mouth. Its orientation, location, and slope had to be all strictly calculated because two teams of diggers began on the opposite side from each other. In addition to the area for the pipes, there were also areas for maintenance and circulation, a very intricate and advanced engineering achievement. Some of the mathematics behind the project included using similar triangles and some of the methods developed by Pythagoras to determine heights well beyond the reach of normal measuring devices. Of course this would not have been possible before Pythagoras’ birth in the 6^th century BCE. Climbing down the tunnel was an interesting experience, as you had to squeeze in through the entrance and stay crouched down throughout its length.

This has to be one of the greatest engineering feats in the world. Consider the length of tunnel they had to bore through (3/4 of a mile), the rudimentary tools they must have had to work with (they certainly didn’t have the large boring machines we use today), and the geometry of both sides coming together at the same point AND with the same slope, allowing the water to flow freely from one side of the island to the other. Yes, one could argue there are much more impressive engineering feats today that come to mind (Hoover Dam, the Chunnel, e.g.) but put into context I can’t see anything that surpasses this one.

6/29 Ephesus, Turkey

Located in a basin between two mountains, Ephesus was a harbor city which had been occupied at least as far back as the 11^th century BCE. It was 1 of 12 colonial cities that was part of the Ionian League, and was loosely based around the cult of Artemis, goddess of fertility (as well as the local fertility deity Cuipele). Like we do today with skyscrapers, each of these cities and others were competing to build the largest structures ever completed, one of which claimed to be – the Temple of Artemis; although nothing of it remains today. What is present now at this location is more of an updated Roman city, with foundations built on the more ancient ones. It was the capital of Asia Minor during their empire. At its height it was one of the largest cities in antiquity, capable of holding 250,000 people. As such, it has one of the largest theaters in antiquity as well. The main street that ran from the state agora to the public agora was known as the Street of Curetis, which cut through the city at a diagonal in opposition to most of the structures which were loosely built along the same N/S axis. On the outskirts of the city is located the Temple of Artemis, access to which was granted by a processional way which had great religious and spiritual importance it the city’s inhabitants.

I was very much intrigued by the Library of Celsus, which was built in the 2^nd century AD and reconstructed in the 1960’s, for its mannerist tendencies. We typically think of Mannerism to be connected to the High Renaissance in Florence and with Michelangelo, but this term refers to a specific movement rather than the concept of mannerism, like the difference between Modernism and modernism. The mannerist trend in this structure is one of using elements in a different way than you would expect, and to also play tricks with your sense of expected rhythm and structure that you typically expect. The façade of the building is reminiscent somewhat of the Olympic Theater by Palladio we saw in Vicenza, although it has a little more depth to its structural members. The rhythm of the columns is fairly regular across its façade, but what gets me about the structure is the upper level. The architects used the often-seen rounded/triangular pattern of pediments spanning the columns, yet left each column on either end exposed. It’s a little jarring to see at first, because what you’re expecting to see is the entablatures on the lower level replicated at the upper level, balancing out the façade. It’s interesting to see these derivations of classical architectural elements, yet every time we come upon a new structure we are tasked with categorizing it. Why is this? It’s not the architect’s intention to build in a certain style; it’s the work of historians that put all of the buildings we see into classes. Is it only necessary for purposes of describing buildings to future generations, or is there some larger societal benefit to putting them into groups? One possible advantage would be so that the client can accurately describe the type of building he/she wants. Another possibility might be for the benefit to pedagogy: as students of architecture being to study different periods in time, they can get a better understanding of the history of this field if they can relate one building to another through similar characteristics. I seem to have a tendency in this journal to ask a lot of rhetorical questions, but I find it helpful for me to ask them simply to get my thoughts out there. I don’t expect answers to them from the reader, but I feel it helps to start a debate on these large sweeping narratives that we are tasked to digest.

6/28 Priene, Turkey

This city pre-dates Pergamon and is one of the earliest examples of rigid town planning, almost similar to the system that the Romans developed. It is one of the most important cities to study in terms of the history of urbanism and city planning because of its grid pattern, developed by Hippodamus of Miletus. Only a purely logical mind could have conceived of and constructed a plan to this degree of precision and rigidity. Its basic form consists of a strict pattern of criss-crossing perpendicular streets built on the landscape. What’s especially interesting about the landscape is that it has quite a slope to it, yet the grid is simply laid right over that with terraces compensating for any height differentials.

Why a grid?

Priene was a colonial city with an estimated population around 5000 established by the Greeks around 350 BCE. The logic behind the grid is that it was a quick way to lay out a city instead of slowly letting it grow naturally on its own, for it was designed all at once. Compare this to some Medieval cities which, when allowed to grow organically, take on a more dendritic street pattern. All major streets are aligned on the East/West axis, with the North/South streets being the secondary ones. Like Manhattan, its morphology consists of equally-sized city blocks, sometimes taking up more than 1 depending on the building type to be placed there, such as a market. Priene also features some of the same building types as the other Greek cities we’ve visited so far, such as the theater, agora, stoas, bouleterion, Temple of Athena, residential quarters, gymnasium, and stadium.

One of the highlights of today had to be the theater presentation. It was quite a neat experience to put on part of an ancient Greek play within a Greek theater. It gave me a heightened sense for the life of a typical Priene citizen. Clearly, the theater was integral to this civilization. Built into the hillside to again take advantage of the topography (as I saw in Pergamon) the Greek theater is a bit different from the Roman one in that its shape resembles more of a horseshoe than a semi-circle. As in other Greek theaters it was again dedicated to Dionysius, and each year there were 2 festivals held in his honor – one in March that would ask him for a good harvest for the Spring and one in December that would send him off for the winter.

