Greek Architecture
Archaic Period (page 4)
The Greeks weren't just copying their old
wooden temples for the fun of it though, or just because they
couldn't think of any better ideas. There was a lot of thought behind
each little decision.
For one thing, these are religious buildings, so they have to please
the gods. The Greeks didn't want
to make too many changes in case the gods didn't like it.
For another, the Greeks wanted their temples to express their ideas
about how the world should work. They believed that men
should create order out of
chaos, and that this would make the gods happy. So one reason
for building a temple is to create order out of chaos. You take jumbled
up stones and make them into something beautiful and orderly, with
a rhythm to it like music.
You can see a Greek temple as a kind of picture of music. Think of
the columns as setting the beat : dum, dum, dum, like drums (and the
flutes make a little riff on that). Then
up above the columns are the triglyphs and metopes.
There are always twice as many triglyphs as there are columns, so
they beat a faster beat, and they are smaller so they set a lighter
tone: bim-bim, bim-bim, bim-bim.
Above that is the pediment, the triangle. The pediment has complicated
sculptures inside it, and you can see it as the melody, with swirls
and patterns, telling a story.
At the same time, the way the temple gets more complex as you go up
tends to draw your eyes upward to the sky, where the gods live, reminding
you that this is a sacred place.
To find out more about Archaic Greek architecture, check out these books on Amazon.com or at your library:
Make This Model Greek Temple (Usborne Cut-Out Models Series), by Iain Ashman (1998)
An Ancient Greek Temple, by John Malam, Mark Bergin (2001)
Greek Art and Archaeology (3rd Edition), by John G. Pedley (2002) This is NOT a children's book, but it has a lot of good information and is pretty readable. Plus, the author is really an expert in this field.
The
Archaeology of Greece: An Introduction, by William R. Biers (1996)
Like Pedley's book, this is NOT a children's book, but Biers writes
very clearly and has a lot of good pictures.
Classical architecture
Main Greek architecture page
Main architecture page
