Greek Material Culture

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Article

Atlas in art  

Karim Arafat

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
Atlas is depicted in art from the mid-6th cent. bce, usually with Heracles in the Garden of the Hesperides, notably on the early Classical metope from *Olympia. In Hellenistic and Roman art he supports the globe with great effort. Pausanias notes him on the chest of *Cypselus (5. 18. 4), and the throne of *Amyclae (3.

Article

axones  

Victor Ehrenberg and P. J. Rhodes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
  2. Greek Material Culture
At Athens the laws of *Draco and of *Solon were inscribed on numbered axones; the term kyrbeis (of unknown origin), used of Solon's laws, is thought by some to refer to a different set of objects, but is more probably an alternative name for the same objects. They were probably three- or four-sided wooden pillars, mounted on a vertical axis so that readers could turn them. Probably they could still be read and studied in the 4th cent.; in the time of *Plutarch small fragments survived.

Article

ball games  

Frederick Adam Wright and Antony Spawforth

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
Playing with a ball (σφαῖρα) was at least as old as *Homer (Od. 6. 100, 8. 370). It is shown in Athenian art, notably two late Archaic reliefs, one (Athens 3476) apparently showing a throw-in from the touch-line in a team game, the other (Athens 3477) what looks like a hockey match; a black-figure vase (London B182a) depicts ball-play by piggyback. Sparta was credited with the invention of ball-play (Ath. 1. 14); a Spartan wrote a lost work on the subject (Ath. 1. 15c), and the ephebes of imperial times fielded 14-strong teams of ball-players (sphaireis) in an annual tournament perhaps akin to American football (P. Cartledge and A. Spawforth, Hellenistic and Roman Sparta (1989), 205 ff.). In other Greek cities ball-play was not an important part of athletic training; the sphairistērion of the Hellenistic *gymnasium was probably a boxing-ring, not a ball-ground (so H.

Article

Bassae  

Richard Allan Tomlinson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Material Culture
  3. Greek Myth and Religion
Bassae, in SW Arcadia, near Phigaleia, the site of one of the best-preserved Greek temples. This was dedicated to *Apollo the Helper (Epikourios). *Pausanias (3) says it was the work of *Ictinus, possible (with some local influence) but unprovable. It dates to the latter part of the 5th cent. bce with an interruption due to Spartan occupation of the area during the *Peloponnesian War. The greater part of the temple is in the local limestone, with carved decoration applied in marble. The *orientation, followed also by its predecessor, was towards the north instead of the east, and the early sunlight, instead of entering through the main doorway, was admitted to the adytum through an opening in the eastern side-wall. Ten engaged Ionic columns decorated the side walls of the cella internally, with a single central Corinthian column—one of the earliest of its kind, and one of the most beautiful (see orders)—between the cella and the adytum.

Article

baths and bathing  

Fikret Yegül

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 July 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
  2. Science, Technology, and Medicine
  3. Roman Material Culture

In Homer’s world, bathing in warm water was a reward reserved for heroes. Ordinary Greeks bathed at home or in public baths characterized by circular chambers with hip-baths and rudimentary heating systems. Public bathing as a daily habit, a hygienic, medicinal, recreational, and luxurious experience belonged to the Romans. The origins of Roman baths can be traced in the simpler Greek baths and the bathing facilities of the Greek gymnasium and palaestra, as well as the farm traditions of rural Italy. The earliest Roman baths (balneae), which show the mastery of floor and wall heating, and a planning system based on controlled and graded heating of spaces, emerged in Latium and Campania by the early 2nd century bce. There is little doubt that bathing as an ultimate luxurious experience was epitomized by the imperial thermae first developed in Rome and spread to the provinces. These grand bathing palaces combined exercise, bathing, recreation, and quasi-intellectual activities in vast, park-like precincts, as best exemplified by the Thermae of Caracalla in Rome. The tradition of public bathing and baths passed on to Early Christian, Byzantine, and Medieval Islamic societies across Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean.

Article

Biton, 3rd or 2nd cent. BCE  

Simon Hornblower

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Greek Material Culture

Biton (Βίτων) (3rd or 2nd cent. bce), the author of a small extant work on siege-engines, Κατασκευαὶ πολεμικῶν ὀργάνων καὶ καταπαλτικῶν (‘The Construction of War-machines and Catapults’; see artillery; siegecraft), and of a lost work on *optics.

