(piano music)
- [Voiceover] At the top of the Acropolis
in Athens adjacent to the Parthenon,
the largest building, is a small complex,
an elegant building called the Erechtheion.
- [Voiceover] This is an Ionic temple,
in contrast to the Parthenon, which is largely Doric.
We notice the Ionic features immediately,
the columns are more slender, there's a decorative
detail and fineness, and the scroll shapes
that we associate with the Ionic order in the capitals.
- [Voiceover] We're approaching the Erechtheion
from the east side, and from this angle
the building looks fairly traditional.
We see six columns, the rightmost of which
is a reconstruction.
Now originally, all of the Ionic columns
on this temple were even more decorative.
There was glass inlaid, there was gold
around the bases and in the capitals.
It must have been a glorious sight.
- [Voiceover] We could refer to this building
not as the Erechtheion, but instead
as the temple to Athena Polias,
that is Athena as the protector goddess
of the city of Athens.
On this east end was a room that held
the ancient statue of Athena that was said
to have dropped from the heavens,
and it was made of olive wood,
it was very simple, it was nothing like
the statue just across the way
sculpted by Phidias.
So you have this real contrast because with the
Erechtheion we have this highly decorative building
that's very elegant, but which housed
a very severe and plain statue of Athena,
but across the way in the severe, Doric temple
of the Parthenon we had an enormous,
highly decorative sculpture of Athena.
- [Voiceover] If you were to enter into the east side
you would walk into a relatively shallow cellar,
this room that would have been the shrine
to this olive wood sculpture of Athena,
but this is a much more complicated
building than that.
- [Voiceover] Right, because normally in a Greek
temple you expect to see symmetry.
- [Voiceover] In this case, the earth drops down
and the building itself is sandwiched
into a very tight space between the foundation
of the old temple to Athena that the Persians
had destroyed and the sheer cliff
at the edge of the Acropolis, and yet
the architect invented a very elegant solution.
Instead of a temple that has six columns
on both the east and the west, what the architect
has done is just swing the back colonnade
around to the north.
If we walk down a set of stairs, that brings
us to an area dedicated to Zeus
and much of the great north porch.
So we've just walked down a narrow, steep flight
of stairs, but originally there was a broad staircase
that brought us down to a precinct
associated with Zeus.
He was the divine judge of a contest
between a god and a goddess to see
who could be the patron of the city of Athens.
- [Voiceover] And in a contest judged
by the earthly king, Erechtheion.
- [Voiceover] The mythic figure.
- [Voiceover] Hence the name of this temple,
the Erechtheion.
Erechtheus asked each god to offer a gift
to the people of Athens, and he would be
the earthly judge.
Athena offers an olive tree, a symbol of peace,
of fertility, and just here on the west side
was the location of that tree offered by Athena.
- [Voiceover] In fact, the modern Athenians
have replanted that tree in that spot,
and for Poseidon's part, he took his trident
and struck a rock and from it came
a spring of salt water, he is the ruler of the seas.
In fact, if you look at the north porch
of the Erechtheion, you can see that in the roof
there's a hole, there's a window,
and according to tradition this is where
his trident came down from the sky
and struck the bedrock from which
the spring of saltwater came.
If you look at the base of the porch,
you can see that there's some missing stone
which allows you to see the actual mark
in the bedrock.
So this temple, the Erechtheion,
was a complicated place.
It had to hold not only the sculpture
to Athena, but also these preexisting shrines.
- [Voiceover] The building is an elegant solution
for the problem of a site
that is serving multiple functions.
- [Voiceover] So the architectural problem
was a complex one.
How do you build a building in a constrained space
between an important ancient site
that is being commemorated, the old temple
to Athena, the side of the cliff,
on multiple levels, and for multiple purposes?
- [Voiceover] When we look up at the north side,
we can see that the architect used a blue marble
in the freeze area, and that sculpture would
have been in Pentelic marble, which was whitish
or cream colored and would have been just
beautifully offset against that blue marble.
- [Voiceover] In fact, the entablature of the
north porch is incredibly detailed,
and because the entablature is so high
on columns that are much higher than on
the other sides, you have a continuity
that's created by the carving
that surround this building that allow
the building to feel unified.
- [Voiceover] But the real treat that everyone
comes to see is the so-called porch
of the maidens on the south side.
- [Voiceover] Let's go take a look.
As we walk around, let's stop here on the west side
of the building because you have a clear view
of the different levels.
On the left you see the very tall north porch,
on the right the porch of the maidens,
but in between you see engaged or half columns,
and those columns allow for a kind
of symmetry with the east porch.
- [Voiceover] So we're standing now with our back
to the Parthenon looking at the south side
of the Erechtheion at the glorious porch
of the maidens with its famous six caryatids.
Six female figures who seem to be holding
up the porch, and reminiscent of Kore figures
from the Archaic period.
- [Voiceover] They have taken the place of columns
and they make explicit the relationship
between the vertical column and the human body.
- [Voiceover] In Greek architecture, we have
a post and lintel system, verticals are posts
and lintels are horizontal members that
go across, and the vertical elements, the columns,
correspond in a way to the verticality
of the human body.
- [Voiceover] This isn't the first time that there
have been caryatids in Greek architecture.
The Siphnian treasury at Delphi incorporated
female figures, but that was Archaic,
and here we have the human body
and the drapery handled in the
high classical manner.
- [Voiceover] Most obviously, you can see
the contrapposto pose, you see their knees
pressing through their drapery,
the shift in their hips, the sense of movement
here, but that sense of movement is balanced
by a pull of vertical lines in their drapery
that gives them at the same time
a sense of stability so we don't feel
like the porch is going to fall down.
- [Voiceover] Especially since their locked legs,
not their free legs, but the legs where
the drapery completely hides the anatomy
of the leg, that is so columnar,
and that's towards the outside,
creating a sense of stability.
- [Voiceover] And confounding the human body
with a column.
- [Voiceover] I love how they seem to be
in procession, they're certainly looking
towards the Parthenon.
- [Voiceover] They remind me of the panathenaic
procession, that annual religious procession
where the Athenians would come up to the Acropolis
and present a new woven garment to the olive wood
statue of Athena that was housed here.
- [Voiceover] Now we don't know
who these figures are.
There have been lots of theories.
In fact, the ancient Roman architect
and theoretician, Vitruvius, suggested they
represented Greek people that had sided
with the enemy, the Persians, during the Persian war
and had been captured by the Athenians.
The men had been killed, the women enslaved
and forced to where their royal garments
in expression of their lasting humiliation.
- [Voiceover] But really we don't know.
- [Voiceover] We have no idea.
- [Voiceover] We do know that their elegance
matches its Ionic order, the decorative moldings,
the colored glass and stone that was used here,
the effect must have been very rich
and very different from what we see today.
- [Voiceover] But we talked about the symmetry
between the east porch of the building
and the half columns on the west side.
Here there's a symmetry between the six caryatids
on the south porch and the six columns
on the north porch.
So although we have a building
that is very disparate.
- [Voiceover] That enclosed the shrines
of different Greek gods and goddesses.
- [Voiceover] This building beautifully expresses
the ability of Greek architects during
the high classical period to unify
disparate purposes in a complex terrain.
(piano music)