Week 8- Art in Archaic Greece (II); the Persian Wars

Readings: Dunstan, chapters 7 and 8.

Greek architecture during the Archaic period

·        Increased wealth in the 7th century BC.

·        The cities demonstrated their wealth and power in temple building.

·        New architectural forms & decoration of the temples encouraged imaginative and ambitious forms.

·        Essentially cult buildings.

·        The early temple: elongated plan, cult statue at the back, row of central pillar supports, peristyle (outer colonnade).

·        Simple architecture (well-laid rubble, mud brick, etc).

·        700 BC: fired-clay roof tiles (lower pitched roof).

·        Still nothing in finished stone.

Influence from Egypt

·        From about 650 on, observation of the monumental stone buildings of Egypt.

·        Replacement of wooden parts with stone equivalents.

·        The stone “orders” of architecture: they defined the pattern of the columnar facades and upperworks.

The Doric order

·        Invented in the second half of the 7th century (in Corinth?).

·        Simple, baseless columns, spreading capitals, triglyph-metope (alternating vertically ridged and plain blocks) frieze above the columns

·        Remained the favorite order of the Greek mainland and western colonies.

·        Example of Thermum.

The Ionic order

·        Evolved later, in eastern Greece.

·        600 BC, at Smyrna, the first known example.

·        Capitals elaborately carved in floral hoops.

The Archaic period (c. 750–500 BC)

·        About 750 BC: period of consolidation of the diverse influences.

·        Age of tyrants: their courts became the significant cultural centers.

·        Increase in the demand for art of all kinds.

·        Classical Doric and Ionic orders fully established largely standardized.

·        Central and southern Greek cities: Doric temples.

·        Heavy forms, with plump columns and capitals and brightly colored upperworks.

·        Eastern Greece: Ionic order, slower to determine its forms.

·        Vertically springing volutes, spiral ornaments.

·        The Ionic order always more ornate and less stereotyped than the Doric.

Greek Sculpture

Five stages of development (900 BC – 146 BC).

• Geometric period (900-800).
• Orientalizing period (800-650).
• Archaic period (650-480).
• Classical period (480-330).
• Hellenistic period (330-146 and later under the Romans).

Our sources

• Not more than a few dozens statues survive.
• Knowledge of the history of Greek sculpture depends on these and on the architectural sculptures.
• Also, small bronzes and terra-cottas.
• Great bulk of evidence: Roman copies.
• Late literary evidence.

The Geometric period

• 9th century BC: Greece was resettling down.
• Invaders from the north influenced Greek artistic style.
• Pottery, terra-cottas sculptures, small bronzes.
• Popular themes: birds and other animals, especially horses.
• Men were not so successfully rendered.

The Orientalizing period

• Technical and stylistic influences from the East.
• 700 BC molds to mass-produce clay relief plaques.
• Stereotyped Oriental convention for figure representation.
• Frontal pose with stiff patterned hair and drapery rendered in a strictly decorative manner (Daedalic style)
• End of the development of naturalism and freedom in miniature sculptures.
• Became representative of major Greek sculpture in the mid-7th century BC.

Second Eastern influence

• 640 BC: second Eastern influence.
• Greeks impressed with the monumentality of Egyptian statuary.
• They learned the techniques of handling the harder stone.
• The idiom and proportions were at first still Daedalic.
• 630 BC freestanding figures of naked men owing in proportion and details of pose to the common Egyptian standing figures.
• Marble youths (kouroi).
• Dedications in sanctuaries, grave markers.

The Archaic period

• The kouroi: the most representative examples of Archaic sculpture.
• Proportions based on theory rather than observation.
• But growing awareness of natural forms & technical mastery led to greater realism.
• Around 480 BC, recognition of the organic structure of the body.

The kore

• The female counterpart of the kouros.
• Sculptors preoccupied with proportion and pattern.
• Development of decorative schemes for the dresse and the mantle.
• These patterns suggest nature rather than copy it.
• Most stood as dedications in sanctuaries.

Sculpture in architecture

• The determining factor: its position on the building.
• Doric temple: metope frieze.
• Above the frieze, the pediments: awkward field—a long, low triangle.
• Early temple pediments:
  • Separate groups of different sizes (Corcyra)
  • Monster bodies to fill the shallow corners (Athens).
  • Later, use of fighting groups with falling and fallen bodies (Athens, Aegina).
• To meet these difficulties, development of a better understanding of the dynamics of the human body.

