On the Olympian Heraion

Alexander J. Ford

Summer, 2023

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The Problem

 

When in 1877 the estimable Willhelm Dorpfeld joined the ongoing excavations at Olympia, he formulated a peculiar hypothesis regarding the temple of Hera. Dorpfeld was convinced that the Heraion must have been originally constructed with wooden columns, not the stone columns which have lain in ruins on the site, now, for centuries. Further he reasoned that those original wooden columns were replaced much later, with stone columns, one-by-one and over a long period of time. According to Dorpfeld it’s in that patchwork renovated state that the temple appears to us today, now entirely stone—as we might expect of a classical Greek temple. This strange picture of the Heraion was drawn up in order to account for one particular eccentricity in the temple’s design: The stone columns and their capitals are highly variable. They differ in ways, which those same components in other Greek temples do not. The diameters of some columns are thicker, while others are thinner. Some are made of a single monolithic block of stone, others are made of several drums—of no consistent height. The forms of the capitals are even stranger; entirely divergent, some are shallow, others deep, some are wide, others narrow, some larger and others smaller. There is a much greater degree of inconsistency in the design of those members at Olympia, than there is in any other Doric temple in the ancient Greek world.

 

The question has caused many archaeologists like Dorpfeld to scratch their heads; what led the architect (or architects, according to some theories) to such a patchwork design? All of the prevailing hypotheses on the question are in many ways only shades of the same idea—that the columns differ so drastically, because they were all erected one-by-one at different times by different designers. Before disabusing scholars of that picture, however, we will need to examine why the idea was so alluring to begin with. It arose, as we will see, from flawed readings of both Pausanias and Vitruvius, in addition to a willingness to impose a degree of modern prejudice on the architect of antiquity. A clear and simple rationale has yet to be proposed, which describes the Heraion as being the result of a single architect, in a single construction period, according to deliberate intention. That is our task.

 

Following the collapse of the Bronze Age; the fall of Mycenae and the passing of the great hilltop palatial kingdoms, the Greek culture entered a period where comparatively little permanent materials come down to us in the archaeological record. The Greeks forgot the techniques of working stone to architectural ends—much the same as Medieval Romans no longer possessed the technology to raise an unreinforced concrete dome on the scale of the Pantheon, despite the fact that they lived every day in its shadow. Across time and culture, again and again, we find ourselves wandering the ruins of our ancestors—having been lowered from prior heights of understanding, and capability. It was the same with the Anglo-Saxons, looking on and inhabiting the stone architectures left to collapse by the Romans in England, having then exited the stage of history—emulating those silent masons and their ghostly work, as in-time it occurred to them to do so; to rise. Specific dates for the lull in the Greek story varies from scholar to scholar. We may call the period between 1100 BCE and 750 BCE a reasonable estimate, by any reckoning. That span of time is referred to by archaeologists as the dark ages.

 

The Heraion occupies a critical moment in the story of Greek architecture, for the simple reason that it’s among the very oldest stone temples that exist following the dark ages. The Heraion, which is now dated with some appreciable degree of certainty to the final decade of the 7th century, thus represents one of the earliest attempts by the Greeks to embark on the task of raising their temples in stone, instead of perishable materials like timber. Masonry, of course, and as we will see, is a trade all to itself. The Heraion has therefore long-since enchanted those scholars who concern themselves with the question of the origins of the Doric Order.

 

Dorpfeld had his own designs. For him, the picture was continuous to a fault—he envisioned the Doric temple as part of an unbroken architectural continuum from the Classical and Hellenistic Greeks, directly back to their Bronze Age forebears, which carried through the dark ages. Dorpfeld viewed this picture as having been verified by Vitruvius’s remarks on the origin of the the Doric order, and this resulted in a kind-of architectural presentism, which held that the genesis of the Doric manner could be explained away as a utilitarian copy of an earlier, wooden prototype. That is, that the form and ornament of the temple was essentially resultant from skeuomorphism and mimicry. Said another way, Vitruvius’s observation that the Doric scheme’s ornament appeared to ‘petrify’ the form of a wooden scheme was defensible from a positivistic standpoint; top-down, as a matter of engineering. The young Greek mason, then, unsure of what to build, simply looked at a wooden temple and copied it in stone down to the details. This acute misconception led Dorpfeld to offer a date for the Heraion’s construction, which was far, far too early. When he returned to excavate the site for the second time he solidified that theory by advancing several more assertions. He claimed to have identified an earlier temple, atop which was raised the present stone temple. The present temple, he further argued, was in-fact the third construction. In between the first and third, he believed, an ash layer present in the stratigraphy suggested a second temple that had burned down.

