The Setting of Hellenistic Temples

Abstract

IN THE HELLENISTIC age the creative power of Greek architects found expression not so much on the mainland of Greece, in the venerable sanctuaries of the past, as in Asia Minor and certain of the neighboring islands. For in the centuries following Alexander the Great, this was the most productive region of the Greek world, architecturally speaking. In such a newly founded city as Pergamon or a resettled town like Priene, the new architectural concepts of the day could more easily be put into practice without the crippling necessity of adjusting them to already existing civic and religious centres. To be sure, essential tastes and practices of previous centuries continued, especially in the last decades of the fourth century and the beginning of the third. The archaic and classical taste for heights, for placing a temple on an akropolis as at Athens or atop a steep promontory overlooking the sea as at Sounion, persisted, if anything intensified, in the Hellenistic period. At Herakleia-on-the-Latmos (Fig. 1), an early Hellenistic temple perched high up on an outcropping of rock overlooking the lake reflects this same tendency. So, too, does the Temple of Athena which crowns the akropolis at Lindos (Fig. 2, A). In the later fourth century, when it was built, it was still possible to enjoy the sight of a building standing in lonely isolation. But not for long. In due time it became necessary to add a vast and impressive approach to the temple composed of a H-shaped colonnade preceded and followed by a monumental flight of steps leading to a propylon from which one finally gained access to the temple at the highest point of the akropolis. Similarly, the early Hellenistic Temple of Athena at Pergamon which originally had occupied a commanding position on one of the uppermost heights of the akropolis, visible from afar, utterly devoid of setting, was provided in the second century with a great architectural framework in the form of a two-storied stoa (Fig. 3). And why? Not only because these colonnades and the rooms behind them were in themselves functional and desirable but because in the previous century a new architectural concept had become irresistible-the desire to provide each significant architectural unit, like the temple, with its own architectural environment, its own setting or surrounding. No longer could such a building be left in isolation or loosely juxtaposed against its neighbors as it had been in previous centuries. Now even older sanctuaries like the temples of Athena at Pergamon or Lindos had to be remodelled in accordance with the new principles. These new principles are visible in the sanctuary of Asklepios at Kos (Fig. 4). There the major temple, built in the mid-second century B.C., is the focal point of a grandiose composition. Placed on the highest of three terraces, it is framed by a horseshoe colonnade and approached by three monumental stairways leading from the outer propylon, across the lower terraces, to its facade. A few standard architectural ingredients-a propylon, stoas. monumental stairways, an altar, the temple itself-are grouped into a clearly defined, immediately graspable composition, a composition characterized by simplicity, boldness and plasticity, by a sharp, firm juxtaposition of the few standard elements. Contrasts of scale, an elevated and central position, an axial approach, emphasis on the facade, all make of the temple the focal point, the culmination of the composition. Kos is a sanctuary of particular complexity. But the essential ingredients of this architectural composition may be found in scores of Hellenistic sanctuaries, especially the all-important and new Hellenistic insistence upon providing the temple with an architectural environment or setting. The shape of this setting varies considerably. Sometimes it is an open horseshoe or Greek H, as at Kos; sometimes the H-shaped frame of stoas is elongated and closed, as in the sanctuary of Artemis at Magnesia (Fig. 5), or the temple is set in the centre of a quadrangle, as at Lagina (Fig. 6). Less frequently, the architectural frame forms a trapezoid, as at Teos or Assos (Fig. 7), and sometimes, whatever the shape of the enclosure, the temple is sucked back into a dominating position at the rear of the field, a scheme particularly convenient for temples presiding over markets, as at Assos, but by no means limited to them. As in the sanctuary of Zeus at Priene (Fig. 8), the temple may actually be engaged in the surrounding colonnades which, incidentally, are often of a different and contrasting order -a Doric framework for an Ionic temple, an Ionic setting