The Temple of Zeus that we visited also caught my eye. Here was one of the most important and largest Ionic temples built in antiquity. While most of it is still on site in ruins, the reason it is widely regarded is for its exact mathematical proportions. I bet the designer of the temple had fun with this one, because, as in other Greek temples, the part to whole relationships were of immense importance to the success of the building. The embates was the standard module of a Greek temple. This part would establish a whole set of rules for any temple, and could be scaled accordingly to the site’s need. It is a 6x11 temple that has been exactly tuned, like a guitar, to represent the rhythm and harmony the Greeks sought within nature and in their designs. I often try to make a connection between architecture and music, because I think that the more cross-disciplinary our minds work, the better off we’ll be. The rhythm of a colonnade could be said to coincide with a steady drum beat; the idiosyncratic nature of a Frank Gehry structure is as pleasing to the eye as a Miles Davis record is pleasing to the ear. There are connections between these two disciplines and others, although sometimes they are hard to pick out if you can’t wrap your head around thinking about architecture as music.

Location: Didyma, Turkey

The only reason we went to Didyma on this day was to go to the Temple of Apollo, and I would have to say I’m glad we did. Some temples have claimed to be the largest in this or that location, but the temple here is by far one of the largest I have seen. One of the reasons for this is the style it was built in: dipteral. This means that there were two rows of columns that went around the entire perimeter of the structure. These columns are assuredly the largest in antiquity (that we have come across at least). The square bases had to be at least 20’ long, and if you were to come across a smaller temple that was in ruins where the highest drum was at most 5’ off the ground, the drums here are 15’ off the ground IN RUIN! It’s quite an impressive structure, made even more so by the tunnels on either side of the main cella that lead down to the oracle room. As modern visitors to the ruins here at Didyma, we were allowed to enter the oracle room. This is quite strange because no one but the high priests were able to visit this room in antiquity. To think about the millions of travelers to here in antiquity when this temple was functioning that had to respect the spiritual nature of the building and not enter the oracle room, yet we were allowed in with no resistance. What does this tell you about the sacredness of these spaces? Were they that sacred at all that now anyone can visit them? Or has the world of archaeology overtaken the world of polytheism in that modern travelers want to see all parts of a building, regardless of ancient tradition? Is ancient tradition dead, and if so what did it mean if it’s not around today? These are rhetorical questions, some of them trivial and meaningless, but it brings us to the presentation of the day on religion.

The tradition of building temples evolved from the Mycenaeans, who originally just left holy spots on top of mountains for the gods to receive their offerings, most likey because these were the high spots closest to the gods. The temple began to resemble the houses of the Greeks, because that’s where they thought the gods lived. Of course the temple and any statue inside were but a placeholder for the gods, but they actually thought the gods would be pleased and therefore inhabit these structures, thereby protecting the city. As Greek religion lacked a specific dogma or scripture, it was more or less up to the people to govern themselves and receive ‘signs’ from the gods of their approval or displeasure with their activities on Earth. As a result, polytheism wasn’t quite the same in all parts of the ancient world, as Christianity isn’t the same in all parts of the world today. Each god had a specific role or characteristic, and they were seen more as a personification of abstract ideas, but at the same time had human qualities as well.

6/27 Pergamon, Turkey

I made it to Asia! (well, technically Asia Minor but I don’t care). Turkey definitely has a different feel than Greece. For one, I can almost sound out the words here instead of completely giving up when I tried to do the same for Greece. Turkey also seems poorer off economically than Greece, at least aesthetically. I realize Greece is going through some turbulent times in their history, but Turkey still hasn’t the development I was expecting. Nonetheless, the first city that we visited today was the ancient acropolis of Pergamon. It was established around the 3^rd century BCE, about the time of Alexander the Great. Up until the 1^st century BCE, there were a series of very wealthy kingdoms that existed in this part of the world, and they did in fact co-exist peacefully with the Roman Empire. They eventually did bequeath their kingdom to the Romans to avoid a major conflict and potential destruction of their culture. Because of this gesture, the Romans continued to build and add to the city, which exhibits a mix of Roman and Hellenistic styles today. The interesting thing to me about this site was that the culture respected the mainland Greeks as well, and attempted to model themselves after the Acropolis in Athens, which is manifested here through a series of structures similar to that which is found across the Aegean Sea. It had the advantage of being built on a steeply sloping site, which gave it layers of terraces, a military outlook, and easily defensible structures. Eventually, though during Roman times the town grew so large that it began to inhabit and spread across the plain below the acropolis. Its urban fabric does an adequate job of following the topographic lines of the site, as opposed to Priene, which we are seeing in a few days that, regardless of changes in elevation, features a strict grid pattern.

There is an aspect to this particular trip to Turkey that I have not experienced yet. I am astonished at how far reaching the Greek and Roman cultures were. The system of logistics that these cultures had set up some two thousand years ago is mind boggling. To be able to quarry stone, move materials over thousands of miles (by boat or land), and construct these beautiful works of architecture seems almost incomprehensible. Structures like the Temple of Athena, which was built out of andesite and faces an open plain to the west, are only a slight part of this vast network. As with many of the Greek temples, it attempts to relate itself to the horizon by having unobstructed views to the landscape. Its entry sequence also imitates the Acropolis in Athens somewhat as the way you first encounter the Temple is from an angle, not straight on as in typical Greek fashion. This non-orthogonal appropriation of space was a hallmark of Greek design: it allows you to develop a relationship with the building first, instead of being forced on a straight axis right into the temple. A number of stoas were also built around the temple, each 2 stories high, terminating at the appropriate distance from the temple so as to give unobstructed views of the surrounding area, and were interconnected to the library on site as well. After the Library of Alexander, which has not been excavated, this is the earliest library of which we have ruins as it was built in the 3^rd century BCE.

The other structure that caught my eye and relates to this idea of the logistical network is the Temple of Trajan, which is a Roman structure, built of the typical regal Corinthian order. There are a couple of amazing features of this structure. It catches my eye again because it is of the same order we see 3000 miles away from Rome, but more so because of the style in which it was built. Hadrian, who constructed it, could have built the platform the temple stands on out of concrete; they had the technology. Keep in mind this structure was built in the 2^nd century AD. Yet, it was built in a style reminiscent of a 6^th century BCE structure! It was probably Hadrian’s extreme respect for the Greek culture which allowed him the patience to build a structure that probably took longer to construct than it would have it were to be built using the more advanced technology of the day. Instead he decides to be true to their culture and build it like they would have nearly 800 years earlier, a stunning achievement in cross-culture awareness.

But wait! There’s more!

