By the second half of the |
This building, the Hephaesteum, is the best-preserved classical temple in metropolitan Greece. It was built entirely of marble, except for the base platform (of limestone) and the roof (of clay tiles over a wooden frame). Small-scale optical corrections were employed to make it look more impressive from the Agora. Indeed its overall plan was probably designed with this specially in mind. The same subtleties of architectural measurement that we saw for the Parthenon also occur in the Hephaesteum, and to a much greater extent. This has been explained in various ways. Some scholars think the Parthenon came first, others that it followed the Hephaesteum. What is certain is that the work started in
The temple was designed to a ground plan (typical for the Doric style) of six by thirteen columns, with a base platform of 13.7 metres by 31.8 metres. The pronaos and opisthodomos both had two columns in antis. The only relief carvings are on all the metope-panels of the short sides and on the two end metope-panels of the long sides. There is a relief frieze running all the way round the architrave of the pronaos; a second frieze in the opisthodomos is confined to the space between the antae. The temple's interior was clearly influenced by the architecture of the Parthenon: this section was probably completed in the course of the Peloponnesian war. And like the Parthenon, the Hephaesteum had a two-storey interior colonnade (ditone colonnade) in the shape of the Greek letter pi.
A further temple of the same period is the temple of Poseidon at Sunium, a marble building of the Doric order. Building is reckoned to have begun in In building the new temple of Poseidon, the remnants of the old one on the same site were used freely. The new temple had a frieze all the way round the architrave of the pteron, and not just round the architrave of the entrance-hall. It had carvings on the pediment (though not on the metope-panels). The corner ornaments had palmettes and spirals. Like the Hephaesteum, the temple of Poseidon had six by thirteen columns (the other dimensions of the two are also comparable), but taller and more slender. Site seems decisively to have influenced design: the temple stood on the summit of a headland and was intended to be most conspicuous from seaward. |
Building at Rhamnus began in the |
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