"Gothic" Construction in Ancient Greece Author(s): Jacques Heyman Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Mar., 1972), pp. 3-9 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/988722 . Accessed: 30/01/2012 03:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and Society of Architectural Historians are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. http://www.jstor.org "Gothic" Construction in Ancient Greece JACQUES HEYMAN University of Cambridge THE FACT THAT ancientGreek and Gothicarchitecture are,visually, so obviouslydistinct leads to the ideathat the masonrystructure behaves in differentways in the two styles.However, an examinationof the mechanicsof ma- sonryconstruction does not supportthis assumption. This is not to imply thatancient Greek and Gothicarchitects had thesame view of theirbuildings; indeed, neither is likelyto havethought of structurein a way thata modernstructural engineerwould considerrelevant. Ruskinobserved "that the principal distinctions between existingstyles of architecturedepend on theirmethods of roofingany space,as a window or door for instance... ; thatis to say, that the characterof Greekarchitecture ... dependson its roofinga spacewith a singlestone laid from Fig. I. Stone lintel (from Ruskin). side to side ... ; and the characterof Gothicarchitecture dependson its roofingspaces with pointedarches ."* Thetype of "Greek"lintel Ruskin had in mindis illustrated... by his own sketch(Fig. I). Ruskinseems to makea in Although comparison purely Fig. 2. A brick plate-bande(from visualterms between Greek and Gothic,it is cleara little Ruskin). laterthat he is thinkingalso of the structuralfunctions of thetwo Otherwriters make a more "transla- styles. explicit contrast,of course,a Gothicarch thrusts aswell as fromvisual to structural for sideways tion" interpretation; example, down. Fletcherdefines and Gothic HenriFocillon writes that (Banister Romanesque "theGreeks opposed the action as arcuated traceable to the of in styles, finally Etruscans.) gravity thevertical direction only."2 Banister Fletcher Ruskininsists that: givesa full statementof structuralfunction when he writes that"Greek architecture was columnarand tra- theGreek system, considered merely as a pieceof construction,is essentially weakand with beated a Thusthe massivestone lintels barbarous,compared thetwo others[Roman and (trabs= beam)."3 of, Forinstance, in thecase of a windowor door, such for a Greek are to act as beams Gothic]. large example, temple supposed asfig. I, if youhave at your disposal a single large and long stone betweenadjacent columns, and to transmitpurely vertical you mayindeed roof it in theGreek manner, as you have done loadsto thosecolumns and thenceto the foundations.By here,with comparative security; but it is alwaysexpensive to ob- tainand to raiseto theirplace stones of thislarge size, and in many J. Ruskin,Lectures on Architectureand Deliveredat Edin- placesnearly impossible to obtainthem at all: and if youhave not I. Painting such andstill insist the in the Greek burghin November1853 (London, 1907), p. II. stones, uponroofing space 2. H. Focillon, The Art of the West,2 vols. (London, 1963), I, 67. way,that is to say,upon having a squarewindow, you must do it 3. SirBanister Fletcher, A Historyof Architectureon the ComparatiPe bythe miserably feeble adjustment of bricks ... [Fig.2]; you can- Method,17th ed. (London, 1961), p. 93. notbut see in a momentthat this cross bar is weakand imperfect. 3 4 Thus Ruskin is making structural as well as aesthetic judgments, although his statementthat the Greek system is weak and the plate-bandemiserably feeble is, in fact, mere assertion. The square form offends Ruskin's eye and the form that of a it. pointed (as, explicitly, leaf) delights Fig. 3. Iron "reinforcement"of Viollet le Duc expressesvery similar structuralviews in architraveof Propylaea, Athens his dictionary; he devotes half a page to the plate-bande, (after Dinsmoor, "Structural Iron..."). twice calling it an "appareilvicieux."4 This, however, is by contrastwith the Greeklintel: "LesGrecs n'admettaient pas l'arc, et s'ils avaient"i franchir un espace entre deux piliers, deux pieds-droits ou deux colonnes, ils posaient sur les points d'appuiverticaux un monolithe horizontal."Viollet le Duc is particularlyupset by the dishonesty of the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-centurypractice of concealing iron barswithin the masonry to form