 

Thus, Dorpfeld contributed to a persistent academic dogma surrounding the birth of the Doric monument. According to his picture, the initial Heraion dated to the end of the Bronze Age. The second and third constructions then carried that site through the dark ages, and supplied a prototype for the rest of the Classical architectural canon. Wooden temples are then copied into stone by new generations of Greek stonemasons, and those stone copies further copied in-turn. Thus the Heraion (more specifically, its peristyle) was cast by Dorpfeld, and others, as structure that was originally wooden, and was literally transformed, on-site, over the years by different architects, piece by piece, into a stone temple.

 

His argument for this was centered on the belief that the peristyle’s wooden columns must have rotted over the long centuries, spanning the lifespan that his three-temple scheme required. When they rotted individually, they were replaced piecemeal with stone columns according to the fashion. Their different form and patchwork aesthetic, then, as Dorpfeld argued, was due to the changing stylistic sensibilities of the time, and to the personal tastes of the individuals who oversaw those restorations. In this way Dorpfeld provided a century’s worth of anthropologists with a case study that seemed both to conclusively depict the theory of Vitruvius, and, to agree with an account of the temple left by Pausanias. It also sat well with materialistically minded scholars, who delight at the idea that ornamentation can be explained mechanistically.

 

After Dorpfeld’s death, W.B. Dinsmoor and colleagues set to work correcting the chronology at the Heraion. The presence of an ash layer was not at all conclusive, and, with that was abandoned the alleged second temple. Evidence for the third temple likewise proved wishful at best, and so Dorpfeld’s three temples were again reduced to one; to the single construction which remains still today, on site. The Bronze Age date for the original construction was again disputed for numerous reasons, and more recent work has fixed the date of construction no earlier than the last decade of the 7th century. We’ll spare the reader the particulars of that discussion, here. Well and good. But then, why do most contemporary academics still generally believe that the Heraion was initially either in-part or in-whole a wooden structure, renovated with stone? Dorpfeld’s hypothesis required centuries for the wooden members to rot, in order to justify their renovation. Why should we believe that the temple was not simply constructed as we see it, to begin with—that is, constructed in stone at the start?

 

The answer to this question is twofold. First, the account given by Pausanias, which we can set aside momentarily. Second, critically, that there is no sufficient explanation for such variance noted in the peristyle—if indeed the peristyle was constructed at once, altogether, and according to the intentional designs of a single architect. Archaeologists are unable to see how such a construction could have been anything other than the compilation of stylistic whimsy over time by different interlopers. How could one architect have intended the columns and capitals to be so different?

 

The problem isn’t with the idea of petrification per se. The closer one looks, the more difficult the argument becomes—the devil is in the details. For example, petrification absolutists point out that the triglyphs in the temple are clearly reminiscent of the ends of compound beams, and the metopes then represent the spaces between them in a timber structure. The mutules and guttae obviously represent nailers which fixed the beams in place. At a glance, this makes sense. It is too clear to dismiss from the relevant rationale. But does it hold up as the sole, or total rationale? Not at all. The triglyphs, for example, wrap all four facades in the Doric temple in the same horizontal plane. Consider a moment further, that if the architects simply derived their ornamental scheme by copying a wooden prototype, triglyphs would only make sense on the long side of the temple, where the beam ends protruded as they spanned the short dimension. Triglyphs interpreted this way present two complete absurdities: beams spanning the far-longer dimension, both impossible to fabricate and serving no structural purpose, and further, beams that physically overlap in space with the transverse beams, in an impossible fashion. Why depict triglyphs on the temple’s short facades, where in timber, there would have been no such form at all? There is no satisfactory answer from a materialistic perspective.

