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A Note on the Temple of Zeus at Cyrene and its Re-Erection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

G. R. H. Wright
G. R. H. Wright*
Affiliation:
Beirut, 20 September 1968
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Extract

During the course of work in Cyrenaica extending over the 1950s and 1960s I was asked by the late Richard Goodchild, then Controller of Antiquities, to note and comment on any architectural features which I felt to have special significance. In this way, across the years, I handed over to him various short notes with drawings of miscellaneous items that I had observed. Of one such observation a copy has come to hand recently among old papers.

While working with the Michigan Expedition to Apollonia (1965–68) I visited the late Professor Stucchi's project for re-erecting the remains of the Temple of Zeus at Cyrene, begun in 1967. During the visit I was interested to observe the detailing of a triglyph block from the peristyle entablature. This seemed to conflict with, or rather to add somewhat to the then accepted building history of the temple — i.e. a (late) Archaic Greek Temple overthrown during the Jewish Revolt and subsequently refurbished minus the peristyle.

Work on Professor Stucchi's project is not yet completed; and although he published both progress reports and some discussion of the findings, he has not, to my knowledge, given us a detailed account of the evidence for the history of the building; so perhaps my note made in 1968 remains of interest. I have left the argument as it stood, but some updating material has been added to the footnotes.

G.R.H.W.

Avignon, December 1993.

Information

Type
Roman Period and Late Antiquity
Information
Libyan Studies , Volume 25 , January 1994 , pp. 185 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1994

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References

Notes

1. For a record of the investigations carried out before 1967, see:

Smith, R. M. and Porcher, E. A., History of the Recent Discoveries at Cyrene (London, 1864) 71–2Google Scholar. Guidi, G., di Cirene, Lo Zeus, Africa Italiana I (1927) 3–40Google Scholar.

Pesce, G., (1) Il Gran Tempio in Cirene, BCH 71–72 (1947–1948) 307–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; (2) La Documentazione epigraphica … del Gran Tempio in Cirene, Bull. Soc. Roy. d'Arch. d'Alexandrie 39 (1951) 83–129Google Scholar.

Goodchild, R. G.et al: The Temple of Zeus at Cyrene (1954–57), PBSR 26 (1958) 30–62Google Scholar.

To this must now be added: Stucchi, S., QuadALibia 6 (1971) 116–121, 8 (1976) 468–76Google Scholar, Architettura Cirenaica (Rome, 1975) especially at 20–1, 23–9, 253–4Google Scholar; see also his brief note in Goodchild, R. G., Kyrene und Apollonia (Zürich, 1971) 154–5Google Scholar and a summary in Da Batto Aristotele a Ibn el-'As. Introduzione alla Mostra (Rome, 1988)Google Scholar with reference to papers read by him at the International Congress on the Parthenon at Basle in 1982 (concerned mainly with the Greek architects use of mathematical formulae) and at the International Congress of Archaeology at Athens in 1983 (concerned mainly with the Roman period architect's use of different, geometrical formulae).

2. In AD 115 (Jewish Revolt) and AD 365 (earthquake).

3. Professor S. Stucchi, Director of the Italian Mission in Cyrene which has been so successful in its work in the Agora (see e.g. Stucchi, S., L'Agorà di Cirene, Rome, 1965Google Scholar), has entered on the project of rebuilding the Temple of Zeus in agreement and association with the Department of Antiquities of the Libyan Government. Since Stucchi's death in 1991 it. has become the responsibility of Professor Lidiano Bacchielli, his successor as Director of the Italian Mission.

4. Pesce (1), cit. n. 1, 347.

5. Dinsmoor, W. B., The Architecture of Ancient Greece (London, 1950) 86Google Scholar.

6. Chamoux, F., Cyrène sous la monarchie des Battiades (Paris, 1953) 325–7Google Scholar.

7. In this connection it may be noted that Prof. Stucchi, in working over Pernier's publication of the Temple of Apollo at Cyrene, has been able to distinguish five reorganisations or reconstructions of the building between its foundation c. 500 BC and the third century AD, Stucchi, , L'Apollonion di Cirene, Quad-ALibia 3 1954) 55–81Google Scholar.

In fact Stucchi has now written (Architettura (cit. n. 1) 20) that evidence found in the course of the re-erection supported the view that the cella, pronaos, and opisthodomos of Zeus were built earlier than the peristasis and, as a working hypothesis, in the late sixth century.

8. cf. Goodchild p. 41.

9. The absence of any ‘hooding’ or curved undercutting at the crown of the Glyphs has always been held a mark of Roman work. (See Plommer, W. H., Ancient and Classical Architecture (London, 1956) 133.Google Scholar)

It may be noted that Cyrenaica shows a preference for this simple type of triglyph design where the fillets run in the same plane up into the crown of the member, so that what would normally be a taenia is only a register defined by a linear scoring (and that sometimes omitted over the triglyph). There are many Hellenistic-Roman examples to be seen — see Wright, G. R. H. in Kraeling, C. H. (ed.), Ptolemais (Chicago, 1960) 220 and pl. XIV, 1 and 2Google Scholar. J. Durm illustrates the feature (Die Baukunst der Griechen, Darmstadt, 1892, p. 117 fig. 88Google Scholar) by a triglyph from a Cyrene tomb and shows another of similar form from Acrae in Sicily. He notes that structurai examples from early times are not evident (p. 118). However it is quite possible that this design was traditional from earliest days in Cyrenaica.

Qualifying these remarks is the fact that the Zeus Temple triglyph is eroded at the upper margin, thus there may have been a taenia. Pesce illustrates a similar triglyph (BCH pl. LVII A and B, fig. 6) which, although likewise eroded, seems to show the vestiges of a taenia. He places this type of triglyph on the entablature of the Pronaos and Opisthodomos and on the cella walls.

Pesce also illustrates and discusses a good, archaic looking triglyph (p. 328, fig. 3) but this is not now visible on the site.

10. Goodchild, R. G., Cyrene and Apollonia. An Historical Guide (London, 1963) 73Google Scholar; his later account in Kyrene und Apollonia (Zürich, 1971) 149–53Google Scholar does not differ in essentials. By 1975, however, Stucchi, Architettura cit. n. 1, 254, had established that some of the columns of the peristasis thrown down in the Jewish Revolt were in fact re-erected, although this work was abandoned unfinished.

11. cf. n. 9. Pesce considered this fact and referred to such a triglyph as Hadrianic in date — accepting Pernier's chronology for the Temple of Apollo (3rd Temple) for his analogies (v. Pesce (1), cit. n. 1, 352). On Goodchild's analysis the triglyph would be a century earlier. In any event it shows that the peristyle adjacent was standing at the date of its cutting.

12. v. Pesce (1), cit. n. 1, 319.

13. For a similar phenomenon at Tolmeita cf. G. R. H. Wright, cit. n. 9, 219.