In the strictly political sphere the Hellenistic age is usually regarded as the period from the death of Alexander the Great to the completion of the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean, that is, from 323 to ca. 50 BC, or even to the extinction of the Ptolemaic kingdom with the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC Yet in the history of Graeco-Roman art and culture many of the features that are most characteristic of Hellenistic civilization clearly go back a generation or more before Alexander’s death in 323, that is, to the period when the brief hegemony of Thebes...

The great epoch of Greek temple building, insofar as the number of large new temples is concerned, had been the later Archaic age and the aftermath of the Persian Wars. In Athens and Attica, however, the post-Persian activity was delayed for a generation or so, to ca. 450–420.¹

Thereafter few projects in the older cities and sanctuaries included completely new temples of large scale. It was frequently a matter of rebuilding an older temple; and the new buildings were often deliberately archaizing in plan, even though both the proportions of the columnar orders employed and the style of the...

In dealing with the entrance to the sacred temenos as part of the overall design of a sanctuary, the preceding chapter touched upon only one aspect of the subject of entranceways. For example, the North Propylaia at Epidauros were too far outside the sacred enclosure of Asklepios for temple and entrance to form a single integrated design (fig. 108). Moreover, buildings of ‘ propylon’ form are often found in association with structures other than temples; and there were, in any case, other means of emphasizing the entrance without resorting to a conventional propylon. The present chapter therefore deals with entranceways...

The stoa is perhaps the most characteristic expression of the spirit of Hellenistic architecture. The basic form occurs in the Aegean world from the latter part of the Bronze Age onwards; but neither in the Bronze Age nor in Archaic and Classical times were stoas used as frequently or as effectively as in the fourth century and the Hellenistic period.

The stoa determined the architectural form of the Hellenistic agora, gymnasium, and palaistra.¹ Colonnaded approaches or enclosures were responsible for much of the imposing appearance of the sanctuaries of Athena Lindia at Lindos, Asklepios at Kos, Artemis at Magnesia, Demeter...

Monuments of this type occupy a special place in the history of Hellenistic architecture, and display greater variety and freedom of design than longer-established types of building.¹ The variety of forms came partly from new combinations of traditional structural and ornamental elements, and partly from non-Greek (Eastern) sources. The demand for more and more imposing monuments originated outside mainland Greece. Local Anatolian rulers who had close contacts with Middle Eastern customs were the first to revive hero cults. For example, magnificent tombs and heroa, which perpetuated the memory of deceased persons, were already being erected in Lykia in the fifth...

For modern students, the history of Greek theatres as substantial buildings really begins in the mid-fourth century; clearly defined principles of design do not appear before the Hellenistic age. It is ironic, but not unparalleled in other periods and contexts, that the evolution of these principles should have coincided with the decline of Greek dramatic poetry, both comic and tragic.

The reasons for this decline are rather complex. Greek tragedy and comedy both grew out of religious celebrations. Especially in the hands of Euripides, tragedy subsequently became more moralizing than ‘religious,’ and also more ‘dramatic’ in character; and the comic...

It may seem at first glance that the treatment of gymnasia, palaistrai, and baths in a single chapter is more appropriate to the history of Roman than of Classical or Hellenistic Greek architecture. For example, Vitruvius deals withthermae, or baths, andpalaestraeone after another, in Book 5 of the DeArchitectura;¹ and his accounts of both types of building, as well as the section on the bathing facilities associated with Romanpalaestrae,² were obviously conceived more in Italic than in Greek terms. Yet the inclusion in the Vitruvian account of elements originating west of the Adriatic notwithstanding, it...

The buildings discussed in this chapter were used for a variety of purposes: religious celebrations, political assemblies, and the storage of temple properties and civic documents, or as military or naval arsenals, commercial warehouses, or granaries. They are treated together because, despite differences in ground plan, they all posed the problem of roofing an area that might range from several hundred to more than 4000 m².¹ With rare exceptions, the roofing of cult-buildings posed no such problems; for even the largest temples, if not partly hypaethral, were divided by interior walls into smaller and more manageable units (pteron, porches, cella,...

In the mid- to late twenties of the last century, students of Greek antiquity had at their disposal a good deal of literary evidence on the subject of domestic architecture in Classical, and even Archaic, Greece; but there were few known physical remains to assist in the interpretation of the ancient texts. Fortunately, new excavations, especially those at Olynthos (in the late twenties and thirties), in the Athenian agora, and elsewhere, have added greatly to our understanding of the Classical Greek house.¹ We can now say that during the Archaic period there were probably a number of residences sufficiently large...

In the eastern Mediterranean Hellenistic art and architecture evolved primarily in the service of the Hellenistic monarchies, especially of Pergamon, Syria, and Egypt. The grandiose design of Pergamon itself stemmed from the desire of the Attalids to transform a military stronghold into a royal capital; and the influence of Pergamene city architecture is clear in many sanctuaries and smaller cities elsewhere in western Asia Minor. The activities of Seleukid (or Seleukid-inspired) architects extended from Sardis and Didyma in western Asia Minor to Iran and Afghanistan. Ptolemaic architects, too, developed types of buildings, techniques of construction, and decorative schemes that were...

Hellenistic and Roman theatres illustrate more clearly than any other group of buildings a new relationship to cityscape or landscape or both – a relationship that becomes more and more common from the middle of the fourth century onward.¹ While the great dramatic masterpieces of Greek and Roman antiquity were the work of Classical dramatists, it was left to Hellenistic architects and their Roman successors to draw together into a unified whole the architecturally disparate elements at Classical theatre buildings, and to integrate these forms into a planned landscape of city or suburbs unknown in Classical times.

For example, the Hellenistic...

The Hellenistic concept of ‘architecture in landscape,’ as described in the preceding chapter, exerted a considerable influence on Roman architecture. For example, despite the obviously Roman character of the monuments overall, there is much that is Hellenistic in inspiration both in the Republican complex at Praeneste (fig. 90) and in the Imperial Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli. Not the least important of the decorative elements in these and other Roman monuments are the many and varied combinations of columnar forms in essentially ornamental roles; and this trait too was part of their Hellenistic heritage. In Classical times, at least down...

In today’s technological world the architect is a highly trained professional – the colleague and collaborator, and often the superior, of the engineering specialist. In the eyes of government and large business corporations, architects generally enjoy much higher standing and prestige than do sculptors or painters. For the world of ancient Greece, at least until late Classical times, the position of the architect was very different, and his ‘professional standing,’ if it existed at all, was certainly far inferior to that of the sculptor or painter. In part, this situation stemmed from the fact that the work of early sculptors and...