 

Another common point to make, against the absolutist picture of petrification, is the ‘inverted’ form of Greek columnar fluting. Having learned from the Egyptians, it’s curious why the Greeks developed the manner of convoke, or scalloped flutes, when the Egyptians fluted their columns in the opposite fashion; with concave or an outwardly-rounded form. The reason for the Egyptian form is clearly meant to recall a column comprising bundled timbers. A common ornament on such a column in Egypt are the horizontal bands that would bond those reed columns. It makes sense for that ornament, should it descend from mimicry, to bow outward. Why, then, do the Greek flutes recede inward? They must serve some other purpose, beyond or before mimicry. The list of similar issues is lengthy. The petrification theory is simply insufficient to explain the aesthetic origin the Doric monument with any finality.

 

The form of the temple and the materials used to render it exist in an imperfect, reflexive relationship. Some compromises are always made in the form, for the sake of economy, and some compromises are made in economy for the sake of form. That is the architect’s torment. In the ancient world, the architect worked to minimize the sacrifice of form for the sake of economy, and we for our part in the modern world behave the opposite. Understanding this is the first step toward understanding the Heraion.

 

Stone, in contrast to timber, provided the Greek architect a different set of material conditions with which to approach the design. Because of its entirely different material properties, and therefore on account of the fact that it lent itself differently to the traditional, microcosmic task, the architect was able to achieve a much higher degree of harmony across the building—given that tradition—as a whole. To take the question of the triglyphs again, for example, that specific ornament could now ring all four facades of the temple with a rhythm that was both familiar, yet, impossible with timbers—as they would have overlapped one another in space, and so on and so forth. The temple’s organizational principles, with stone, therefore experienced an astonishing degree of expressive regularization, which, up to that point would have been out of the question. Things that were material necessities were suddenly released into the metaphysical realm of architectural consideration.

 

The architect’s repertoire of form and ornamentation, therefore; his ordering system, found a purer articulation. One, which freed him and his work from certain mundane constraints germane to prior timber construction. In one sense, then, the preservation of the triglyph in this ornamental scheme would have demonstrated very clearly to the Greek onlooker that the new architecture had achieved something altogether tangible, visible in the tiniest details of the design. That achievement would have required, of course, a measure of grammar—so to speak. Therefore can we start to see those elements of Doric ornament which seem so obviously skeumorphic, together with those that so curiously do not. At the bottom there is a canonical microcosmic form, and working up from there, the architect does as much as he can, and the gods will forgive him his humanity.

 

But for modern academics, who we may say for lack of a better word bring with them a certain industrial prejudice, the Doric invention must—above all else—be supplied with a fundamentally practical raison d’etree. It must have occurred commensurate with the way that we ourselves see the world; as a succession of evolutionary inevitabilities, and thus, the material record must contain hybrid forms, as though the architects of antiquity were borne along in some immutable and ergonomic current, where concerns of the engineer were highest, and the limits of his technological capabilities marked the boundary of archaic superstition. Dorpfeld and others therefore convinced themselves that the Heraion must be just such a fossil. Half man, and half beast, thus subverting Vitruvius’s symbolic theory, by purporting to prove it positivistically; that man descended from beast according to a quantifiable mechanism.

 

The Irony of course is that Dorpfeld’s conviction, that the Doric temple’s lineage did extend so far back as the Bronze Age, is true. The issue is that what links the Doric invention to the Megaron, and before, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, to the domicile itself, is a metaphysical lineage. Not a structural one. It’s a symbolic heritage, not an ergonomic one.