In order to construct this temple, a platform had to be built in order to get it to be at the appropriate height. So to show off their technological prowess, the Romans built a series of barrel vaults that comprised an entire network underneath the temple. This work of civil engineering definitely exhibits the Roman building style: rounded arches that are stretched out along the length of the temple, and a duality of function: to support the temple above and to create space below that could have been used as a storage facility or some other use.

You could also expect to find a theater at Pergamon. This one in particular was the steepest in antiquity and could hold up to 10,000 people. What was interesting about this structure was that it was both enlarged during the Roman times and did not have any scenery, allowing full unobstructed views of the landscape. This might have been a result of the desire to maintain that all-important relationship with nature, as previously described, or it might have been a function of the types of performances held here. Either way, it is quite an impressive structure that also features a small Temple of Dionysius at the bottom. This was placed here so that as you were approaching the theater from the road below, you could see the temple and its relation to the overall complex, just as Dionysius has a relation to the world of theater, entertainment, and debauchery.

One building type that I haven’t yet discussed that we came across is the gymnasium. It is built on three different levels for use by three different age groups and wasn’t designed exclusively for exercise. Rather, both intellectual and physical activities would take place here, as the Greeks found it important to exercise both mind and body simultaneously to keep both parts working in harmony.

Dedicated to the God of Healing, Asclepius, the Asclepion was primarily an early form of a hospital dedicated to keeping the population of Pergamon in good health. Of course the concept of healing had to have a deity to go along with it, and we can still see remnants of Asclepius today, as his symbol was the snake wrapping around a staff. The whole area of Pergamon was really a functioning early metropolis. None of the aspects of daily life were taken for granted and each had its place and specific function. We can look back today and call them somewhat ‘primitive’ because all of their structures were built primarily out of stone, a Neolithic-looking building material that gives each building here more of a crude feel than it deserves. This was a thriving city: even the hospitals had theater spaces for music and performances, stoas for commercial use, and a sacred spring in which to take baths. At the same time, though, the way they treated their patients was based off of knowledge that is definitely primitive when looked at through a modern medicine lens. Hippocrates looked at the body in such theoretical terms that he thought the body’s 4 temperaments were responsible for balancing out the human body and for you to remain in good health. So we have a dynamic here of a well-cultivated intelligent, democratic society that still relied on superstition and bad science most of the time. But we should give them a break; it was our earliest attempts at civilization and I think they got it mostly right.

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I’m sitting on a bus somewhere outside of Pergamon, Turkey. Having just visited the main Acropolis and Asclepieion (hospital) of the area, I’m staggered at the scope and scale of the ancient world and their ability to logistically organize vast parts of the globe and unify them into a cohesive whole. The distance between Rome and the west coast of Turkey is equivalent to a plane ride from New York to Los Angeles. Yet, we see the same building typologies here that we see in the ‘mother land’ of Rome. The Temple of Trajan, for instance, (also dedicated to Zeus) is a prime example and is also a fascinating building for another reason which I will mention later on. It was built during the reign of Hadrian, somewhere in the 2^nd century AD and similar to a temple of Zeus that we saw in Athens. The order is Corinthian, the formal expression basically the same as any temple you would see in Rome, yet it is some 2500 miles away. I can’t even begin to describe how difficult and therefore purposeful a journey for the emperor Hadrian must have been around this time. If he did in fact come here to Turkey and either approve of this building type or be involved in some other capacity, one would have to think that he was involved in traveling to other parts of the Roman Empire which were under his control at the time of his reign. Spain, England, North Africa, parts of the Middle East, Germany, France were all at one time under the umbrella of that city in central Italy. The vastness of this Empire is what astonishes me sometimes. Without modern transportation, infrastructure, or communication, you wonder sometimes how it was able to grow this large. I suspect that they had more time to think about and deploy the logistics, rather than spend their time on facebook or google.

Another fascinating aspect of the Temple of Zeus in Pergamon is the style in which it was built. At the time of its construction, Hadrian’s Villa had already been in existence and the Romans knew quite a lot about concrete and the ability to deploy it in any number of ways. Domes and other various shell-like spatial arrangements had been experimented on in Hadrian’s Villa and were at the fingertips of the emperor. Yet, in a nod to the Greeks and with a great respect for their culture after they had bequeathed their city to the Romans, Hadrian constructed the temple in the style essentially of the Parthenon: by stacking stones on top of one another. You say, so what? The Parthenon was constructed around 440 BCE. The Temple of Zeus was constructed in the 2^nd century AD, 600 years AFTER the Parthenon. To put an equivalent perspective on this time gap, it would be like if we constructed churches today like they did in the 1400’s. what if we built one of those large Gothic churches with its flying buttresses, hand-made stained glass windows, and ridiculously tall naves. It just wouldn’t be done today; it would be unheard of. This building style says again to me how much respect the Romans had for classical Greek culture. Now the construction method was not EXACTLY the same. The Parthenon was built out of solid marble. The Temple of Zeus in Pergamon was built of local stone with a marble revetment. At least, the base was constructed this way; the columns are still solid carved marble and in a different order (style).

I am also starting to formulate a question in my head about the world in general. Do I prefer natural beauty or man-made beauty? When I look at all of the beautiful places that we have visited over the last 6 weeks, I have seen mountain ranges, hillsides, valleys, sunsets, beaches, and rivers. Yet I have also seen townscapes built into the land; incredible spatial volumes; meticulous building methods that boggle the mind as to how detailed they are; exquisite paintings, frescoes, and statues from any number of masters of their craft from ancient to Renaissance times; and more ancient ruins than I can count on my two hands. I have seen a little from Column A and a little from Column B mixed together (as in the case of both the sunset over Florence and the Athens surrounding townscape. As an architect I have been trained to recognize those elements which are beautifully man-made. Yet, as a citizen of the world, I am startled to see the natural beauty that remains in the world. At this very moment we are passing a mountain range with its vast rolling hills, trees dotting the tops, and the very last flickers of sun touching the tops of the mountains. I wish sometimes I could capture the beauty of these scenes in pictures, but I feel that they do not do the scene justice sometimes. It remains to be seen how camera technology will develop, but there is something to be said about moving past a beautiful scene and seeing it constantly change before your eyes as opposed to seeing it still on a computer screen or framed picture. To be able to move around these enormous formations of nature and perceive the foreground moving at a much higher speed than the seemingly glacial background is a part of our experience as human beings that have to be among the most awe-inspiring.

