The last of the four great buildings of the Periklean program is the most unusual: the Erech-theion, an Ionic temple on the north edge of the Acropolis, built between 421 and 405 BC (Figure 16.10). Its name honors Erechtheus, a legendary king of Athens, and the temple itself may stand on the site of the Mycenaean palace, known as the “House of Erechtheus.” The Erechtheion sheltered a variety of cults, which fact, combined with the irregular ground levels, accounts for its eccentric design. Most prominent of these was the shrine of Athena Polias, Athena as the patroness of the city of Athens, the oldest, most venerable cult of the goddess. It was to this particular Athena that the peplos carried to the Acropolis in the Panathenaic procession and depicted on the Parthenon frieze was presented.
Figure 16.10 Erechtheion, west facade
Like the Parthenon, the Erechtheion was elegantly built of Pentelic marble on limestone foundations, but with some details in dark limestone from Eleusis. Column capitals and other architectural decoration, including a poorly preserved frieze, were elaborately carved. In ground plan, the Erechtheion consists of a main building, oriented east-west, to which two porches have been attached, a north porch with six Ionic columns, and a smaller south porch, with its six famous caryatid columns. The east facade is traditional. On the west, however, one can clearly see the different floor levels, with the stylobate of the north porch much lower than the floor of the main building and the caryatid porch (Figure 16.10).
Many shrines and holy places were scattered both inside and in the immediately surrounding ground. They represent an impressive concentration of sacred, ancient relics of the city. Although Pausanias described them, his details do not allow us to pinpoint their locations. The interior arrangement of the temple is controversial, for example, since remodelings through the centuries have stripped most traces of the ancient rooms. The shrine of Athena Polias, outfitted with an oil lamp made of gold, always lit, a bronze palm tree above it that contained a chimney to the roof, and some spoils from the Persian Wars, was housed somewhere in the main building. Other holy spots both inside and out included altars to Erechtheus, the hero Bootes, and Hephaistos; the olive tree and the salt water spring created by Athena and Poseidon in their contest for supremacy over the city; marks of Zeus’s thunderbolt in a square hole in the floor of the north porch, with a corresponding opening in the roof above; the tombs of Kekrops, traditionally the first king of Athens; a shrine to Pandrosos, one of his daughters, who with her sisters leapt from the Acropolis when struck with madness after opening against orders the chest concealing the child god Erichthonios in the form of a snake; and a crypt for snakes, where Erichthonios dwelled as the guardian of the Acropolis.
World History