 

Given this, we turn briefly to the notorious passage from Pausanias, a Roman chronicler and writer of the first century AD, who described the Heraion on his visit to Olympia. He writes:

 

It remains after this for me to describe the temple of Hera and the noteworthy objects contained in it. The Elean account says that it was the people of Scillus, one of the cities in Triphylia, who built the temple about eight years after Oxylus came to the throne of Elis. The style of the temple is Doric, and pillars stand all round it. In the rear chamber one of the two pillars is of oak. The length of the temple is one hundred and sixty-nine feet, the breadth sixty-three feet, the height not short of fifty feet. Who the architect was they do not relate.

 

Reading this passage, many modern scholars have delighted to argue that Pausanias meant the peristyle, in that time even still, remained in a state of partial wood and partial stone. Some more sober voices point out that Pausanias was likely describing votive pillars set up within the opisthodomos—which is not at all unprecedented. The response, from the dissent, tends to be that Pausanias was very clearly enamored of objects of great antiquity. Often, he would go out of his way to describe in lavish detail the history and appearance of objects that he knew to be very old. He was, after all, an antiquarian. Therefore, if he meant votive pillars, he would have told us about them in exhaustive detail. Because he didn’t we can assume he meant that the peristyle contained wooden columns itself. The problem is that this argument is neither conclusive nor even particularly convincing. Pausanias described, for example, the image of Apollo at the Amyklaean throne near Sparta—a votive pillar of considerable antiquity, only insofar as to say that he found the thing crude compared to the work of the architect Bathykles, in whose temple the image was housed. Pausanias in that case spared far more words in praise of Bathykles and his architecture, than for the antique pillar of Apollo. This back and forth can persist ad nauseam.

 

What’s critical to understand is simply that Pausanias is not particularly clear, and therefore, it’s hard to say conclusively what he meant. The reader must ask himself: Is it more likely that in saying “In the rear chamber, one of the two pillars is of oak,” Pausanias meant that there were two votive pillars within the opisthodomos, or, is it more likely that he meant that the temple itself was built of a patchwork of timber and stone from some reason? In his 2016 study of the building, Dr. Phil Sapirstein pointed out that the operative word in this passage, (eteros) could reasonably be taken so broadly as to mean “any column that is distinguished from the rest by being wooden.” We are left, then, with the most substantive issue: That of the variance in the peristyle. Why?

 

The most convincing solution to the riddle of the Heraion’s peristyle is altogether rather simple. But, in order to appreciate the simplicity of the proposal, the reader will first need to take care to become familiar with some elementary concerns that faced the Doric architect—both structural, and proportional. Exiting the dark ages and dispensing with impermanent materials for his work, the architect faced two major challenges. The first was learning to build in stone, and the second was building at a larger scale. What we can uncover by considering the design of a given temple in the context of the architect’s attitude toward these two issues, provides a clarity that is difficult to gather in a purely archaeological setting.

 

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Simple Structural Concerns in Stone

 

There are five primary ‘loads,’ or forces which may act upon a given structural member. They are compression, tension, bending, torsion, and shear. Compression results when two pushing loads effect an object, squeezing it toward a center point. One stone resting atop another places the bottom stone in compression. Tension results when two pulling forces effect an object, stretching it away from a center point. A rope pulled at both ends thus experiences tension. Bending results when a load is applied to a fixed object, resulting in a deflection or deformation—such as a lintel beam above a door or window, supporting the weight of the wall overhead. When an object experiences bending, the deformation pattern will create a gradient across the object, from compression at one extremity to tension at the other. Torsion and shear are of little consequence here.

 

Any span is thus under constant bending pressure—like a single architrave block lofted across two columns in a temple peristyle. It is important to note that a structural member’s resistance to the bending force is dictated by its cross-sectional area.

 

Given this information, consider an ancient architect attempting to enlarge the scale of a monumental structure. If the building in question was simply, say, to double in size, one can imagine a myriad of problems suddenly arise. Quarrying blocks that are twice as large will increase the cost of labour. Blocks of such a size would be drastically more skill-intensive to cut free of the quarry without any cracking, and would have a much greater chance of containing natural fissures that destroy the block upon extraction regardless of the skill of the mason. Doubling the size of the block also presents problems for transporting it, both technologically as well as in cost. Transporting larger blocks from a technological standpoint is something that is addressed and well-documented in the case of the second Artemision at Ephesos, for example, in the mid-6th century. Further, raising blocks of such a size would likely not have been technologically feasible. Not at least at the outset of the masonic task. Still, there is the central issue of structural integrity raised, when increasing the scale of the stone members. 

