Episode 4: Stone Masonry Perfected: The Greek Temple

Understanding Greek and Roman Technology: From the Catapult to the Parthenon

Dr Stephen Ressler (2013)

Film Review

In ancient Greece, the temple was not only the home of a god but the major structure representing the polis (ie the citizenry under the city-state’s jurisdiction).

Construction of a new temple had to be approved by the popular assembly, at which point a citizen’s committee hired an architektron, who was a combination architect, engineer and master builder.

Temples were usually built on the city’s acropolis (highest point of land) with the entrance facing the rising sun.

Temples had to be set in bedrock, on a foundation up to 15 feet deep. Doric order temples, initially made of wood, were the first Greek temples (10th century BC). Later marble temples featured stylized ornamentation meant to replicate original wood features and reduced the slope of their roofs (to accommodate the increased weight of terracotta tiles).*

Still later Ionian order temples, had thinner columns topped with more ornate capitols decorated with scroll work.

Corinthian columns, appearing during the third century BC, were favored by the Romans.

Ressler has constructed a fascinating model to demonstrate the concept of load bearing and explain how Greek architects addressed this requirement with tabeated** construction. This entailed a series of horizontal beams supported by a regular arrangement of columns. The lower tensile strength of longer marble beams limited the size of Greek temples.

All Greek temples were based standardized mathematical dimensions calculated from the number of columns they used.

*Which replaced thatch used on the earliest temples.

**Trabeated roofs used a prop and lintel system to support the roof load.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/146678/146686