The Persian Wars

Historical sources - Herodotus

• Our main source about this conflict.
• Our knowledge almost exclusively from Greek sources.
• Herodotus of Halicarnassus (middle of the 5th century BC), traveled all over the Mediterranean and beyond.
• He collected information over the Persian Wars (The Histories).
• Not much critical control: truth, exaggerations, political propaganda.

Thucydides and others

• Thucydides: only limited information, from where Herodotus ends until the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC.
• Persian War in Book 1.
• Later writers (whose works have not survived complete):
  • Ephorus (4th century BC) wrote a universal history book.
  • Diodorus Siculus (1st century AD): book of history since the beginning of time.
  • Persian source in Greek literature: Ctesias of Cnedus (4th century BC).
• Also:
  • 2nd century AD Plutarch's biographies.
  • Pausanias the Geographer (2^nd century AD).

The First Persian War

Croesus, 560-546

• The Persian Wars begin with the Ionian Revolt.
• This history begins with Croesus, king of Lydia.
• He had conquered most of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, but was still on fairly good terms with them.
• But the Persians came.

Cyrus the Great

• The greatest empire that the ancient world had yet seen.
• Assyria conquered by the Medes, And later the Persians had conquered Media.
• One of the greatest of the Persian kings: Cyrus (d. 530).
• Cyrus conquered Media and Lydia, becoming the ruler of the Ionian Greeks.
• The Persians drafted Greeks into their armies, levied heavy tribute, garrisoned Persian troops in the Greek cities, and interfered in the local governments.
• Greeks revolted: Cyrus conquered the Greek cities directly.
• The Greeks continued to be unruly subjects until the rule of Darius I.

The Ionian revolt

• The opportunist tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, began a democratic rebellion in 499 BC.
• He went to the Greek mainland for support and received help from Athens (20 ships) and Eretria.
• In 498 BC, the Athenians conquered, burned Sardis and the Persians were driven out of Asia Minor.
• The Persians come back in full force:  end of the rebellion (493 BC).

The Persian invasion of Thrace and Macedonia (492)

• Darius desired that Athens be punished.
• Hippias, the former tyrant of Athens, influenced him too.
• Darius assembled an enormous army, intending to crush the Greeks forever.
• He also let it be known that anyone who cooperated with Persia would be spared.
• Mardonius, Darius' son-in-law, invaded Thrace and Macedon in 492.
• Thrace reorganized as a satrapy, Macedon reduced to a client state.
• Athens, foreseeing an attack, tried vainly to gain allies, except the reluctant Spartans.
• The Persian fleet is damaged by a storm.

The First Persian invasion of Greece (490)

• Darius gathered another Persian expeditionary force to punish Attica and Eretria.
• Herodotus: 600 triremes.
• Land forces: 200,000-600,000 troops, depending of the sources.
• The Persian force sailed from Samos to Naxos, spread across the Cyclades, and went to Eretria.
• Eretria was razed.
• Hippias among the invading army.

Miltiades

• The Greek Miltiades, former tyrant of Chersonese, had been Darius’ vassal and soldier.
• He fled his country and joined the Athenians.
• He was elected to serve as one of the 10 generals for 490 BC.
• He knew the Persian tactics.

The Battle of Marathon

• The Persian arrived in Attica (near Marathon).
• Spartans delayed by a religious celebration.
• Athens’ only allies: the Plataeans (1000 hoplites).
• 9,000-10,000 Athenian soldiers according to the ancient sources.
• Persians: 50,000-60,000? 20,000?
• Miltiades convinced of the superiority of  the Greek hoplites in close combat.
• The Athenians attacked the Persian army and encircled it.
• 6,400 Persian dead, against 192 Athenian and 11 Plataean dead (Herodotus).

Impact of Marathon

• A very famous victory.
• Athenians prestige.
• A revelation to the Greeks: they could resist.
• Many city-states joined with the Athenians and Spartans.
• For the Persians, Marathon was the first defeat for several generations.
• The Persians had found themselves bested on land and sea by Athens.