 

As the scale of the temple is increased, so too is the load on both the architrave and the peristyle. The architrave, which comprises individual blocks spanning the intercolumniation, is supporting both the entablature, and its own weight. Different materials will have different properties with respect to the five principle loads outlined above. Stone, for example, is excellent in compression, and brittle in tension. Structures which subject critical stone members to tensile forces will doubtlessly result in catastrophe. “Doubling the size of the architrave,” explains J. J. Coulton, “will mean doubling the length of the architrave as well as its height and thickness.” The relationship of scale to volume is therefore such, that doubling the scale of a block will increase its cross-sectional area by four times, but its volume by eight times.

 

What this means is that increasing the scale of the temple proportionally will quickly become a question of diminishing structural returns, as the architrave blocks become too heavy to support their own weight—much less the entablature and roof above. Put simply, The weight of the block increases faster than its size. Therefore there exists an upper limit, at which a stone of a given size will crack due to the tensile forces along their underside. When that assembly fails, the temple’s roof will collapse. Many of the design decisions made by Doric architects can be understood as inventive responses to these simple, critical issues.

 

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Combating Disproportionate Architecture

 

For these reasons it appears that early Doric architects elected to experiment with disproportionately increasing the scale of the building. There are several major ways that this was achieved that we observe archaeologically. The first being, increasing only the length of the temple in plan. Such temples grow longer, but, retain the typical six-column width. 

 

It’s a simple, if inelegant solution to the demand for an increase in scale. Throughout most of the 7th century we find that relatively elongated, narrow temples are numerous. While stretching the temple in one dimension does result in a technically larger construction, and conveniently sidesteps the structural problems implicit in widening the temple (and thereby elongating its roof span), the proportion of the overall structure is entirely sacrificed by simply extending it lengthwise. Though it may be harsh to say the practice betrays the relative skill of the architect, it is certainly a sign of the times. This strategy is an early innovation, and eventually gives way to more sophisticated solutions. By the beginning of the classical period, the most common relationship exhibited by temples of the type in terms of its planar proportion was roughly n by (2n + 1), where the variable represents the number of columns in the peristyle along the short facade.

 

The second method employed by architects to navigate the problem of scale was to increase the structure’s length in both planar dimensions. What this means, in structural terms, is the addition of more columns to both facades in order to maintain the optimal intercolumniation—which is dictated by the size of the architrave blocks that span overhead. Recall, the architrave supports the thrust of the roof, and those blocks can only become so large before they fail under their own weight. It’s imperative to keep the spacing between the columns carefully controlled. This results in a more proper ratio of length to width, and again, a technically larger structure. However, the height of a Doric column is a function of its diameter. Though adding more columns to the peristyle can again conveniently sidestep any structural calamity, it is very difficult to alter the height of a Doric column without adjusting the intercolumniation; the temple becomes longer and wider, but alas, no taller. Thus we can understand the strange squatness of the “Basilica” at Paestum. 

 

Increasing the temple’s width means a larger roof span, as we’ve said, and that brings along its own set of design problems. For this reason, we ought to pay attention to the number of subdivisions of a temple’s width. The Basilica at Paestum is a somewhat crude example of strategically increasing the number of those subdivisions, and thereby segmenting a larger roof span into more manageable sub-spans. At Paestum the roof span—though widened—is pared down into five points of support, or, four smaller spans. This is achieved with the introduction of the central colonnade in the cella.

 

Ironically such a configuration sets the Basilica back some two hundred years, reviving old problems exhibited at the Hekatompedon at Samos—that is, the existence of a central colonnade displaces the cult image from the center in the cella. This means that one’s view of the cult image is obstructed, and its position in the temple is disproportionate in the extreme.