On the other hand, entering into a space such as St. Peter’s Church in Rome with its golden inscriptions, sculpture and painting decorated walls, and complete vertical expansion of the typical basilica form inspires one to revel in the capabilities of the human mind to create such structures. Now of course beauty here is so entangled with the subjective experience that the two can never be separated. What is beautiful and heavenly to one may be just an ugly, over-decorated, ecclesiastical nightmare to another. I, for one, much rather prefer those churches whose geometrical experiments are beyond what I can comprehend rather than staring at walls covered in mosaics and paintings; but that’s just me. Nevertheless, the overall debate remains; what is more beautiful: nature or man-made structures. Could it be a little bit of both? Can’t I have both? Can nature create something ugly? If it exists, it was meant to look like that and can’t control whether it is beautiful or not. We, on the other hand, as rational, logical and emotional beings can control the output of our designs. Since the beginning of civilization we have produced a lot of reprehensibly ugly buildings and a good number of ones that are regarded by the general population to be ‘beautiful’. Which do I prefer? I’ve only just started this discussion with myself. Which do you prefer?

6/24 Athens Archaeological Museum

Today was a rather short day, as the only site on our agenda was the Archaeological Museum of Athens. As opposed to the Acropolis museum, which deals specifically with that area of Athens, the Archaeological Museum constitutes all the artifacts which have been found to be from antiquity. From the Bronze Age to the Classical Era, items from Mycenae, Tiryns, Piros, and many other city-states were found within the museum. It contains tables of Linear B – a language specifically of the Mycenaean culture which was sort of a precursor, proto-Greek writing style. The statues found inside are also from the Classical period, and were divided up between the Kouros and the Kore, male and female statues. The Greeks had an interesting way of representing human figures: the Kouros would always be of a stiff posture, smiling and typically had one foot forward. As in all cultures, certain characteristics evolve around their artwork and are repeated over and over. These statues represented more or less a rule in ancient Greek statue: to show male figures in this way was in keeping with tradition and one of the first steps in moving away from Egyptian human representation, which was typically even more stiff and rigid. The ‘one foot forward’ method of representation eventually gave way to more fluid ways of showing the human body: knees bent, arms in dynamic poses, contrappostso (leaning on one leg with the torso twisted), etc. I suppose that there was always a debate and tension over whether to keep with traditional forms of representing the human figure and trying something new. If a society was stable, often their method of denoting the human body never changed. However, if there was some kind of political strife, war, or transfer of power to a different culture, the statues would probably then reflect this change; as a reaction to a new way of life.

6/23 Delphi

The discussion today began with the kind of transformation the Greeks underwent from an agrarian society to one that flourished with a network of palace economies from 1400-1200BCE, the collapse that ushered in the Geometric Period from 1100-800BCE, the growth of Athens from 800-500BCE, its Classical Period from 500-350BCE, and the Hellenistic Era, which began shortly after that. You can definitely see why it was mostly independent city-states that developed around the mainland of Greece. The setting for Delphi is along the side of a range of nearly inaccessible mountains. It is a wonder at all how all of these peoples ended up speaking the same language. One would assume that they might end up speaking something differently, but the Greek culture has a unique way of remaining tightly knit, even in instances where two city-states have a history of conflict (Athens and Sparta). There are many myths surrounding the ancient city of Delphi: it has claimed to be the center of the world, a veritable navel between the heavens and the underworld. The deity who protected the city was Apollo, and this was manifested in a number of ways: he has temples and shrines built in his honor, there are a multitude of religious ceremonies dedicated to him, and even the famed Oracle of Delphi probably derived some of his spiritual prowess from this great deity. The predictive power of the oracle was also a result of the vapors that emanated from beneath the surface around the area of the ancient city. It was believed that in order to tell someone his future and destiny, the oracle would draw up some kind of spirit from the earth, cleanse himself spiritually, and through this method would speak to whomever sought his wisdom – a process which was referred to as Paedriades.

Starting from the bottom of the site, we were introduced to a new form of classic Greek architectural language: the tholos. The architect for this structure was Theodoros, who is mentioned by name in Vitruvius, who conceived of transforming the rectangular language of entablatures, columns, and plinths into a curved one. It features sculpture that represents various achievements of the Gods and other tribes and is of both the Doric and Corinthian orders. What was interesting to me about this structure was how the vernacular of Greek architecture was interpreted to be circular. So far we have come across temples, stoa, and any number of buildings which are more or less rectangular and have lines of columns which are just that: lines that have two termination points. But to wrap that line back on itself and create a seemingly infinite repetition of the column where no one knows where it begins and ends is quite a different conception and takes an architect who is willing to consider the act of arranging columns in a completely different way.

Further up the site we crossed the boundary of the terminus, which made a clear distinction between the outside and the inside, demarcating these spaces with a clear line of stones. Once you crossed this ancient boundary, you were entering the world of Apollo, and it was assumed that you would give to him gifts to receive his blessing. All along this path, or Heirera Heods, was a series of bronze statues commemorating the victory of the Spartans over the Persians, each new offering attempting to be greater than the last. These offerings would be placed in Thesauri, or treasuries, places for votive offerings that would have acted like a museum does today. Each thesauri was in fact a small temple – the structure would have all the components found in the typical shrine such as columns, walls, pediments, entablatures, etc. The more city-states that contributed to the deity, the more his credibility grew.

Culminating the walk up the site was the great Temple of Apollo, the house of the deity who represents music, light, harmony, logic, and reason. Because this is such an ancient site, the current temple, which is in ruins, is actually the 6^th version to be built along with the fact that this region has very high seismic activity. We can only be sure of the construction method of the 4^th temple, which was said to be made out of stone. It is a hexastyle, 6x15 Doric amphiprostyle temple which represents some of man’s more logical accomplishments. Now contrasting this, the west pediment was actually dedicated to Dionysius, who represented some of the darker side of man’s character: entertainment, dance, emotion, etc. The Greeks sought balance and harmony in all things, and to be too logical and reasonable was never a good thing for them, which prompted the need to let loose every once in a while and worship Dionysius. This back and forth was represented in the changing of the seasons, as Apollo would ‘go away’ during winter time (presumably to just represent the colder weather) and would be replaced by other gods during this time.

