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The Stones of Athens1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

R. E. Wycherley
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Extract

‘Attica has a plentiful supply of stone,’ says Xenophon (Poroi i. 4),‘from which are made the fairest temples and altars, and the most beautiful statues for the gods.’ Athens was indeed blessed in its building stones, as in its fine clay. The immensely complicated geophysical processes which created the exquisite landscape of Attica produced a variety of useful and often beautiful materials, nicely distributed about the land. The stones are mostly limestones of different sorts. Marble itself is a limestone miraculously metamorphosed by titanic heat and pressure into its characteristic crystalline structure, thus forming in the body of the earth what M. Aurelius (ix. 36) aptly calls poroi, calluses or nodules. This has happened in many places, but in most the result consists of comparatively small lumps or thin veins; much rarer are the massive beds from which can be extracted the great blocks needed for the major architectural members of temples and other large buildings. In this too Attica is exceptionally favoured. More than one huge layer runs through the fabric of both Pentelikon and Hymettos; and other extensive beds lie near the southern tip of Attica.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , April 1974 , pp. 54 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1974

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References

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