 

In fact, the Basilica’s awkward resolution is the origin of its namesake; the Basilica is so-called due to a long-time misconception about its supposed function being non-religious. Originally, the structure was thought not to be a temple at all, but to be some sort of a civic space—a Basilica, because an odd number of columns on the facade meant that there could be no cult image in the proper seat, and further, that the central aperture in the cella was obstructed such that according to legend, the god could not enter the space on-axis. By these assessments, the temple was regarded by archaeologists-of-old as not a temple at all. This misconception persisted for so long that a neoclassical architect in France adapted the Basilica’s plan as a typological model for the Bibliotheque St. Genevieve—contending that the central colonnade allowed for a more functionally appropriate public space in a classical sense. He pointed to the Basilica at Paestum as evidence for this view. The argument was well-received by his contemporaries. The Basilica is thus a fantastic example of the perils of adding more columns to the Doric peristyle in order to increase the building’s size, while avoiding the material limitations of the architrave.

 

Recall that the height constraint exhibited by buildings like the Basilica is largely a function of the proportioning system underlying the Doric order. The introduction of the Ionic Order brings a taller column to the stylobate, and as a result the standard six-column facade of the Doric temple is replaced by the typical eight-column front of the Ionic. While the development of the Ionic Order cannot readily be reduced to a direct reaction to this particular set of design problems, it should be noted that the Ionic does, as a matter of fact, re-tool the entire proportioning system underlying the Doric typology, in such a way as to alleviate the height issue to an appreciable degree. For the purposes of this specific discussion we might observe that the Ionic Order operates to increase the number of columns in the peristyle, as well as to increase the height of the architrave—reforming the temple type to a more appropriate proportion at a larger scale—all while retaining a standard block size that is much the same.

 

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The Heraion’s Peristyle

 

All of this talk of proportional and structural back-and-forth serves to clarify one single point to the reader, before all else: That despite the rigorous aesthetic of the traditional canona, no two Greek temples are the same. Despite the fact that any two people have hands which conform to the same bone-structure, the same musculature, exhibit the same range of motion, and so on—no two hands have the same configuration of lineaments in the palm. No two sets of fingerprints are the same. So it is with the canon. We must understand that every expression of architectural symbolism in the ancient world were negotiations between the ideal, ouranic manner evident in the world around us, and the mundane constraints placed upon the shoulders of the architect. The architect's task, after all, is the reckoning of divine order into the temple. And so, each architect proceeded as best he could, toward that goal, given what was at his disposal. Always for him the quality of his temple was defined by its adherence to, and exemplification of the natural law. His tools, techniques, and technologies were in service of that purpose.

 

Bearing this in mind, we return to the question of the Heraion and its eccentric peristyle. The simplest explanation for the patchwork aesthetic is that the columns and their capitals were erected at once, together with the rest of the temple, in a single period and according to deliberate intention. One may protest, if that’s the case, then why do we only see such a quilt of columns at the Heraion, and nowhere else in the Greek world? The answer is that we see numerous innovations in the Doric canon that occurred only at one site, and nowhere else.

 

The Temple of Zeus Akragas, for example, sought to skirt the issue of limitation on the scale of the architrave blocks by incorporating a colossal two-courses. This was neither precedented nor repeated. The architect of the Basilica at Paestum, as we’ve seen in detail here, was content to displace the cult image in his temple in order to achieve a larger and more grand structure overall. That central colonnade was apparently so disharmonious to later architects, that it was not repeated either. One wonders then, given the degree of innovation that characterizes the young Doric architect, if the peristyle at the Heraion may be seen according to the same rationale—is there a world where such variance in columns and their capitals made sense as a way to alleviate these practical issues, while at the same time being for the architect an allowable concession—one that arguably did not infringe on the temple’s metaphysical function? It seems that there is. The answer lay in the quarry, and in construction sequencing.

