The Annual of the British School at Athens the Ionic Capital of The
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The Annual of the British School at Athens http://journals.cambridge.org/ATH Additional services for The Annual of the British School at Athens: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The Ionic Capital of the Gymnasium of Kynosarges Pieter Rodeck The Annual of the British School at Athens / Volume 3 / November 1897, pp 89 - 105 DOI: 10.1017/S0068245400000770, Published online: 18 October 2013 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0068245400000770 How to cite this article: Pieter Rodeck (1897). The Ionic Capital of the Gymnasium of Kynosarges. The Annual of the British School at Athens, 3, pp 89-105 doi:10.1017/S0068245400000770 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/ATH, IP address: 130.133.8.114 on 02 May 2015 COIN TYPE OF ELIS, RESTORED. THE IONIC CAPITAL OF THE GYMNASIUM OF KYNOSARGES. (PLATES VL—Vm.) THE excavations of the British School at Athens, in the winters of 1896 and 1897, had the result of determining that the site, on which they were carried on, had been a burial ground previous to the sixth cen- tury B.C. and again after the third century, and that, in the meantime, it must have been covered by the Greek building, of which we laid bare the foundations. The plan of this building resembles that of a large gymnasium; the period of its existence coincides with that during which we know the gymnasium of Kynosarges to have existed, and the position of the site is such as the various mentions of Kynosarges by classic authors leads us to expect. We therefore claim to have deter- mined the site of the gymnasium of Kynosarges; and such of its architectural remains as we hoped to find would naturally fulfil two conditions :—that of belonging to a date within the two limits of the existence of the gymnasium, and that of bearing some analogy to the details of similar gymnasia. We learn, however, from Livy XXXI., 24, that the whole Kynosarges quarter, as well as the Lykeion, was completely destroyed by Philip V. of Macedon, no building, whether sacred or domestic, having escaped his fury. We could, therefore, hope to find but little besides the foundation walls, and, in fact, a few terra- cotta antefixae and a fragment, slightly less than a quarter of an Ionic capital, were the only architectural remains found on the site, which, as far as their age is concerned, are likely to have belonged to the gymna- N 90 THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS. [1896-7. sium. In temples the antifixae were, like the roof tiles, usually of marble ; in less monumental buildings, such as gymnasia, it is natural that both should be formed of terra-cotta. The capital I will now discuss more fully. A white marble fragment had been noticed for some time built into the limestone wall of one of the buildings of Roman date, which had been erected on the site of the former gymnasium. Its position is definitely marked on the plan of the excavations, which will shortly appear with Mr. Cecil Smith'sarticle on the subject in the Journal of Hellenic Studies. On picking away some of the mortar in which it was embedded, it was seen that the fragment was a piece of an Ionic capital built in, lying on its abacus, with the volute inside the wall. We then had it taken out of the wall, and found the beautiful fragment shown on Plate VI. The line of the fracture across the underside and two fronts of the capital, is shown by a dotted line. The surface is smooth, without any existing trace of the painted ornaments which it doubtless had; only the scamillus on the abacus was left purposely rough. The volute is damaged along its lower rim for the distance of about a quadrant. It was an easy matter, by completing the circle of the capital and drawing the other volutes and halves of cushions in their corresponding positions, to produce an almost complete drawing of the capital. The projection of the abacus over the cushions is given by the remains of the fillet between cushion and abacus. The only features, for the resto- ration of which the analogy of other examples had to be sought, were the mouldings of the cushions. At the fracture across the cushions are the remains of a bead moulding. As this is not on the centre-line of the cushion, it follows that there were at least two such beads. Still, two beads alone interrupting the curve of the cushion are not met with till Roman times, such as occur, for example, in the aqueduct of Hadrian, published by Stuart [see also Puchstein, Das Ionische Kapitell, pp. 22-3] and the temple of Apollo Chresterios [Bohn and Schuchhardt, Altertiimer von Aegae, Plate 57], the latter of which dates from 46 B.C. To find an analogy for filling in the space between them, I did not have so far to go; for at the east end of the skene of the Theatre of Dionysos in Athens, I found the capital shown on Plate VII. I will call this capital No. 2, and our fragment No. 1. THE IONIC CAPITAL OF THE GYMNASIUM OF KYNOSARGES. 91 This second capital bears such a striking resemblance in all essential features to No. 1, that I did not hesitate to restore the mouldings of the cushion as the same, namely, three beads separated by fillets from two channels. A comparison of the proportions of one capital to those of the other leads me to think that No. 2, which is evidently the later, was copied directly from No. 1, or from some unknown example which served as model for both. Among the important dimensions of the front, the one in which the greatest difference occurs is the clear breadth between the volutes. In No. 1, this dimension is 0-422 of the circle on the under side of the capital, while in No. 2 it is 0*47, making a differ- ence of 0-048, which after all is little. There is only one difference of design in the two capitals; on the sides the abacus is separated from the cushion by a fillet in No. 1, but by a flat ogee moulding in No. 2. This is an unimportant feature. Further, the two leaves at the junction of the volutes with the lower connecting fillet are of a less severe design in the later example. In this feature the sculptor of the capital would naturally allow his own invention greater liberty than in the essential proportions of the design. As to the origin of the Ionic capital, which I call No 2, nothing is known. Dr. Dorpfeld assigns to it no place in his architectural restoration of the theatre, and he suggested to me that it may have been thrown over the edge of the Acropolis with the loose earth, which was cleared off that part of the Acropolis immediately above the theatre. This is not so unlikely as it at first may appear to those who have not had practical experience of excavations. In fact, it seems to be a not uncommon occurrence. For when the Greek Archaeological Society last year excavated the northern slope of the Acropolis, a small Byzantine church was unearthed, which had some years ago been ruined by the pressure of the mass of earth thrown over from that part of the Acropolis immediately above it, on which the Erechtheion stands, and, as in the case of our Ionic capital, there were found, in and near the church, a Byzantine anta-capital, the cornice of an iconostasis, fragments of sculptured slabs, &c, which from their style cannot have belonged to the small church, but may be ascribed to the early Byzantine church fitted up in the Erechtheion. Near the bastion at the north-east angle of the Acropolis, called the " Belvedere," there have been collected a great store of Ionic capitals of a large variety of styles and sizes found on the Acropolis; but I saw none like No. 1 or No. 2 among them. In the 92 THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS. [1896-7. theatre, however, I found the upper end of a shaft and a base, which apparently belong to capital No. 2, and which had evidently been placed near it by some one who arranged the fragments there. I have drawn the section of these with the capital. In my search for other examples of Ionic capitals of the same type as the two I am publishing, I did not find that one which was published by J. C. Watt, in 1893, in his Examples of Greek and Pompeian Decora- tive Work, Plate 30. This apparently he found " near the Acropolis." It varies but slightly from No. 2. Its total breadth is greater than, and its total height equal to that of No. 2, so that it works out as of flatter proportion. The centre of the eye is at exactly the same depth from the under edge of the abacus, but nearer to the bed-joint of the capital; the cymatium of the abacus is slightly higher than that of No. 2, but the cymatia between the volutes are equal, so that the channel connect- ing the volutes is slightly flatter than in No. 2 ; on the other hand, its downward curve has the same defect of abruptness. The spiral of the volute frees itself from the fillet round the eye a little sooner, and races a curve which deviates from that of No.