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.