Article

Boethus (1–2), metalworkers of Chalcedon, 2nd cent. BCE  

Andrew F. Stewart

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
Members of a family of artisans alternating the names Boethus and Athenaeon. Made portraits at *Lindus and *Delos between 184 and 126, a bronze *herm found in a ship wrecked off Mahdia in Tunisia (c.100), and a child strangling a goose (Plin. HN 34. 84), perhaps preserved in copy; also expensive couches and silver tableware. A bronze statue of Agon (Eros Enagonios) found in the Mahdia wreck may go with the herm. Not to be confused with either the sculptor (?) of the Elgin throne (Malibu, Getty Mus.) or Boethus son of Apollodorus of Carthage, known from a single signature from *Ephesus.

Article

books, Greek and Roman  

H. Maehler

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Greek Material Culture
  3. Latin Literature
  4. Roman Material Culture
Books existed in *Egypt long before they came into use in Greece. Systems of writing had been invented and developed for administrative purposes in both Egypt and *Mesopotamia by c.3000 bce. While the Sumerians (see sumerian) and Babylonians used clay tablets for their *cuneiform scripts, the Egyptians used papyrus. A blank sheet of papyrus was found in the tomb of the vizier Hemaka in Saqqara of c.3000 bce. The oldest surviving inscribed papyrus texts are the temple accounts of Abusir of c.2450 bce. A number of fine statues of seated scribes of the same period suggests that this profession was already well established and that writing had been practised for centuries, long enough for the ‘hieratic’ script to develop through the adaptation of hieroglyphs to the use of reed-brush and papyrus. The hieroglyph for ‘book-roll’ is first attested in the first dynasty (c.

Article

Bouleuterion  

Malcolm Bell, III

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
27 August 2020
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
The bouleuterion housed the boule or council of a Greek polis in the form of a roofed meeting space. Most, if not all, cities had one; the remains of more than fifty buildings are extant. Although there were also bouleuteria in large sanctuaries and federal capitals, the major examples are urban. Bouleuteria were almost always located near a city’s agora. Over time their architects designed increasingly unobstructed interior spaces.Construction of dedicated bouleuteria began in the late archaic period; earlier councils may have met in porticoes or other buildings. Councils were generally composed of 100–500 bouletai and required a capacious meeting place; the bouleuterion became one of a city’s largest secular buildings. In the 5th and 4th centuries bce, the usual form was a hypostyle hall with symmetrically spaced interior columns, level floors, and seating on benches, as at Argos and Athens. Sloping stone seating was introduced early in the Hellenistic era and became standard; both rectilinear and curvilinear versions are known, the latter much more common. Secondary meeting spaces for committees of prytaneis or probouloi were sometimes adjacent.

Article

boxing  

Robert Leslie Howland and Stephen Instone

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture

In Greek and Roman boxing there was no classification of competitors by weight and so the advantage was generally with the heavier man.

The Greeks bound leather thongs (ἱμάντες) round their wrists and knuckles, to protect them rather than to increase the severity of the blow. Sometimes the fingers, or some of them, were left free, though this may have been the practice in the *pankration rather than specifically boxing. For training they used softer padded gloves (σφαῖραι). Body-blows were not generally used and the face was always the principal target.

The Romans used the caestus, a glove weighted with pieces of iron and having metal spikes placed round the knuckles, and boxing was often more of a gladiatorial show than an athletic sport. See agōnes; athletics; gladiators.

Article

Brauron  

Robin Osborne

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Material Culture
  3. Greek Myth and Religion
Brauron, site of a sanctuary of *Artemis on the east coast of *Attica at the mouth of the river Erasinos. It is included in *Philochorus' list of twelve townships united by *Theseus (FGrH 328 F 94). Archaeological evidence indicates human presence in the area of the sanctuary and the acropolis above it from neolithic times onwards, and there is an important late Helladic cemetery nearby. In the sanctuary itself there is a continuous tradition from protogeometric on, with a temple built in the 6th cent. (Phot. Lexicon, entry under Βραυρώνια) and an architecturally innovative pi-shaped *stoa with dining-rooms built in the later part of the 5th cent. Flooding in the early 3rd cent. bce led to the abandonment of the site. Some traditions associate the Pisistratids (see pisistratus; hippias(1); *Hipparchus (1)) with Brauron (Phot., as above), or with the local residential centre called Philaidai which lay a short distance inland from the sanctuary (Pl. Hipparch.

