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A Roof at Delphi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

A. Trevor Hodge
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Extract

Because of its dating on the borderline of archaic and classical, and its excellent state of preservation, the Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi has for long been a monument of great interest to scholars working in many fields of ancient art and architecture. It is my belief that it offers valuable and surprising evidence in the perplexing problem of how the ancients roofed their buildings; and to set forth the grounds for that belief is the aim of this paper.

The roof over the pronaos was substantially different from the roof over the cella. Among other things, the pronaos had a stone instead of a wooden ceiling, which was, moreover, at a higher level. We are here concerned with the roof over the cella, for which alone there seems to be reliable evidence (mostly on the inside face of the west pediment). The French publication, otherwise extremely full, says little more than that the rather slender ridge beam and purlins were supported by props from the five massive crossbeams spanning the building, and that these carried a ceiling of boards fixed to their underside (FdD II 48). An examination of the stonework seems to suggest different conclusions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 49 , November 1954 , pp. 202 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1954

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References

1 My acknowledgements are especially due to Dr. W. H. Plommer and Mr. R. M. Cook, of Cambridge, for much help and advice in the preparation of this article, and to Mr. G. P. Stevens and Mr. B. H. Hill, of the American School at Athens. I must thank M. Daux, Director of the French School, for permission to reproduce Fig. 2; and I am deeply grateful to M. Gallet de Santerre for facilitating my work at Delphi, and to M. Y. Fomine for acute criticism tempered with heartening encouragement. To Mr. J. B. Ward Perkins, Director of the British School at Rome, and to Prof. D. S. Robertson, I am indebted for valuable comment and advice on my drawings; they are based on those of P. E. Hoff, published in Fouilles de Delphes II.