Hellenistic Architecture

Many of the qualities that differentiate Hellenistic from Classical Greek art reach their apogee in the great Altar of Zeus from Pergamum in north-western Asia Minor (5,17). It was by far the largest sculptural complex created in the ancient world, a work so grandiose and imposing that the author of the Biblical Book of Revelation later called it 'Satan's seat'. Erected as a memorial to the war which, ironically, established Rome as the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean, it commemorates in more ways than one the beginning of the end of the Hellenic world. Pergamum had been a kingdom of minor importance until 230 BC, when its king Attalus I defeated an invading force of Gauls from the north and briefly made himself master of Asia Minor. The event was celebrated in a series of statues of dead or dying Gauls, now known only from later copies (5,18), which reveal the emergence of a distinctive Pergamene style responsive to the highly ‘civilized' demands of its patrons. For in this remarkable sculpture the defeated is endowed with dignity, even nobility, and those introspective, spiritualizing trends in Hellenistic thought, which held that the body is the prison of the soul, found their classic expression. The spirit persists while life slowly drains away from the body of the Dying Gaul. Comparison between him and the Fallen Warrior from Aegina (4,21) 5,18 Dying Gaul, Roman copy of a bronze original of c. 230-220 BC. Marble, life-size. Museo Capitolino, Rome. shows how much had been gained in expressiveness - and how much lost in purely sculptural power.

The Altar of Zeus was erected some 50 years later. It stood on a 20-foot-high (6m) platform, surrounded by an Ionic colonnade. The approach was from the back, so that only after a walk round the building did the great flight of steps leading up to the altar come into view. Running round the base was a sculptural frieze (which only partly survives) some 7V2 feet (2.3m) high and, in all, more than 300 feet (90m) long (5,19). On the interior wall of the colonnade at the level of the altar a second frieze, of which a good deal less has been preserved, runs for some 240 feet (73m); it is about 5 feet (1.5m) high. (The remains of the building were dismantled after excavation in the late nineteenth century and re-erected in the Berlin Museum in about 1900.) The first and larger frieze is devoted to a battle between gods and giants, the gods being the full height of the relief slabs and the giants even bigger, only their huge menacing torsos being visible. Muscles swell in great hard knots, eyes bulge beneath puckered brows, teeth are clenched in agony. The writhing, overpowering figures seem contorted, stretched, almost racked, into an apparently endless, uncontrolled (in fact, very carefully calculated) variety of strenuous, coiling postures to which the dynamic integration of the whole composition is due. Rhythmic sense is felt very strongly -a plastic rhythm so compelling that the individual figures and complex groups are all fused into a single system of correspondences throughout the whole design. Deep cutting and under-cutting produce strong contrasts of light and dark which heighten the drama and seem to echo in abstract terms the great cosmic conflict between Olympians and earth-bound giants. The effect, in fact, is painterly rather than sculptural in its dramatic use of chiaroscuro - the stone is carved so that effects of light and shade suggest forms without describing them in full - and in its extreme naturalism, which is taken to such lengths that some of the figures break out of their architectural frame altogether and into the spectator's space. One of the giants leans out to kneel on the steps leading up to the altar. The upper frieze is quite different, with figures smaller than life, subtly carved in low relief and intended to be examined closely - a contrast recalling Aristotle's description of the various contrasting oratorical styles (p. 181).

Likewise, in the structure as a whole, a sculptural conception of architecture as mass in space - rather than space regulated by mass - was taken to its furthest extreme. Yet the classic virtue of a clear relationship of parts to the whole might be said to have culminated here. For the continuous band of sculpture makes a wonderfully rich, almost a color contrast with the base below and colonnade above, giving by its complexity a peculiar value to the cool lucidity and elegance of the Ionic columns. The interior -always of less importance than the exterior in ancient Greece - has been eliminated altogether. The whole building is nothing but a facade.

In urban planning, too, some very significant departures were made at Pergamum from former Greek practice. On its rocky acropolis the Altar of Zeus was only one of several structures, including a temple of Athena, a library, large theatre, royal palace and stoa, all visually related to one another and placed so as to take full advantage of the terraced hilltop site (5,20). Such an interest in the monumental effects obtained by careful siting, grouping and the creation of vistas first becomes apparent only in Hellenistic times. In Athens itself at the end of the fourth century BC, the agora was still simply an irregular open space bordered by a number of detached and unrelated buildings. All this was changed in the second century BC by, significantly enough, Attalus II of Pergamum. A long two-story stoa was built on the east side (4,54), thus creating a united spatial composition.

The history of Hellenistic architecture is, however, hard to trace. We know less about it than about earlier, Classical Greek architecture, for much less has survived. Nothing remains in the three great capital cities: Alexandria and Antioch were both entirely rebuilt by later inhabitants;

Seleucia on the Tigris was deserted and left to crumble away after the Parthian occupation. The Altar of Zeus from Pergamum (5,17) and the huge Corinthian temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens, begun in 174 BC but not completed until about AD 130 (5,21), are almost the only major buildings of which more than the foundations are visible, although enough survives at Didyma on the west coast of present-day Turkey to indicate the dramatic effects sometimes achieved in planning (5,22; 23). The central doorway of this great dipteral temple, approached through gigantic Corinthian columns over 64 feet (19.5m) high, led from an antechamber to a great flight of steps descending into an open, sunlit interior court, where an elegant small Ionic temple contained the cult statue. Similarly inventive planning has been revealed by excavations in temple precincts (sanctuary of Asclepius on the island of Kos, third century BC) and in whole urban areas (e.g. Priene) (4,53); but our knowledge of ancient urbanism is very limited. (The name of Hippodamus, the fifth-century BC Milesian architect credited by Aristotle with the systemati-zation of regular street patterns of the gridiron type, has been associated with Priene; and regular, usually rectangular, street-planning goes back to the seventh century BC in the Aegean and much further in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley; see pp. 61-2,76.) However, excavations show the new importance given in Hellenistic cities not only to prominent civic buildings but to monumental effects in their disposition - and to an increase in the size and decorative richness of private houses with painted walls and elaborate pebble-mosaic pavements, as at Pella in Macedonia, the birthplace of Alexander (5,8), and on the island of Delos, an important centre for trade in slaves. If little remains from the period itself, it seems almost certain that the opulent architectural style elaborated in Asia Minor and Syria under Roman rule, especially at Baalbek (5,71) and Palmyra, derived from Hellenistic prototypes and reflects Hellenistic aspirations and achievements.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 701