Classical Athens, however unique and sometimes hated, was also inclusive and representative of all Greece. In no other Greek city are we so aware of the presence and contributions of Greeks from elsewhere. Additionally, a number of important Athenians were, or at least were reputed to be, of partly non-Athenian (even non-Greek) origins; artists were no exception. By the late Archaic period, Greek sculptors like Antenor, learning from Egypt, began to master the techniques of large-scale bronze casting; the islanders of Aigina were particularly famous for their accomplishments. While Aigina and Athens were by now deadly enemies - indeed, at war in 481 - the signature of a contemporary Aiginetan sculptor was found on the Athenian akropolis; so was a bronze warrior’s head assumed to be Aiginetan work of the 480s because of the similarity to marble heads decorating the Temple of Aphaia on Aigina. At this date, it was usually the long-established practice of stone carving that influenced the style of the younger medium. In a wealthier Greece after 480, however, bronze became more commonly used than marble for single statues, and its technical advantages led to more active and complex poses pioneered in metal, then used in stone.
The Aphaia temple may have been built as early as 500 or (as stratigraphy suggests) as late as the 470s. Pedimental decoration was under way when - undoubtedly on the east, probably on the west - the themes of the sculptural program were changed to Trojan wars: on the west the ten-year war, on the east the earlier expedition led by Herakles and the Aiginetan Telamon. The east pediment received its final decoration later than the west and shows a more advanced style, closer to Classical; instances of tired, mannered drapery tend to belong to the west, the more Classical-appearing heads and dynamic poses to the east. The expensive change to Trojan-War themes must have been strongly motivated, and commemoration of victory over Persia - at Salamis the Aiginetans played an even more glorious role than detested Athens - is the most plausible explanation. Many scholars date the replacements to the 480s, but if the east pediment at least is post-war, the anti-Persian theme is still a possibility, presumably adding to a sculptural program originating as anti-Athenian propaganda with aristocratic, anti-democratic emphasis.
The Tomb of the Diver at Poseidonia (Paestum) is another monument dated around 480 - probably slightly later, but here the connection with events is unimportant; while the Greeks of Sicily repelled a Carthaginian invasion around the time the mainland Greeks defeated Xerxes, the Greek cities of Italy were little affected by either barbarian threat. What is instead of interest is the adaptation of a non-Greek practice: the decoration of a tomb’s interior with figural scenes of funerary significance. The walls depict an all-male symposium enlivened with musical and amorous rapture. On the underside of the lid, a nude youth dives from a massive masonry platform into a puddle of green water between two schematic trees. The obvious overall parallels are Etruscan tombs depicting banqueting and drinking. The Tomb of Hunting and Fishing at Tarquinia depicts a diver commonly cited as the prototype for the Poseidonia figure - but this is problematic; since some individual elements of the Etruscan painting have parallels in Greek vase painting, so might the diver. Whatever his origins, the Poseidonia diver - isolated, unlike the Etruscan youth - is the most meaningful motif on the Greek tomb and must be the soul plunging into the ocean of oblivion (although other interpretations have been suggested), perhaps from the Pillars of Herakles. The symposiasts have parallels in vase painting, but their figures are defined by areas of color rather than by interior detail, and their faces seem more individualized than those on Attic vases: a true Early Classical touch. Overall, in this single example of fifth-century Greek free (non-ceramic) painting yet discovered, Poseidonian artists display the charm and originality for which their Archaic temples - and those of the West Greeks generally - are admired.
The Temple of Athena built at Poseidonia around 500 is particularly attractive and striking for its integration of Ionic elements into the Doric order. This may further illustrate the open-mindedness exemplified by the Tomb of the Diver; conversely, it may reflect settlers’ consciousness that all Greek styles were ‘‘theirs’’ rather than foreign. And the West Greeks came from all regions of the homeland. Most, whatever their origins, built Doric temples, but the large Ionic temples of the 470s at Lokroi and Metapontion have no mainland parallels from the entire Classical era. Even fiercely Dorian Syracuse had an Archaic Ionic temple.
Theron of Akragas, one of several Dorian tyrants in early fifth-century Sicily united by ties of blood or marriage, probably began the immense (over 100 m) Olympieion in the 480s, although some date the start of construction before 500, while others consider it a monument for the victory over the Carthaginians at Himera in 480. This decisive battle, in which Theron played a key role, occasioned other victory temples, and it has been speculated that some of the Olympieion’s most unusual features were of Carthaginian origin, also that some workmen were Carthaginian prisoners; meaning and style could have evolved during the long period of intermittent construction. The order was Doric but included many Ionian elements, and the size may have been inspired by the comparably large Ionic temple at Ephesos and the Ionic temple-like Didyma sanctuary. At Akragas, however, there was no peristyle but an ashlar screen wall punctuated with half-columns, and this appears a West Greek idea. Statues, now variously called Giants, Atlantes, or Telamones, served as optical and perhaps physical supports (their exact location has been much debated), an innovative Doric version of Ionian caryatids and probably, like them, alluding to captives - specifically Carthaginians from Himera. The Olympieion was unfinished when Carthage obliterated Akragas, the second city of Sicily, in 406.
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