inated were more rural; they preferred what they considered
the sturdier, more “manly” Doric style. Th ey resisted Ionic ar-
chitecture because they saw it as symbolic of the dominance of
Athens over the other city-states of Greece. A good example of
the Ionic style is the Temple of Apollo at Didyma with its 122
enormous columns (only two of which survive).
Th e Doric and the Ionian are regarded as the two main
styles of Greek architecture. A third order, though, called the
Corinthian, emerged from the Greek city of Corinth. Th is
style was an evolution of the Ionic, for it features columns
that were even longer and slimmer than Ionic columns. Th e
distinguishing feature was elaborate and detailed carvings on
the capital. Th ese carvings were of the leaves of the acanthus,
a plant that grew in the Mediterranean region. Because the
Corinthian style was more detailed and “fancy,” it came to
be associated with luxury and wealth. Th e reason the Corin-
thian style is not considered a major style of Greek architec-
ture is that few buildings in Greece adopted the style. Later,
though, it was commonly used in Roman buildings, includ-
ing the Pantheon.
ANCIENT GREEK HOMES
Because the houses of ancient Greece were generally built
with inferior materials, archaeologists do not have very
many complete or nearly complete houses to study. Th e
generalizations they make about Greek homes are pieced
together from contemporary descriptions and from the re-
mains of housing sites that have been excavated. Th ese sites
are found primarily in Athens and the northern Greek city
of Olynthos. One exception is a house that has been exca-
vated in the town of Vari, located southeast of Athens. Th is
is the best-preserved house archaeologists have had to work
with, and while it was a farmhouse, evidence suggests that
houses in the cities were similar.
Th ese sites provide evidence in the form of fl oor plans.
Also, the remains of artifacts provide evidence of the use to
which rooms and areas of the house were put. For example,
the existence of a drain suggests that an area was used as a
bathroom, while chips of a substance like marble suggest that
an area was used as a workshop by a stonemason.
A number of factors infl uenced the design and construc-
tion of Greek homes. In Athens many houses were irregularly
shaped because the streets of ancient Athens were extremely
narrow and crooked. In earlier centuries people had built
crude homes on sites that gave them access to water and that
followed the natural contours of the land. Later, when Greek
civilization was at its height and new homes were being built
over the old ones, little eff ort was made to impose more order
on the layout of the city.
Further, eff orts were made to build housing in places
near to where Athenians worked. Th us, many homes were
built in and around the industrial district of the city. Th e
streets were made of hard-packed earth, sometimes covered
with gravel. Water was brought in by conduits carved in the
rock or sometimes by terra-cotta pipes, though water oft en
had to be carried to the home from public fountains. Th e re-
mains of many cesspools have been found, suggesting that
waste was removed by channeling it into these pools. In some
places, drainage ditches were constructed; some were simply
conduits carved into rocks, but some were elaborately con-
structed with fl oors, walls, and even slab ceilings.
Greek houses tended to be of poor quality. Even the bet-
ter homes were made primarily with stone and mud, not the
limestone that was used for public buildings. Th e foundation
of the house consisted of irregularly shaped rocks that were
simply piled in place. Th e exterior walls were made with mud
brick, sometimes coated with lime. Th ese walls were thin
and rickety—so much so that burglars, rather than coming
through doors or windows, simply knocked holes in the walls
to gain entry; in fact, a common Greek word for burglar liter-
ally meant “wall digger.” In some cases, the thickness of the
surviving foundation suggests that the house might have been
of two stories. While most homes, especially those built before
about 500 b.c.e., were small, in later years larger and more
luxurious homes were built. Many were built in the country-
side, where wealthier Athenians would go in the summer to
escape the city’s heat, as well as the smells, insects, rats, and
disease caused by garbage piling up in the streets.
An almost universal feature of Greek houses was that
they were built around a central open courtyard. Rooms were
adjacent to the courtyard on all four sides, though the homes
of poorer people generally consisted of just one room divided
by partitions. Many had a veranda that provided shade and
protection from the rains. Th e interior walls were generally
coated with whitewashed plaster, and the homes of wealthier
people were decorated with frescoes. Either animal skins or
reed mats covered fl oors of hard-packed earth, and small
stones were oft en used to create mosaics on the fl oors. Small
windows were positioned close to the ceilings to admit light
but keep out the heat of the summer sun. Roofs were gener-
ally made of terra-cotta tiles over wood. Wood, though, was
expensive and hard to obtain. Only the wealthy could aff ord
wooden shutters over the windows and wooden doors; when
people in the countryside fl ed during outbreaks of war, they
oft en took their wooden doors and shutters with them.
Another feature of Greek homes was that many had sep-
arate quarters for men and women. Greek husbands believed
that their wives and daughters had to be shielded from pub-
lic view. Th us, if they could aff ord to do so, they constructed
homes with a separate area for women either at the back of
the house, away from the street, or on the second story. Th is
area was called a gynaikeion. Similarly, men had their own
quarters, called the andrôn, typically located on the north
side of the house, which stayed cooler. Many men used this
area of the house to entertain male friends.
Few examples of what could be called apartment houses
have been found. A notable exception is the port town of Pi-
raeus, where apartment blocks called synoikiai were occupied
by the poor and foreigners. Th ese apartments, though, were
oft en death traps because of earthquakes and fi res.architecture: Greece 77