Article

building materials, Greek  

Richard Allan Tomlinson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
In its developed stages Greek *architecture was based on the use of finely dressed stone masonry, predominantly limestone. Where available either locally or transported, white *marble was used for the finest structures. The coloured marbles favoured in the late bronze age were not used. Transport costs were a major factor in the availability of stone: local stone would often be used as an economy and this occasionally tends to the use of abnormal materials such as trachite at *Pergamum. In major buildings the dressed blocks were regularly fastened with clamps and dowels of wood or metal, but without mortar; and although exceptionally almost entire buildings might be of marble, including ceilings of quite large span (e.g. the *Propylaea at Athens), considerations of cost frequently meant that the less conspicuous parts were built in local limestone. See quarries. Inferior materials were regularly surfaced with fine marble stucco to resemble masonry, but the use of fine marble veneer was a Hellenistic innovation, as was the reintroduction of coloured and patterned marbles (other than grey). In some Hellenistic buildings such decorative stone facings were imitated in painted plaster and all but the best materials were plastered on the interior often to receive painted decoration (see painting (techniques); painting, greek).

Article

Buthrotum  

David R. Hernandez

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Material Culture: Bronze Age
  3. Greek Material Culture
Buthrotum (Bouthrotos; modern Butrint in southern Albania) was a seaport occupying a headland on the coast of Epirus in ancient NW Greece. Described as a “little Troy” in Vergil’s Aeneid, the city was said to have been founded by Helenus after the sack of Troy. Established by the end of 7th century bce, Buthrotum served as an emporium and enclave of Corcyra during the Archaic and Classical periods. Occupying a fortified acropolis with a Doric temple, evidently dedicated to Athena Polias, the city was identified as a polis c. 500 bce. An Epirote city of the Chaones during the Hellenistic period, it established a sanctuary of Asclepius with a theatre, inscribed with over 200 manumission decrees, and an agora. After 167 bce, Buthrotum was the capital of the koinon of the Prasaiboi. In the Late Republic, Titus Pomponius Atticus and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa were patrons of the city, the former owning a lucrative and attractive villa praised by Cicero. Colonised by Rome in July 44 bce under a plan devised by Julius Caesar, Buthrotum was refounded by Augustus as colonia Augusta Buthrotum.

Article

Calamis, Greek sculptor  

Gisela M. A. Richter and Antony Spawforth

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
Active during the second quarter of the 5th cent. bce, to be distinguished from a second Calamis, sculptor and silversmith, working after c.400 bce, perhaps his grandson. He worked in marble, bronze, and gold and ivory. His style was distinguished for its grace and refinement, and he was famous for his statues of horses. Pausanias (9. 16. 1) states that he made a statue of *Zeus*Ammon for *Pindar, and a ram-bearing *Hermes for *Tanagra (9. 22. 1); the latter is reproduced on Roman coins of that city. His most ambitious work was a colossal bronze statue of Apollo, 30 cubits (15 m.: 50 ft.) high, which he made for Apollonia Pontica (Plin. HN 34. 39; Strabo 7. 319). It is perhaps reproduced on silver coins of that city. His Sosandra was praised by *Lucian (Eikones 6) for the simple and orderly arrangement of its drapery. His Apollo Alexikakos, which stood in the *Ceramicus of Athens (Paus.

Article

Calauria  

D. Graham J. Shipley

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Material Culture
Calauria (now Póros), a Saronic island (23 sq. km.: 9 sq. mi.) adjacent to the Argolid, and its polis. The town lay near the island's summit (283 m.: 928 ft.); its remains, chiefly Hellenistic, include a probable heroon (see hero-cult) of *Demosthenes (2), who killed himself here.The sanctuary of *Poseidon has Mycenaean tombs, 8th-cent. and later dedications, and cult buildings of c.520–320 bce. It was the focus of the Calaurian *amphictiony, whose members included Hermione, *Epidaurus, *Aegina, *Athens, and Boeotian *Orchomenus (1). The inclusion of Nauplia and Cynurian Prasiae, neither of them autonomous after c.650, implies an early foundation date. Rather than a military, political, or economic union, the amphictiony was probably a cultic association of mainly local, non-Dorian towns: the sanctuary's material apogee is not matched by any known political activity. By *Strabo's time the sanctuary had been sacked by Cilician pirates (see piracy) and the amphictiony no longer existed.

