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On the Ancient Hecatompedon which occupied the Site of the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

Dr. Dörpfeld, as was to be expected, has published in the Mittheilungen an answer to my article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1891.

Excepting in two corrections of detail, of which I recognize the value, and shall have occasion to make mention in the proper place, he does not appear to me to have shaken in the slightest degree the position that I took up, namely, that the great sub-basement wall under the south flank of the Parthenon was built for a temple named the Hecatompedon anterior by many years to the time of Cimon, and that the remains of large limestone architraves frieze and cornice in the north wall of the Acropolis belonged to that temple and not to the archaic temple of Athene near the Erechtheum, the discovery of which will always be associated with Dr. Dörpfeld's name. I must assume that the readers of this article will have before them both my original paper in the Hellenic Journal, already referred to, and Dr. Dörpfeld's answer in the Mittheilungen which, so far as it affects my argument, I will endeavour to answer point by point.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1893

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References

1 Mittheilungen des K. Arch. Instituts Athen, 1892, XVII.

2 Given in detail in Principles of Athenian Architecture.

3 A stone was found in 1891 by Mr. Waddington at Plataea of a similar section, but not in situ, and therefore without any evidence that it had belonged to the stylobate of the temple he was excavating.

4 See the remarks on this difficulty in p. 166 of the Mittheilungen.

5 In p. 174, Mittheilungen, attention is called lo the narrowness of the north and south peristyles, and it is accounted for by the width of the cella necessary to give proper effect to the statue. I have remarked at length on this point in p. 287 of my previous article in this Journal, where I have shown how the position of the walls of the old Hecatompedon would have led to it. There is nothing however antagonistic in the two explanations, which may both have been present in the mind of the builders of the Parthenon. The statue however would chiefly require breadth in the central division of the naos, and the side aisles, so to call them, need not have been made so wide, except for some other reason than the proper reception of the statue.