Another slightly odd aspect to this whole cult was the idea of Apollo Loxos, or Apollo ‘slanted’, a version of the oracle which would tend to either change its mind or tell the future in some kind of vague way. Fortunes would be told in such an ambiguous fashion that the right outcome would inevitably occur, even if it wasn’t what the participants had anticipated. The ceremony of getting into a trance-like state and translating the words from the gods was taxing for the women who performed this duty. I find this practice really interesting because, in modern times, we can safely say that no one can accurately predict the future. Yet the Greeks relied on these women to tell their fortunes and would be so superstitious as to believe in whatever resulted from the ceremony. This also can branch off into a discussion about how our belief systems have evolved, why we drop some beliefs in favor of others, why we anthropomorphized nature in the past but don’t do so today, etc. It’s partially due to the fact that we have found scientific reasons for the natural phenomena of which the Greeks were naïve about centuries ago. Yet every time we find out something about the universe we should constantly try to ask ourselves if this is the truth and the way in which reality actually performs.

6/22 Foundations of Athens

We started this day at the northwest corner of Athens and the mission was to find out how the city is organized and what constitutes its urban fabric. Previously called Dromos, Athens contains all of the features of any metropolis: streets, blocks, housing, administration, shops, hospitals, etc. Its main northwest street lead to the Academy of Plato, located in the suburbs. Also in this corner of the city we found the Demosion Sema, which was public cemetery where Athenians would bury loved ones and is thought to be the located of Pericles and the commemoration spot of soldiers who died in the Peloponnesian War. One reason it’s located here was that a typical practice of Greek city-states was to bury their dead outside the city walls. Burials would also often take place along the Sacred Way, which was an extremely important ritual procession route. Excavations here found both elaborately and humbly decorated tombs that contained both cremation and inhumation, signifying, as in Rome, multiple cultures coming together and blending. It’s interesting to consider this fact and the seeming contradiction it represents. The Greeks had deeply ingrained in their society a concept of the citizen: one who would participate in political life, could vote in elections, and in groups could make a true impact in the daily lives of all people. Yet, at the end of their lives, they were to be buried outside the city walls. Doesn’t this seem like an incongruity? The populous would spend their whole lives building up reputations, relationships, and connections, yet at the end were given a resting place out beyond the limits of their home. In order to respectfully remember citizens of Athens, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to keep them within the confines of the city, instead of burying them “out there” in the wild, beyond the walls? These questions are not for me to rule on, since they were answered thousands of years before my birth. Nevertheless I feel they are an important set of questions to ask.

The next element of the urban fabric we studied was the Ancient Agora, the open space adjacent to the Acropolis which was the cradle of Athenian Democracy. It consolidated a wide variety of practices of everyday life including those political, administrative, public, religious, military, commercial, judicial, and leisure. The Agora was the heart of political life in the city, a place for discussion and debate and to experiment with Democracy. High above the Agora is the Areos Pagos, which was the ancient judicial court and dedicated later to Mars by the Romans. The area underwent many transformations throughout the years, but the underlying fabric tended not to change, as was the case with the Panathenaic Way, which was a diagonal street cut through the Agora. It is an anti-Roman construct in the fact that it is non-orthogonal and served many religious and processional purposes for the ancient Athenians. It was Kleisthenes who devised a system of representation for everyone instead of just a few; political units were constituted from the 10 tribes around Athens and the overall purpose was to usurp power from the aristocratic families and give it back to the people. It’s quite a fascinating concept considering the innumerable monarchies and supreme rulers that were ubiquitous in the ancient world. It’s also a reason why we study ancient Greece instead of ancient Persia: their idea to bring power to the masses is generally well received because it’s popular. There has always been that inkling within everyone to be free, and although we may still not have fully manifested this concept in the United States, the thread has seemingly followed us since antiquity. Similarly to the Congress in the US, Athens featured a boule; a house of the Parliament which needed votes from the citizens to pass laws, for their only duty was to prepare topics for the people to consider. Executive power in this system would rotate between the different tribes. Additional structures in the Agora, and most likely ones which will be repeated in the cities we will see, included the stoas, which housed commercial functions; various altars to serve their polytheistic lifestyle; theaters; a metroon, or public archives (a possible precursor to the library); and the bouleterion, or council building.

To visit the next structure was also quite a treat. The temple of Hephaistos is by far the most well-preserved Doric temple from antiquity. To see a temple this old and in this good of a condition is so extremely rare. Anything could seemingly happen to these ancient structures: fire, war, natural disaster, etc. that could ruin them. It wasn’t the positioning of this temple, which was dedicated also to Athena and built around 430 BCE, that kept it from ruin. The reason it could have survived was that some of these ancient structures were converted to churches after Christianity swept through the Mediterranean world. And despite the innumerable amount of conflicts that permeated the areathis hexastyle, peristyle temple survives today without a single column missing. It is the prototypical Doric temple featuring three separate cellas, the opisthonais, naos, and pronaos. The peristyle nature of the typical temple means that the inner rooms could be set free from the confines of the exterior rows of columns, almost making the structure seem transparent in a way.

Used primarily for commercial purposes but could essentially be repurposed for any usage, the stoa was a major building type during the Classical Greek period in Athens. A recreation of one of these stoas, the Stoa of Attalos, figures prominently in any study of the fabric of the Agora. Usually, the stoa would define the outline of this open space, doing its part to enclose the area while still allowing a sense of place to be felt by its inhabitants. Featuring a Doric colonnade that fronts the Agora, the stoa utilized the concepts of passive cooling inside to create air flows in the centuries before air conditioning. I think the most important question to ask about this space is: is it inside or outside? One could theoretically debate both sides – you are technically outside because you aren’t enclosed by 4 walls. Yet at the same time you have a roof over your head which protects you from the elements and provides a basic measure of shelter – 2 basic requirements for architecture. In a sense, then it is simultaneously both; each argument has equal weight. It also has a different functionality than that of the temple, for it’s not regarded for its sculptural qualities but rather for the modular repetition of spaces and its multi-functionality. The rhythm created by the columns along its long rectangular shape is an example perhaps of early Mannerism: taking what you would normally expect (maximum 12-14 columns in a temple) and stretching it out horizontally along the ground.

