the stoa poikile - The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

THE STOA POIKILE 253:
and the interior Ionic columns as not Doric; he may have wanted to tie the back of the
exterior order to the interior columns by more than the ceiling beams which ran
between them; he may have wished to have the spectator who walked down that aisle
look up on one side to an Ionic capital and on the other to an Ionic moulding, as
he did if he walked between Ionic column and back wall.
On the technical side we note that the top surface of these fragments with its
cutting 0.19 m. wide and 0.013 m. deep at the back suggests that wooden beams
rested on it. I am reminded by Oscar Broneer that the back of the frieze blocks of
the South Stoa at Corinth 32 had a cutting on top to allow for the insertion of a thin
strip of wood which would take care of the sagging of the wooden ceiling beams set
on it. The ceiling beams and interbeams here may have rested on the epistyle rather
than on the frieze, as is in fact common in most stoai,33 and if so a very thin piece of
wood may have crowned the cyma reversa and on that wood the wooden beams or
rafters might have rested.
Innovator we have seen this man to be in several respects already (above, pp.
243, 244, 250-251), and innovator he most certainly was in creating this moulding.
Compared to the proportions of late 6th century cyma reversas this is strikingly deep
for its height; it is not nearly so close to earlier cyma reversa profiles as were those
created by the architects of the Parthenon and Propylaia and Erechtheion some time
later. It was devised by our architect quite independently and for a quite new purpose.
Not only are the proportions unparalleled for many years to come but a new element
has been added at the base of the profile, a strongly projecting base fillet. We now know
that this element which we once called " Periklean base fillet " because it seemed to
have been invented for the Periklean buildings of Athens had been used if not actually
introduced a decade or so earlier by the designer of the building to which these
fragments belong.
It is at least worth recalling that in another ten to fifteen years this moulding,
with its profile refined and a crowning fascia added, is used not only to crown the
Doric epistyle of the pronaos of both Hephaisteion and Temple of Poseidon at
Sounion,34 under the sculptured frieze, but also for the epistyle backer across the
peristyle and along the sides as far as the pronaos columns. What connection, if any,
our architect had with the " Theseion architect " merits consideration.
IDENTIFICATION
These fragments appear to belong to a building of the Doric order (Fig. 6) with
interior Ionic columns, with decorated walls (presumably the interior faces of them),
32 Corinth, I, iv, The South Stoa, Princeton, 1954, p. 35, figs. 12, 13, Frontispiece.
33 Note, most conveniently, the Stoa of Attalos in the Athenian Agora as rebuilt following
the evidence of the original building, The Stoa of Attalos II in Athens (Picture Book, No. 2),
Princeton, 1959, figs. 6, 7, 28, 30.
34 P.G.M., p. 59, pl. XXVII, 2, 3.