DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.748#0118
INVESTIGATIONS AT ASSOS, 1881. IOI
the fifth century b. c. amply accounts for the appearance of
primitive traits in the temple of Assos at a time when the
architecture of Attica had reached its full development. The
Asiatic provinces, which for six decades had suffered from
Lydian and Persian occupation, bore in the year 475 b. c. a
somewhat similar artistic relation to European Greece to that
which the eastern shores of the Adriatic bore to the western
during the later ages of the Roman Empire. It was not to
be expected that the full advance displayed in the temple of
^Egina, or the Theseion, should be shared by contemporaneous
buildings in Mysia.
Even from this point of view, however, the temple of Assos
must be classed as one of the more primitive examples of that
phase of the Doric style, designated by Semper as the " fully
developed archaic." The only other peripteral temples in
which the epinaos is known to have been omitted are those
extremely ancient monuments at Selinus, designated as the
temples C, D, and S, and the fragmentary remains near Cadac-
chio upon the island of Corfu. The epinaos, unknown in the
primitive temple in antis, seems to have had no purpose con-
nected with the service of the temple, there being no entrance
through it to the naos, so that its introduction may be regarded
as a concession made to the formal symmetry of the edifice at
a time when the general arrangement of plan was still under-
going development.
The constructive character of the temple of Assos and the
irregularity of its details show that the building antedates
the time when the entire fane, down to the most inconsider-
able members, was laid out according to a systematized canon.
The individual variations, noticed in its different parts, seldom
occur in later buildings, but are sufficiently common in archaic
temples. The variation of 0.09 metre in the lower diameters
of the columns of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia is pro-
the fifth century b. c. amply accounts for the appearance of
primitive traits in the temple of Assos at a time when the
architecture of Attica had reached its full development. The
Asiatic provinces, which for six decades had suffered from
Lydian and Persian occupation, bore in the year 475 b. c. a
somewhat similar artistic relation to European Greece to that
which the eastern shores of the Adriatic bore to the western
during the later ages of the Roman Empire. It was not to
be expected that the full advance displayed in the temple of
^Egina, or the Theseion, should be shared by contemporaneous
buildings in Mysia.
Even from this point of view, however, the temple of Assos
must be classed as one of the more primitive examples of that
phase of the Doric style, designated by Semper as the " fully
developed archaic." The only other peripteral temples in
which the epinaos is known to have been omitted are those
extremely ancient monuments at Selinus, designated as the
temples C, D, and S, and the fragmentary remains near Cadac-
chio upon the island of Corfu. The epinaos, unknown in the
primitive temple in antis, seems to have had no purpose con-
nected with the service of the temple, there being no entrance
through it to the naos, so that its introduction may be regarded
as a concession made to the formal symmetry of the edifice at
a time when the general arrangement of plan was still under-
going development.
The constructive character of the temple of Assos and the
irregularity of its details show that the building antedates
the time when the entire fane, down to the most inconsider-
able members, was laid out according to a systematized canon.
The individual variations, noticed in its different parts, seldom
occur in later buildings, but are sufficiently common in archaic
temples. The variation of 0.09 metre in the lower diameters
of the columns of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia is pro-