Article

Callicrates (1), Athenian architect, 5th cent. BCE  

Richard Allan Tomlinson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture

Athenian *architect of the 5th cent. bce, responsible for work at the Nike sanctuary and the central long wall to the Piraeus (see athens, topography). He was associated with *Ictinus (see parthenon).

Article

Callimachus (2), Greek sculptor, fl. c. 430–400 BCE  

Andrew F. Stewart

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
He made a golden lamp for the *Erechtheum, a set of bronze Laconian dancers, and a *Hera for *Plataea, and allegedly invented the Corinthian capital (Vitr. 4. 1. 9–10). He may also have invented the running drill (cf. Paus. 1. 26. 6–7), but over-elaboration spoiled his work (Plin. HN 34.

Article

Callipolis  

W. M. Murray

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Material Culture

Callipolis (also Callion), main city of the Aetolian tribe Callieis (a branch of the Ophiones), located in eastern *Aetolia on the upper Mournos river. Mentioned by *Thucydides (2) (3. 96. 3) in the 5th cent., the Callieis in the 4th cent. fortified their city, which prospered until it was attacked and destroyed by the Gauls (see Galatia) in 279 bce (Paus. 10. 22. 2–4). Excavations at modern Palaiokastro, near Velouchovo, have revealed clear evidence for the city's wealth and for its destruction. An interesting cache of clay seals from the destroyed archives attests to the diplomatic and business connections of Callipolis before its destruction.

Article

Camarina  

Arthur Geoffrey Woodhead and R. J. A. Wilson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Material Culture
A Syracusan (see syracuse) colony founded c.599 bce at the mouth of the river Hipparis in southern Sicily, near modern Scoglitti. Its mid-6th cent. fortifications enclose a vast area of 145 ha. (358 acres), far larger than other Syracusan colonies. In constant dispute with the Syracusans, it was destroyed by them in 533 and again c.484 after refoundation by *Hippocrates (1) of Gela. Established once more in 461 by the Geloans, it supported the anti-Syracusan coalition in 427–4, but decided for Syracuse after 415 (cf. Thuc. 6. 75–88). Abandoned by *Dionysius (1) I in 405, but reoccupied from 396, it revived in the period of *Timoleon; several houses of this period have been uncovered. Extensive excavations since 1971 have transformed our knowledge of the topography of the city and its cemeteries. Estimates from the latter suggest that the 6th-cent. population was about 16,000. The agora with two stoas lay at the west end of the city overlooking the sea, and a 5th cent. temple of Athena is known at the summit of the hill near the centre of the city. A cache of over 140 inscribed lead sheets found in this temple in 1987 indicates that after the 461 refoundation the population was divided into three tribes, subdivided into at least fourteen *phratries.

Article

caryatides  

Andrew F. Stewart

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
A Greek term for column-shafts carved in the form of draped women; male equivalents were called Atlantides (see atlas). Apparently named after Caryae in *Laconia, where virgins danced to *Artemis Caryatis (Pratin. Lyr. 4; Paus. 3. 10. 7). Of near-eastern derivation (e.g. Tell Halaf), they appear in Greece around 550 bce, and are popular on late Archaic treasuries at *Delphi; the most famous are those of the Athenian *Erechtheum. The Erechtheum accounts, however, simply call them korai; in this case, perhaps, they were civic versions of the private korē dedications of the past. Copies of the Erechtheum caryatids embellished the *forum Augustum, the *Pantheon, and Hadrian's villa at *Tibur. Vitruvius (1. 1. 5) calls them ‘images of eternal servitude’, and connects them with Caryae's punishment for *Medism in the *Persian Wars, but since the type is unquestionably earlier and Caryae was destroyed much later (370; 222 bce), this must be an aition (explanation) invented after the fact (see K.