the true and effective structure (e.g., the Madeleine, the Panth6on): "Les archi- tectes du moyen age, on le comprend, ne pouvaient s'as- treindre"a mentir de cette sorte aux principesles plus vrais et les plus naturelsde la construction,et c'est pour cela que plusieursles considererentcomme des gens naifs." However, the Greeks did, in fact, themselves use con- cealed iron in their masonry,5 although the use was only occasional.The matterhas given rise to some controversy,6 but it seems fairly clearthat the Greekiron cannot properly be considered as reinforcement in the modern sense. In Fig. 4. Propylaea,Athens, reconstructed (photo: author). some instances it may have slightly relieved stresses (but does so no longer, since it has long since rustedaway); more This form of construction is as ingenious as it is mis- usually it served some sort of simplifying constructional directed. Although the stressesresulting from the bending function, from a of simple keying together masonry (the moment would be reduced, tensile stresseswould still be Theban treasury,Delphi) to a kind of permanentfalsework present,and stone is a materialweak in tension. In the pres- (as at the Temple of Zeus, Agrigento; see below). ent state of the Propylaea (Fig. 4) it will be seen that, de- The Propylaea at Athens (Mnesicles,437 B.C.)is one of spite the precautions, at least two of the architravesare the buildings which originally had concealed iron. Each broken right through at their centers of span. To be sure, architraveis composed of two marble beams 5o cm thick this fracturemay have occurredas a result of the iron rust- and 8o cm high, spanning typically about 3.6 m between ing away, with the load of the marble ceiling beams thus the centers of supporting columns; the clear span between being imposed directly on the architraves.The history of abaci is, of course, less than 3.6 m. These twin architraves the fracturesis, however, unimportant;and, as will be seen, were channelled out on their top faces, and an iron bar, the fracturesthemselves are not of structuralimportance. about m and of section about 75 mm X mm 1.6 long IIS Ruskin notes a similar fracture in Edinburgh, and de- was apparentlyinserted to spreadthe load (Fig. 3). Suppos- scribes "the great church with the dome, at the end of ing the structuralaction of the architraveto be that of a George Street," whose "huge horizontal lintel above the beam in bending, then the introduction of the iron bars door is alreadysplit right through." It might be naturalto would reduce the value of the maximum bending moment suppose that such splits are a sign of danger, or to believe in the marble beams to one-half. something approaching with Pol Abraham that cracks are "signes avant-coureurs in 4. E. E. Viollet le Duc, Dictionnaireraisonne' de l'architecturefranfaise de la ruine,"7but these beliefs are not supported any way du XIe au XVIe siecle,Io vols. (Paris,1858-1868), vrI, 207. by modern structuralanalysis. Indeed, I have recently ar- 5. W. B. Dinsmoor, "StructuralIron in Greek Architecture," gued "that the crackedstate is the naturalstate of masonry, AmericanJournalof Archaeology (2nd ser.), xxvI (1922), 148. 6. R. A. Jewett, "StructuralAntecedents of the I-beam, I8oo- 185o," Technologyand Culture, vim (1967), 346. For a discussionby H. Dorn, see Technologyand Culture, Ix (1968),415, with a response 7. Pol Abraham, Violletle Duc et le rationalismemedieval (Paris, by Jewett, 419, and rejoinderfrom Dorn, 427. 1934), p. 8. :5 Fig. 6. Collapsemechanism for voussoirarch. Fig. 7. Stableposition for an imperfectlyfitted plate-bande. Fig. 5. Temple of Zeus, Athens (photo: author). forcesbetween two adjacentportions of masonryare so althoughthe cracksmay be so smallas to be invisible,or be high thatthere is no dangerof slidingfailure; this assump- closedby the elasticityof the stone."' tion will usuallybe satisfied,although it is possibleto find A very visiblefracture is shown in Figure5, wherethe practicalcounterexamples. Further, stresses in masonry architravehas sagged slightly to reveala wedge-shaped constructionare usually so smallthat there is no dangerof crackat the centerof span (Templeof Zeus, Athens,174 crushingof the material. B.C.and later). There is no questionof thisstone architrave Certaintheorems of structuralbehavior can be proved actingin any senseas a lintelbeam. The mode of actionis within the frameworkof theseassumptions. For example, clear;the two halvesof