Although the chieftain’s communal feast was being replaced by public feasts organized by city-state cult centers, Archaic elites retained private drinking-parties as a suitable venue for political and social networking between males of similar status. This custom, the
Formal “architecture” reappeared in Greece when it was decided to invest major resources into buildings that went well beyond functionality (Tomlinson 1995). The Lefkandi structure (see Chapter 8) stood out from surrounding homes, either as the residence, or a copy of it, for persons of local distinction. In the transformation of this private monument into a communal temple, high status was being transferred to the god(dess) whose cult image was to be displayed inside
Figure 10.5 Late Archaic temple of Aphaea on the island of Aegina.
A. A. M. van der Heyden, Atlas van de antieke wereld. Amsterdam 1958, 30.
It, as an act of group devotion to the community’s divine protector. Within the temple lay also a treasury of valuable or symbolic items dedicated to the divinity. However, the Greek climate encourages public activity to be outdoors, so that ancient Greek formal rituals took place at altars before the temple, watched and participated in by the community, who afterwards partook of the meat from the sacrificial animals in regular feasts. Once more a meaningful link is derivable back in time to communal feasting at the chief’s great house, and to the prestige goods in his storeroom which evidenced his wealthy social connections, bridal gifts, and foreign exchange contacts.
During the early Archaic, temples achieve greater monumentality, through elaborate cut-stone foundations, stone superstructures for walls and roofsupporting columns, and terracotta-tiled roofs. The successful merging of the local great house with its organic architecture and the admired Egyptian and Levantine architecture, culminates in the characteristic
Greek temple design (Figure 10.5). The significance of these structures, through investment in labor and materials, goes well beyond the desire of Greek cities to emulate the advanced cultures they were increasingly mixing with in the East Mediterranean and their own harbor-towns. They represent a reorientation of city-state society toward a new symbol of civic identity, the patron deity’s sanctuary, for all citizens regardless of class. Furthermore, vigorous competition between poleis for land, trade opportunities, and prestige encouraged a rivalry in the size and ornamentation of temples (Snodgrass 1986). Outdoing neighboring or rival towns in the dimensions or cost of state temples spurred competitors to follow with a more impressive imitation. Tak (1990) describes similar rivalry between rural communities in Early Modern Italy, using the term “campani-lismo,” since rival villages try to outdo each other in the height and splendor of their prominent church bell-towers.
Panhellenic sanctuaries were equally arenas for interstate rivalry. Although their festival games were associated with a peaceable meeting of states (for the premier four-yearly Olympic festival heralds toured the Aegean announcing a cessation of interstate hostilities for its duration), less palatably those occasions were also “theaters” for chauvinistic competition and iconographic aggression. Many states dedicated small treasuries in temple form at the major interstate sanctuaries (Renfrew 1986, Snodgrass 1986), publicly displaying their sophistication and wealth, but also armor and weapons taken from campaigns against other Greek states. The treasury of Megara, ca. 510 BC, drew the viewer’s attention to a recent military success over its larger neighbor Corinth (Spivey 1997): on its pediment the gods defeat a giant, whilst over this a looted shield was inscribed with the information that the victory spoils had paid for the monument.
Under the Tyrants, temple construction and its symbolic ornament introduced a more personal note to this competitiveness, as dictators embellished their towns with showpiece shrines and other public works (fountains or aqueducts), both to persuade citizens of their benevolent munificence and to impress neighboring states. In Athens Peisistratos, coming to power in 561 BC, had a long and probably benevolent rule, possibly residing on the Acropolis. Here fragments of a temple pediment may show Peisistratos uniting three regional power factions in Attica: the coastlands (waves), the plains (grain), and the hill-country (birds) (Fullerton 2000). Another pediment fragment ca. 545 BC shows Heracles, possibly adopted as propaganda for the tyrant as “strongman” (Spivey 1997). The Peisistratid Acropolis building program may represent several sacred buildings, but the central structure was one (or more) Athena temples. In the city below, this dynasty is linked to the formal layout of a new public square or Agora, with facilities for drainage, water supply, and road construction (Ammerman 1996). Traditionally, the formal presentation of plays in the Agora belongs to the same period, as does the first phase in the construction of a massive temple to Zeus to the southeast of the Acropolis, and the founding of the Dionysos temple on the Acropolis lower slope (Shapiro 2007). Finally, supporting the theory that increasing territorial control by city-states was symbolized through their involvement in local cult foci in their dependent countryside (Bintliff 1977, De Polignac 1995), there was a major elaboration of Athens’ distant cult center at Eleusis, on the western border of Attica, attributed to initiatives during the Peisistratids’ reign.
We are witnessing the early stages in the characteristic physical appearance of the Classical city, a “city of images” (Berard 1984): an urban environment where citizens are represented by, and visitors are confronted with, widespread art and architecture in the public and private sphere, which expresses the cultural aspirations and values of the city, as well as to a considerable extent those of Greek civilization in general.
World History