The first example of a stadium was the Panathenaic Stadium, in the Southeast corner of the city outside the city walls. The Greeks were quite a competitive bunch. They hosted athletic games in honor of the deities and is a unique feature of this civilization that isn’t found anywhere else in the ancient world at this time. Amazingly, it was made entirely of marble and the seating takes advantage of the sloping site.

We were also introduced to the number of public works projects around the city that were made under the direction of the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the 2^nd century AD. After a large temple dedicated to Zeus called the Olympeion was not completed because it was so large and would have cost the city so much money, Hadrian, with a large amount of respect for Greek culture, came to Athens and finished it. This was part of a pattern on the part of the great Emperor to leave many of the structures of ancient Greece alone and simply add to, renovate, or reconstruct buildings without disturbing what was there. Even after its completion, it was still subject to the same forces that all other structures were exposed to, and inevitably fell. As the Romantic period in the 18^th and 19^th centuries took hold across Europe, John Ruskin advocated leaving the fallen structures as they were. He was nearly obsessed with romanticizing the past and for not reconstructing it, for reasons which I still do not fully understand.

The Greeks were so eternally grateful to Hadrian for reconstructing this temple that they built a gate in his honor, which acts as a threshold to the city and features both Greek and Roman architectural themes. It’s hard to classify this structure in any certain category because of the mixing of orders and mixing of CULTURES within the same edifice. One could certainly say though that it represents the coming together of civilizations, not necessarily the mixing of them because the orders and elements are completely separate on each level. The way the gate is intended to be read is the side you’re standing on should be represented on the face you’re looking at. For instance, standing facing the Acropolis it would say Hadrian, as if it would be a reminder as to where you were in the world, not a sign that you were entering someone else’s. It’s an interesting concept, but hard to describe without actually walking around the entire structure and reading what it says on both sides.

The next location was the rest of the unexplored territory around the Agora. There are a variety of structures around this area which contribute significantly to the fabric of Athens, and looking back on the day’s walk we’re dealing with quite a sophisticated society. We were introduced to the Peripatos, which was the walk that goes around the Acropolis hill. All of the citizens would tend to participate in this walk, and it was intended to be an educational one, mixing learning with experiencing nature at the same time. Along the way we came across the Stoa of Eumenes, the Athenian Aesclepion, and the Odeon of Herod Atticos. Each of these structures performed a different civic function, from commercial and retail usage, to healing the sick, to hosting dramatic music performances, and none of which is without merit for such a large urban population.

We also visited one of the earliest theaters to be constructed, the Theater of Dionysius. Originally, the performances of plays were held in the Agora until there was such a demand for this type of entertainment that a dedicated structure had to be built for it. As part of the learning walk of the Peripatos, the Greek tragedies held in the theaters would give people time to reflect on their lives, the good/bad parts of one’s soul and what it means to be a moral citizen. I find it to be of great value sometimes to just sit and think about my place in the world. While our society seems to be speeding up with the advent of facebook and smartphones, we often don’t give our minds the space to expand on what our place is today in the modern world. The Greeks didn’t have as many things to distract them from everyday life, either, so it would have been a portion of their day that they could use to ‘culture’ themselves and hold up a mirror to society.

One of the other interesting areas we visited was the Pnyx, also sometimes referred to as the Hill of the Nymphs. It had somewhat of an amphitheater-like quality, and that was probably a good thing considering its function was to practice their form of Democracy. It was in good working order until voting, which would require a quorum of 6000 citizens to pass a law, was moved to the Theater of Dionysius to accommodate more citizens.

One can’t appreciate the Democratic processes that went on at the Pnyx and the rather free-flowing manner in which they took place unless you consider the Areos Pagos, which was previously the supreme court of Athens. Perched atop a dramatic rocky outcrop further down from the Acropolis sits this natural formation which would be a place where life/death crimes were to be heard in front of the magistrates. I got the impression that this place was to be an extremely intimidating and daunting place to have your life decided on, as the steep drop from all sides of it only added to the heightened sense of drama.

Finally, we ended this day taking a look at Hadrian’s Library, which became a popular building type after the Library of Alexander was built in the 4^th century BCE; every city started to build one. It was Pergamin who developed a writing technique that could be used on papyrus, but the process of copying a book was still at this time a colossal undertaking. I can’t imagine what the literacy rate must have been for the people of ancient Greece. Yes, they practiced Democracy and held open debates, but what about the rest of the population which did not participate in political life and were perhaps less economically well off than the upper class? Were they left to educate themselves? Searching for a copy of a book must have been nearly impossible until the advent of the library. This building type sought to consolidate all the accumulated knowledge of a society into one democratic process whereby citizens could enlighten themselves if they chose to do so. Hadrian’s library is also conveniently located near the center of the city, further emphasizing the desire to have all citizens participate in the proliferation of useful knowledge. I come back to this idea that I wrote about in my Rome journal that accurate knowledge and the protection thereof is very fragile. What everyone is constantly searching for is the truth: truth in people, in politics, in science, in life. If we don’t protect these attempts that mankind has made of searching for the truth, all we’re left with is speculation, bad science, and a propaganda-filled society. Therefore, it is significantly incumbent on the educated class to preserve libraries (and digital media) to the best and most precise of our abilities; otherwise we lose a bit of our humanity and cease to be conscious, fact-seeking creatures.