 

The stone at Olympia is of relatively poor quality. Likely sourced from near the river, it’s porous and soft. It’s not like the great Penteli quarries at Athens, where the marble can be won from the earth in unfissured monoliths of exquisite regularity. Both the low character of the stone at Olympia, and the youth of the mason’s craft at the time of the Heraion’s construction, mean that what blocks were able to be produced by a foreman and his workers, from the quarries, was a limiting factor. A given budget could only pay so many laborers, to dig for so long.

 

So, foremost in the architect’s mind were those elements in his temple, which must be allotted the larger, rarer, and more difficult-to-source stones. As we’ve seen, the most crucial elements are the architrave blocks. It’s these, which cannot be configured of variable pieces, like the column drums, and without which, the roof is impossible. They must be large enough to span the intercolumniation, and further, they are the last stone elements to be set into place before the roof is constructed, following the capitals themselves—and this is the key.

 

As the design and construction proceeded, first would be laid the leveling courses, the stereobates, and the stylobate. Atop these, next, would be established the peristyle either in-part, or in whole. Unfinished, the plan of the cella would then be measured out from the peristyle. Any damage that occurred to the colonnade during the process of establishing the cella (by dragging orthostates between column drums) could be dressed away, afterward. All the while, the masons in the quarry are digging up less-desirable stones, pursuing from that fissured mess blocks that were large enough, and substantial enough to serve the architrave. Quarrying would have to continue until the entire architrave was supplied. In such low-quality quarries where the vast majority of what is cut is insufficient, the entire quarrying process could perhaps be viewed as the pursuit of those members. As other blocks were won and set aside, the architect could identify stones suitable for column drums, for the stereobates or stylobate, and so on and so forth. Slowly, the peristyle rises to the level of the capitals.

 

It’s not difficult to imagine that after finally accruing the material for his architrave, the architect of the Heraion would have had, at his disposal, a field of smaller blocks already brought from the quarry. Rather than continuing to push off the schedule, and continuing to pay laborers to keep pursuing more regular stones for the capitals—there at the end of the stonecutting process— perhaps he elected instead to use what was already dug up, and laid out before him. In this way, the variance not just in the height of column drums, but also in the form of the capitals themselves is easily explained.

 

Variable drum height is common in Doric temples, likely for this very reason. At the Temple of Athena at Paestum we see it, as well at the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai, at the temple of Poseidon at Sounion, the list goes on and on. In-passing it serves to propose an explanation of the Greek columnar flutes, which I’ve not seen elsewhere, for my part. That is, that the flutes on the Doric column are not applied—as is commonly repeated—to ‘hide the horizontal seams’ between drums, and thus give the false impression that the column is a monolithic block of stone. Any observer can see for themselves the horizontal seams in fluted columns, nearer than a dozen strides. No, the flutes are, I suggest, applied toward a slightly more specific purpose. They function, I believe, to hide the horizontal variance in drum height. At a distance, of course the impression of a monolithic column is created, which is desirable, but also, even up-close, it can be difficult to ascertain differences in drum-height that would be quite noticeable without them. Only the most dramatic variance would stick-out, as it were, from the veil of ornamentation. It follows, then, to suggest that the concave character of the flutes, unique to the Greeks, is due to the fact that a concave flute casts a deeper shadow, and therefore, hides the variance more thoroughly in a variety of light conditions. Where the flutes convex, like the Egyptian manner, the bowed-out body of the flute would expose the variable seams much more visibly.

 

Regardless, what we see now according to this rationale is that there is no need for multiple construction periods at the Heraion. There is no need for competing stylistic imperatives, no need to attenuate Pausanias, and no need to suddenly twist the words of Vitruvius. For his capitals, the architect at the Heraion appears to have taken what he had at his disposal, and applied the rules of proportion to the raw material of each capital, in its turn, to free a form from the rough stone that suited it. Each stone, itself, being arguably no more ‘variable’ or ‘different’ than the drums and components that comprised its shaft. Unfortunately for him, the odd aesthetic legacy of that compromise was relegated to other experimental solutions, which were neither precedented, nor repeated.

 

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