sculptors delighted in rendering the intricate patterns created by
the cascading folds of thin, soft material. In another Acropolis kore
(FIG. 5-12), the asymmetry of the folds greatly relieves the stiff
frontality of the body and makes the figure appear much more life-
like than contemporary kouroi. The sculptor achieved added variety
by showing the kore grasping part of her chiton in her left hand (un-
fortunately broken off ) to lift it off the ground in order to take a step
forward. This is the equivalent of the advanced left foot of the kouroi
and became standard for statues of korai. Despite the varied surface
treatment of brightly colored garments on the korai, the kore pos-
tures are as fixed as those of their male counterparts.
Architecture and Architectural Sculpture
Many of the earliest Greek temples do not survive because they were
built of wood and mud brick. Pausanias noted in his second-century
CEguidebook to Greece that in the even-then-ancient Temple of Hera
at Olympia, one oak column was still in place. (Stone columns had
replaced the others.) Archaic and later Greek temples, however, were
constructed of more permanent materials—limestone, in many
cases, and, where it was available, marble, which was more impressive
and durable (and more expensive). In Greece proper, if not in its
western colonies, marble was readily at hand. Bluish-white marble
came from Hymettus, just east of Athens. Glittering white marble
particularly adapted for carving was brought from Pentelicus, north-
east of the city, and from the Aegean Islands, especially Paros.
Already in the Orientalizing seventh centuryBCE, the Greeks
had built at Prinias a stone temple (FIG. 5-6) embellished with stone
sculptures, but the Cretan temple resembled the megaron of a Myce-
naean palace more than anything Greek traders had seen in their
travels overseas. In the Archaic age of the sixth century, with the
model of Egyptian columnar halls such as that at Karnak (FIG. 3-25)
before them, Greek architects began to build the columnar stone
temples that became more influential on the later history of archi-
tecture in the Western world than any other building type ever
devised.
Greek temples differed in function from most later religious
shrines. The altar lay outside the temple—at the east end, facing the
rising sun—and the Greeks gathered outside, not inside, the build-
ing to worship. The temple proper housed the so-called cult statue of
the deity, the grandest of all votive offerings. Both in its early and
mature manifestations, the Greek temple was the house of the god
or goddess, not of his or her followers.
TEMPLE PLANS In basic plan (see “Greek Temple Plans,” above,
and FIG. 5-13), the Greek temple still discloses a close affinity with
the Mycenaean megaron (FIG. 4-18), and, even in its most elaborate
form, it retains the latter structure’s basic simplicity. In all cases, the
remarkable order, compactness, and symmetry of the Greek scheme
strike the eye first, reflecting the Greeks’ sense of proportion and
their effort to achieve ideal forms in terms of regular numerical rela-
tionships and geometric rules. Whether the plan is simple or more
complex, no fundamental change occurs in the nature of the units or
of their grouping. Classical Greek architecture, like classical music,
has a simple core theme with a series of complex, but always quite
intelligible, variations developed from it.
The Greeks’ insistence on proportional order guided their ex-
periments with the proportions of temple plans. The earliest temples
tended to be long and narrow, with the proportion of the ends to the
sides roughly expressible as 1:3. From the sixth centuryBCEon, plans
approached but rarely had a proportion of exactly 1:2. Classical tem-
ples tended to be a little longer than twice their width. To the Greek
mind, proportion in architecture and sculpture was much the same
as harmony in music, reflecting and embodying the cosmic order.
TEMPLE ORNAMENTATION Figural sculpture played a
major role in the exterior program of the Greek temple from early
times, partly to embellish the god’s shrine, partly to tell something
about the deity symbolized within, and partly to serve as a votive of-
fering. But the building itself, with its finely carved capitals and
moldings, also was conceived as sculpture, abstract in form and pos-
sessing the power of sculpture to evoke human responses. The com-
manding importance of the sculptured temple, its inspiring function
in public life, was emphasized in its elevated site, often on a hill
above the city (acropolis means “high city”).
Sculptural ornament was concentrated on the upper part of the
building, in the frieze and pediments (see “Doric and Ionic Orders,”
page 110). Architectural sculpture, like freestanding statuary, was
painted (FIG. 5-27,right) and usually was placed only in the building
parts that had no structural function. This is true particularly of theArchaic Period 109ARCHITECTURAL BASICS5-13Plan of a typical Greek peripteral temple.
The basic form of the canonical Greek temple derives from that of
the megaron of a Mycenaean palace (FIG. 4-18), but Greek temples
housed statues of deities and most were surrounded by columns.Stylobate (level on which columns stand)Peristyle (external colonnade on all four sides)Cella (Naos)AntaAntaOpistho-domos
Columns in antisPronaosT
he core of an ancient Greek temple plan (FIG. 5-13) was the naos,
or cella,a room with no windows that usually housed the cult
statue of the deity. It was preceded by a pronaos,or porch, often with
two columns between the antae,or extended walls (columns in antis).
A smaller second room might be placed behind the cella (FIG. 5-16),
but in its canonical form, the Greek temple had a porch at the rear
(opisthodomos) set against the blank back wall of the cella. The purpose
was not functional but decorative, satisfying the Greek passion for bal-
ance and symmetry. A colonnade could be placed across the front of
the temple (prostyle; FIG. 5-52), across both front and back (amphi-
prostyle; FIG. 5-55), or, more commonly, all around the cella and its
porch(es) to form a peristyle,as in FIG. 5-13(compare FIG. 5-15). Single
(peripteral) colonnades were the norm, but double (dipteral) colon-
nades were features of especially elaborate temples (FIG. 5-75).
Greek Temple Plans