Labraunda 5: The Andrones by Pontus Hellström Jesper Blid

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 189 Labraunda 5: The Andrones. By Pontus HellstrÈ om and Jesper Blid. Stockholm: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (Labraunda 5). 2019. Pp. 297, 472 figs. This study of the banqueting halls at the sanctuary of Labraunda is the culmination of exploration and research by the Swedish project begun in 1948. The volume is handsomely produced. Discussions of technical issues are clearly expressed, and scarcely an erratum is to be found in its nearly 300 pages. Pontus Hellström authored most of the text, while Jesper Blid was responsible for the drawings, many based on documentation by previous architects—notably Thomas Thieme, who worked at Labraunda from 1979 until his death in 2014. Blid is to be commended not only for the crisp and informative illustrations (particularly vivid restorations are figs. 231, 235, 472), but also for writing several important sections. Except for some minor issues raised below, the interpretative work is excellent and will no doubt represent the final word on most aspects of the design and dating of the andrones. Part 1 is an extended description and reconstruction of the remains. The first two chapters cover the Andron of Maussollos and Andron A, argued to have been begun under Maussollos but dedicated after the succession of his brother Idrieus. The next chapter on materials and construction techniques summarizes the previous descriptions, while Chapter Four examines metrology. The first part ends in an eclectic Chapter Five about nearby structures including the Terrace House (possibly a service building), Hellenistic Andron C, and extensions to the Andron of Maussollos. Part 2 comprises succinct studies on style and chronology (Chapters Six to Seven), closing in Chapter Eight with the functions of the andrones and their reflection of Hekatomnid ideology. The organization and coverage is occasionally eccentric due to the division by author. Blid’s study of the later phases of the Andron of Maussollos,1 which became the entrance and courtyard of a sprawling late antique and Byzantine residential complex, is a valuable contribution to scholarship on the reoccupation of abandoned Greek ruins, but it is difficult to access due to its order of appearance. When reading the primary descriptions of these latter phases in Chapter One, one is left in the dark about their nature until reaching Blid’s analysis in Chapter Five, and then obliged to flip back and forth while parsing it. Blid’s description of Andron C also merits its own chapter rather than being relegated to the end of Part 1. Likewise, Chapters Six to Seven cover some of the same ground and might have been combined rather than split by author. Consistent with the intellectual priorities and graphical standards of Bauforschung, the book is replete with detailed accounts of the remains and richly illustrated by photographs and line drawings of the architecture. The ashlar walls of the two Hekatomnid andrones, whose masonry was quarried from the local gneiss and laid in an irregular header-stretcher format, are remarkably well preserved. Whereas the rough gneiss blocks were evidently stuccoed over, the façade, entablature, and threshold were executed in marble from Herakleia or Milas. Resembling over-sized treasuries, the distyle in antis format of the buildings combines Ionic columns with a Doric entablature. In line with their functions as banqueting and reception halls, however, both andrones have large windows admitting light into the porch and cella. Their considerable breadth—close to 10 m—must have been spanned by enormous and costly timbers.2 The interiors are poorly preserved, but at least a plastered platform for klinai survives along the interior of the cella. 1 Also see J. Blid, Labraunda 4: Remains of Late Antiquity (Lund 2016). 2 The cuttings on the cornice blocks argue against a more efficient truss framework. 190 PHOENIX Architectural historians will appreciate the detailed analyses of the marble elements— those on the antae and Ionic capitals are particularly successful—and of the construction techniques, which include early instances of the Karian-Ionian lewis hole and a surviving double-conical bronze dowel. The authors identify a distinctive decorative and technical system developed at Labraunda between the 370s and the middle of the fourth century b.c.e. and show how the...