6/21 The Acropolis

Athens, by any measure, and its Acropolis is but a scaled up version of the Mycenaean acropolis: it lies on a high vantage point overlooking the city, with a natural basin and access to water nearby. Additionally, it has remnants of Neolithic and Bronze Age civilizations found throughout the area. Unfortunately, it experienced the same type of collapse that consumed other civilizations around the area in the 12^th century BCE. For about 300 years, one could categorize this time period as the 1^st Dark Ages. Nevertheless, society recovered and experienced a period of growth through a process of synoecism, or the coming together of different communities. After the recovery from this downturn in history, a new political structure began to emerge, one in which there was no king or megaron. Instead, these institutions were replaced by the Gods and the temple, respectively. There seemed to be a movement away from secular control of society to one which worshipped the heavens. This same pattern can be found in ancient Roman history as well, as after the fall of the Roman Empire Christianity sought to remove all instances of Pagan, polytheistic tradition and replace it with a monotheistic tradition. The political power was also transferred, as it moved from the Acropolis to the Agora. Previously, kings had ruled from this higher part of the city, a sign of a monarchical society. However, as power shifted, Athens became more of a democratic society and power moved down to where the common people could be active participants in the debates of the day. As Athens rose in power, they began to build temples on top of the Acropolis. Evidence of 6 of these structures have been found, with each successive new edifice being built on top of the older ones, whether because it had been knocked down through wars, or the belief system had changed necessitating a different structure be built, or because of natural causes.

The most recent Parthenon built on the Acropolis was dedicated to Athena Parthenon and the heightened sense of nationalism after the victory at the battle of Marathon over the Persians. It also helped that the Athenians inherited wealth from the Persians after their defeat along with the discovery of a silver mine. These two factors played into the decision to make a temple completely out of marble, a previously unheard of feat. Concurrently with the construction of the Parthenon was the creation of the famed statue of Athena Parthenon by Phidias, one which would be placed within the temple upon its completion. What I find especially interesting about temple architecture is its rather simplistic program: the entire purpose of these structures was to act as a house to a God. If any of the Greek civilizations had come under hard economic times, would they simply deem these structures unnecessary? Or was the desire to build a house for their deity so strong that they would divert funds from other parts of their culture and dedicate themselves to build a temple? My guess is that since the Greeks were such a loyal people, the Athenians especially, that no amount of political strife would have prevented them from building a temple to the patron of Athens. While it is rather simple in conception, as I previously noted, the complexity occurs in the making and execution.

One of the best parts of the trip so far was the ability to go behind the scenes and actually see the contemporary attempts at restoring the Parthenon. We got a chance to see what kinds of tools the ancient Greeks used, how the Modern archaeologists and stonecutters are attempting to piece back together the old stones with freshly cut ones, and more insights than you would normally receive on your typical trip to the Acropolis. I had always learned that the entasis of a column was a result of the Greeks wanting to correct some kind of optical deficiency in the human eye; the bulge being an attempt to not make it seem like a column was too skinny. in addition, however, the Greeks attempted to imbue a column with the sense that it was bearing the actual weight of the stones above, adding a certain amount of drama to the entire structure as if they were about to collapse under the tremendous mass of the entablatures. I had never before looked at the entasis through this point of view. Once this insight was revealed, an entire new appreciation and dimension was revealed to me about these ancient structures. These ancient temples were not simply houses to the Gods. They were seen as living, plastic structures that turned inert stone into an especially dramatic presentation. Another feature that I had not realized about the Parthenon was that they curved the temple along the length of the plinth in both directions, a move that almost makes it seem like it will burst and explode at any minute. For the Greeks, it was apparently extremely difficult to make a straight line. We learned from the presentation of the differing methods they tried to use to do so. One of the methods involved measuring pieces of the temple from a flat expanse of water. Others involved stretching a piece of string. Therefore it is simply amazing at the precision in which the structures on the acropolis are rendered. There are absolutely no gaps between the drums of each column. Such minute details are what make this structure one of the pinnacles of accomplishment in Western culture.

The sculptural program of the Parthenon is another one of its distinguishing features that, although not existing today at the actual building, can be found depicted in Berlin at their archaeological museum and at the new Acropolis Museum by Bernard Tschumi. Both the pediments and metopes contained sculpture. The west side’s metopes depicted the battle vs. the Amazons, while the east side’s metopes depicted the battle of the Olympic Gods vs. various monsters. The east pediment depicted the birth of Athena, fully formed and armed from Zeus’ calf, while the west pediment depicted the struggle for who would protect the city: Athena or Poseidon. All of these creation myths represent something in the historical record that is a metaphor for some actual event. The metopes could be said to represent the struggle of the transition between a nomadic civilization and one which had tamed agriculture and become more civilized.

As I had never visited Athens before, it was quite a pleasure to visit one of the most important urban design fabrics of ancient architecture. Moving up the Acropolis through the Propylaea and seeing the Parthenon not frontally as the Romans may have designed it, but from an angle. The ability to view this structure as a three-dimensional form was a key element in the design of the Acropolis and the fact that the entrance to the temple was on the opposite side from where you entered from the Propylaea. This allows you the ability to walk almost fully around the building and develop a relationship with it, a processional feature that is quite pleasing. The buildings here were meant to be understood as a whole, blending with the surrounding landscape. I often wonder why architects design some of their buildings merely as a frontal composition. I mentioned this in my Venice journal but I think it bears repeating: I seem to appreciate a building more when I can walk completely around it and view it holistically. At the same time, I can understand site restrictions that may force only a frontal reading to a building. However, when allowed I would advise any designer (and myself) to consider all sides of a building.

The other building of note on the Acropolis is the Erechtheion, which was built 30 years after the Parthenon and seemingly has nothing to do with either the design or its layout. For one thing, its slender Ionic columns clash with the Doric arrangement of the main temple. It has a rather complex program, as it was dedicated to many deities and negotiates many height differences along the site. The projecting portico facing the Parthenon, however, does feature one of the most famous set of columns in antiquity. The Caryatids have a long and storied history and many theories abound as to the reason for their existence. Vitruvius said that they were slave women who had to hold up the entablature above as a sign of punishment and bondage. Others have suggested they were the 6 daughters of an ancient king who sacrificed themselves in battle. Whatever the case may be, it starts the conversation as to the derivation of the column itself. From my studies of ancient architecture, I was taught that the column which originated in Egypt was a representation in stone of a bundle of reeds. Other creation myths state that since these Greek temples were connected heavily with nature, they represent trees. However, still others state that the human body was a key factor in deriving the proportions of columns. I believe that it is probably a mixture of all of these theories. Many cultures from around the ancient world developed the use of columns in their architecture, so it shows by logic therefore that not all of them could have developed the column for the exact same reasons.

