Rhetoric and the Architecture of Empire inthe Athenian Agora Submitted by John Vandenbergh Lewis B.Arch., University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona May, 1992 Submitted to the Department of Architecture in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Science in Architecture Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology June, 1995 John Vandenbergh Lewis, 1995. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part. I A A Signature of the Author Jo Vandenbergh Lewis Depa* ent of Architecture, May 12, 1995 Certified by IrP u Julian Beinarl Professor of Architecture I Accepted by I I Roy Strickland Chairman, Department of Architecture Committee on Graduate Students MASSACHUSETTS INSTJTUTE OF TECHNOLOGY JUL 251995 4ROtd Rhetoric and the Architecture of Empire inthe Athenian Agora by John Vandenbergh Lewis Submitted to the Department of Architecture May 12, 1995 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science inArchitecture Studies Abstract The various political regimes of ancient Athens established and legitimated their power through civic architecture and public rhetoric in the agora. A study of the parallel developments of architectural and rhetorical form, supported by previously published archaeological evidence and the well documented history of classical rhetoric, demonstrates that both served to propel democracy and, later, to euphemize the asymmetrical power structures of the Hellenistic and Roman empires. In addition, civic architecture and rhetoric worked in unison following analogous patterns of presentation in civic space. Civic imperial architecture in the agora may be thus understood to function as the stageset and legitimator of imperial political rhetoric in the agora. Thesis Advisor: Julian Beinart, Professor of Architecture and Planning Rhetoric and the Architecture of Empire in the Athenian Agora Table of Contents Introduction 5 Words and Architecture 10 Rhetoric and the Architecture of the Agora 20 Pre-Classical Athens, 1450-500 BC 21 Classical Athens, 500-404Bc 35 Late Classical Athens, 404-323 BC 98 Hellenistic Athens, 322-31 BC 118 Roman Athens, 86 BC- AD 267 131 Conclusion 152 Afterword 154 Illustrations 156 Bibliography 179 Rhetoric and the Architecture of Empire in the Athenian Agora Introduction Rhetoric and the Architecture of Empire in the Athenian Agora Introduction were intimately associated in Athenian public life. Rhetoric was not simply the explicit means of propaganda and dispute, it was an evolving art that served to encourage or discourage various regimes through bodily presentation and personal accountability in public space. Likewise, the agora was not simply the public space of the city, it was an accumulation of monuments and buildings The Role of the Agora in designed to psychologically reinforce the Athenian Public Life. permanence of current regimes and to stand as evidence for or against the contentions of rhetoric. We are therefore uninterested in determining which of the two came first, The agora of Athens was the central meeting rhetoric or public space; their very place for the people of Athens, their interdependence suggests that one without marketplace, and the site of most of their the other is so altered as to become civic buildings. As such it was the crucible unrecognizable. The agora without rhetoric is for change and improvement in the arts and a marketplace. Rhetoric without the agora is in the politics of the city that was the cradle simple declamation. of Western civilization. However, perhaps due to its multiple roles as political, Thus is established the tripod of Greek commercial, and intellectual center of the politics: the regime, its speaking ancient city, the agora reveals a difficult, if participants, and the place for speech. All not unanswerable conundrum concerning the four regimes discussed in this paper can be origins of Athenian democracy: we do not characterized by particular, meaningful have sufficient evidence to determine which variations of the three constituent parts of came first, the agora as an open space or governance. This paper will refer to democracy as speaking in public. What we archaeology, surviving literature, and related do know is that in the agora there were modern studies to elucidate the various interdependent and parallel developments in parallel forms of rhetoric and civic the two preeminent means of expressing architecture in the agora, always with political will and power: public rhetoric and reference to politics and governance. In civic architecture. The art of argumentation chronological order the paper covers the and speech, rhetoric, and the art of enclosing following periods: pre-Classical tyranny, the and legitimating public activity, architecture, democratic and Hellenistic periods, and the Rhetoric and the Architecture of Empire in the Athenian Agora Roman occupation to the Herulian sack of aristocracy was disrupted. Laws were written Athens in 267AD. and read to the public; civic institutions consisting of representatives of the Athenian Pre-Classical Athens was a slowly evolving tribes were established. The resulting warren of houses surrounding the palace of importance of literacy and public the tyrant. The tyrant survived by military participation in politics led inevitably to the strength and a code of suspicion. In such a Classical form of the agora: public speech political climate uncensored speech was was possible only if there was space for it; impossible, and public meetings except to the space was possible only if upheld by law receive the word of the tyrant by edict were and public institutions; and the institutions impossible. The speech of pre-democratic were the embodiment of public will as Athens was of only three permissible expressed in speech. The tripod was stable varieties: the tradition of orality and poetry and we cannot safely postulate a first, that served to perpetuate the mythology and pre-existing leg. The constitution of Solon, folk traditions of the culture, the workaday the agora as an open space surrounded by talk of private and commercial life, and the civic buildings, and the practice of public edicts of the tyrant. Political speech was speech were instituted simultaneously. The entirely in the mouth of the tyrant and his actual acceptance of the constitution after appointed archon. The rigid hierarchy of millennia of oligarchy, the actual pre-Classical society was starkly evinced by construction of the civic buildings, and the the relationships established between people actual common practice of public speech by by speech and the architecture of the city. a people unused to participation were Men were either governed or the governor. undoubtedly gradual; but the archaeological The governed put their bodies into the and historical evidence indicates that they architectural space of the palace, made were conceived simultaneously. They were, temporarily public, in order to hear but not to in fact, one body. speak. The beginnings of democracy were not The oral tradition of archaic Greece, long without setbacks. The constitution of Solon established as a highly sophisticated art form, was abolished by Pisistratos and a powerful may have contained the seeds of rhetoric, the aristocracy in 560, and the accompanying art of arguing and speaking. The seeds were institutions of public speech and civic agora not to sprout, however, until the advent of were shut down. The agora continued to uncensored speech among the members of function as a marketplace, but without the polis. Following the rise of the archon uncensored speech until the democratic Solon in 594 the dominance of the reforms of Cleisthenes in 508. The new, Rhetoric and the Architecture of Empire in the Athenian Agora purely democratic constitution remained in maintain the democratic constitution and place as the foundation of government local control of the magistracies and courts. throughout the fifth century. Rhetoric and The sanctity of the agora as the place of civic architecture in the agora were, from democracy, however, was spoiled. Foreign then on, the means of political presentation kings and patrons poured money into civic in Athens. building projects that greatly aggrandized and beautified the agora but which The agora was a sloping, tree-shaded floor established men over other men. The surrounded by informal groupings of civic Athenians had resisted and prohibited and commercial buildings. The Philosophers monuments to individuals in the agora, and and their students sat in the stoas in small had specially avoided architectural groups and practiced dialogue, a carefully arrangements that allowed rhetors to sway constructed form of argumentation meant to the crowd. They recognized the find out the truth. Late in the century when incompatibility of patronage and democracy, there arose a need for a theater for meetings and feared that the axial, frontal architecture of the ever-growing Ekklesia one was of the Hellenistic speakers' platforms and constructed outside of the agora on the Pnyx, theaters would allow speakers to get undue not for reasons of topography, but apparently influence over the demos. The agora of the to separate that hierarchical form of oratory Hellenistic era was a place of oratory where from the democratic agora. Though archaic the Classical agora had been a place of Homer could conceive