Theseus, the Hephaisteion and the temple of Poseidon at Sounion. A case of bipolarity in Athens of the fifth Century BC. Martin Schneegans Master thesis in Archaeology The Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History The University of Oslo May 2016 Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 1 Research Problem and Aim of the Study............................................................................................. 2 Research History and Methodological Framework ............................................................................. 3 Chapter One - The Myth of Theseus ....................................................................................................... 7 The Life and Times of Theseus ............................................................................................................ 7 The Myth of Theseus in the Written Record ..................................................................................... 13 The Earliest Tales ........................................................................................................................... 13 The Way from Troezen: the Myth-Cycle ....................................................................................... 17 The Battles against the Amazons .................................................................................................. 21 Analysis of all the Results .............................................................................................................. 22 Chapter Two - Theseus in Vase Painting and other pictorial Media ..................................................... 30 The Earliest Tales ............................................................................................................................... 30 The Minotaur ................................................................................................................................. 30 Visit at the bottom of the sea ....................................................................................................... 32 Theseus and Ariadne ..................................................................................................................... 32 The abduction of Helen ................................................................................................................. 32 The abduction of Persephone ....................................................................................................... 33 The Centauromachy ...................................................................................................................... 33 The Marathonian bull .................................................................................................................... 34 The abduction of Antiope .............................................................................................................. 34 The Myth-cycle .................................................................................................................................. 34 Gnorismata .................................................................................................................................... 35 Periphetes ..................................................................................................................................... 35 Sinis ................................................................................................................................................ 35 Phaia .............................................................................................................................................. 35 Skyron ............................................................................................................................................ 35 Kerkyon .......................................................................................................................................... 35 Prokrustes ...................................................................................................................................... 36 The Amazonomachy .......................................................................................................................... 36 Analysis of the representation of the tales ................................................................................... 37 Chapter Three - The Athenian Treasury at Delphi ................................................................................ 41 The Date of the Treasury ................................................................................................................... 43 Function and Media .......................................................................................................................... 45 Chapter four – Bipolarity, the Hephaisteion and Temple of Poseidon at Sounion ............................... 53 The Hephaisteion .............................................................................................................................. 54 The Architectural Sculpture ........................................................................................................... 56 The Ionic frieze .............................................................................................................................. 57 The Audience of the Temple ............................................................................................................. 60 The temple of Poseidon at Sounion .................................................................................................. 62 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 69 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 70 List of ancient authors ....................................................................................................................... 70 List of references ............................................................................................................................... 71 List of figures ......................................................................................................................................... 76 Architectonic terms used in the document ........................................................................................... 88 Introduction The Ancient logographer Isocrates tells us in his encomium or appraisal of Helen of Sparta (Isoc. 18-20) written around 370 BC about how the Athenian hero Theseus was so impressed by the beauty of Helen that he was unable to show any restraint and abducted and raped her to satisfy his lust even though she still was a child. This deplorable act of immorality was, however, mended or even neutralized a few lines later when Isocrates compared Theseus with Herakles The fairest praise that I can award to Theseus is this – that he, a contemporary of Herakles, won a fame which rivalled his. For they not only equipped themselves with similar armour, but followed the same pursuits, performing deeds that were worthy of their common origin. For being in birth the sons of brothers, the one of Zeus, the other of Poseidon, they cherished also kindred ambitions; for they alone of all who have lived before our time made themselves champions of human life. It came to pass that Herakles undertook perilous labours more celebrated and more severe, Theseus those more useful, and to the Greeks of more vital importance [Isoc. 23-24]. This sudden appraisal of a man whom we had just been told was a rapist is astonishingly odd. Perhaps Isocrates knew nothing about the origins of the abduction-story and perhaps he did not even care to find out from where it came. By the time he wrote this encomium he was a grown up man who evidently had learnt at his mother’s knee that Theseus had achieved greatness and that the tale was just one of many colourful episodes in the life of Theseus. He was probably unable to explain how the Athenian hero, who was so useful “to the Greeks” and had surpassed Herakles by accomplishing deeds “of more vital importance”, could show this kind of contrasts. He probably knew his Homer very well and took for granted the implicit interpretation of Theseus’ and Perithoos’ accounts in the Odyssey which placed the story in the distant time of the heroic age (Hom.Od. 11.631). What he probably did not know 1 is when exactly the Odyssey had been written and how to relate in time this literary reference to the works of art and literature that obviously paralleled Theseus with Herakles. For he would have understood that it had passed around two hundred years in the written and the material record from the time Theseus abducted Helen and the time when the hero had performed the deeds that helped him to outdone Herakles. This work concerns itself in great part with this topic: the myth of Theseus and its transformation in works of art and literature throughout time. The real subject matter of this thesis is, however, to elucidate how this evolution gave rise to such a prominence and importance of the hero as to be depicted in the Ionic friezes of the temple of Poseidon at Sounion and in the Hephaisteion in Athens in the middle of the fifth century BC. These temples have so much in common that