6/20 Mycenae, Greece

It is quite possible that the location of today’s lecture is where all of Western culture can derive itself, specifically, the ideals of democracy, mega-institutions, and a certain way of life that is more inclusive rather than exclusive. The ancient city of Mycenae was but a tiny part of a large network of citadels and city-states located in Greece and Asia Minor. Evidence suggests even earlier Neolithic settlements from around 6500 – 5000 BCE. We know that the earliest settlements here spoke Greek, were a mix between the indigenous populations of the region and Indo-European peoples, and that they had the same Gods as in classical mythologies: Athena, Apollo, Zeus, etc. While we know very little about the oldest civilizations here, we can definitely divide those civilizations from 2000 BCE onwards into three distinct categories:

1. Early Mycenaean – 2000-1600BCE

a. Trade, communication, simple civilization, horses

2. Middle Mycenaean, 1600-1400 BCE

a. Growth and expansion due to the death of rival Aegean civilization

b. Had the opportunity to utilize the networks built up by the Minoans

3. Late Mycenaean, 1400-1200 BCE

a. Height of their power, international presence, highly developed communication networks

I recount this minor introduction into ancient Greek history because it will most definitely pertain to the sights that we will be seeing later on in this trip. As for the site of the ancient Mycenaean civilization, they of course needed some sort of defense mechanism in order to protect themselves from invaders and to protect the sacred burial areas. As the Classical Greeks thought these giant fortifications were built by some type of super-human Cyclops, they deemed these structures to be Cyclopean. Of course we know now this isn’t the case, but it’s these types of creation myths that permeate the ancient world and are intermingled with some aspects of the truth. It’s not often hard to pick out the myth from the reality, but as we all experience this world in a subjective way, what actually is myth to some people becomes a reality for others.

The Lion’s Gate, for instance, is a good way to look at this intermingling of fact vs. fiction. The relief atop this structure depicts two lions whose spirits and strength are protecting the area from invaders. Is it the lions that are protecting the area, or the fact that the stones are so massive and impenetrable as to prevent attack? For the ancient Greeks it was probably a bit of both. Did the spirit of two lions somehow shield this city from attack? Probably not. But does that matter now, or was the idea of mythology so ingrained in ancient Greek culture that either answer suited them just fine?

Once we passed through the gates, we were informed that the ancient citadel program would have comprised a palace for the elite, houses for administrative purposes and for priests, storage, and any temples that they were inspired to build. Any graves and burial chambers were usually located outside the city walls, a practice that was common in this area of the world. Chambers would often include luxurious items that were common to the rulers in their everyday lives such as tools, swords, masks, jewelry, and terra cotta. While later civilizations built many temples to their gods, the temples here were often hard to identify and absent in some cases. Other architectural elements present at Mycenae included a military garrison, which was the lookout spot above the Lion’s Gate and faces north; the Megaron, which was a major feature of these civilizations – a palace for the elite with 5 different levels; and houses with single holes in each roof for rainwater entrance or expelling smoke that were often complemented by a courtyard below. Many of these structures were meant to be understood with respect to the landscape, which has been a long-standing tradition in Greek culture.

I was also quite interested in the procession of spaces in the Megaron, which was the house of the king located at the top or near the top of most acropolises in ancient Greece. The sequence of spaces is as follows:

exterior courtyard à portico à ambulatory (the interstitial space) à bedroom and hearth

This procession of spaces from being exposed to enclosed is not unique in the world. Rather, there are many civilizations whose ancient architecture has these same features. Perhaps it is within our nature to want to move away from the wild outdoors into a more enclosed civilized place. When we were at the Villa Giulia in Rome, it was explained to us the difference between the cultivated garden and the natural landscape. Perhaps this is what they were trying to achieve here as well: a statement that said that they are a civilized people, and aside from the basic need for shelter, they will create a procession of spaces which is both sensitive and responsive to the landscape but also reflects the civility of current society.

The lower burial chamber, known as a Tholos, is also a common feature to this civilization. It is both a manifestation of their connection with the Egyptian burial culture, and an admitted preoccupation with the afterlife. The monumental entryway is what connects the outside world to the world of the dead: a large door twice the size of a normal person and colossal stone walls rise up to greet all visitors. At this time, the ancient Greeks had somewhat of a grasp on post/lintel and corbelling construction techniques. It is evident in these tholos tombs, as above each monumental door stands a triangular section of corbelled stones, a device employed so push the forces of gravity to the side allowing the door to be made so large.

Location: Tiryns

Tiryns was the ancient port city of Mycenae, providing this civilization a chance to grow their navy to be used for both trading and war. It is not by the sea today, as the shoreline has receded, and the position of the city was not as fortified as the cities further inland. As a result there needed to be many more thresholds in order to reach the Megaron or to simply breach the city walls. Again we see similar elements of the ancient Greek cities: walls, gates, megaron, and storage. It also had a gate similar to the northern gate at Mycenae. These features aside, I was again taken by the sequence of spaces at the megaron. Its propylon gives it an elaborate threshold and monumental entrance to an inner courtyard. There seems to be a similar effect as one moves from the open spaces to the closed spaces. To think that there was a conscious effort on the part of the Greeks to consider the implications of the difference in attitude and feeling as one moved from the “denial” space to the “reward” space definitely tells me that this was an advanced society. Yes, we could absolutely say that society today is more advanced technologically. But have we lost something architecturally along the way? The Greeks only had nature to rely on giving them sustenance and providing them vistas with which to appreciate their position in life. I believe that Frank Lloyd Wright was probably one of the last great architects to really consider nature in his designs. To me, green architecture somehow seems ‘forced’ in a way. And this is not to say we should return to making our houses out of stone and perching them atop mountains, no. what I’m saying is that to look at these examples might help us further our deteriorating relationship with nature.