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[German version] The Theatre of Pompey, Rome's first stone theatre, interrupted a long sequence of predominantly wooden theatres which had previously been built temporarily for reasons of public safety in Rome and throughout Italy (Amphitheatre; Theatre II.); it was begun by the triumvir Pompeius [I 3] after his triumph (in 61 BC) and dedicated with lavish games in 55 BC, the second year of his consulship. The gigantic complex on the western part of the Field of Mars (Campus Martius) outside the c…

(κλίμαξ/ klímax, Latin scalae, plural). [German version] I. Ancient Orient and Egypt Stairways were installed to overcome differences in height, but in the form of monumental constructs, they also created distance between buildings and people. There is evidence from the Ancient Orient of stairways ranging from a few steps between street level and a house or stairs inside houses and palaces, through monumental staircases in temples and palaces to stairways in funerary architecture. The materials used were dr…

[German version] (αὐλή; aulḗ) In Homer (Od. 14,5) the enclosed, light courtyard of a  house. Since the 7th cent. BC, the aule is a central part of the Greek courtyard house, where the multi-room house is grouped around the aule, which can be used agriculturally, for example as stables. The development of the courtyard house marks an important point in the development of Greek house architecture; it displaces the until that time usual form of the one-room house (megaron, oval and apsidal house). The aule was usually paved; from classical times, it is present in nearly all houses…

[German version] ('crematorium'). An architectural cremation place for Roman rulers, of which often only an altar remains. The best-known example is the Ustrinum of Augustus on the Field of Mars in Rome (Campus Martius; Roma III.) near the Mausoleum Augusti; Strabo (5,3,8), describes it as lavishly built and preserved, after the act of cremation, as a monument. Remains of other ustrina on the Field of Mars are assigned to the emperors Hadrianus, Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius. Höcker, Christoph (Kissing) Bibliography A. Danti, s. v. Arae Consecrationis, LTUR 1, 1993, 75 f.  H. …

[German version] Passed down in Vitruvius [1. s.v. l.], an architectural technical term, on many occasions there also designated as lacunaria (pl.), for the sunken panels that decorated the ceiling between wooden beams crossing one another ( Roofing), the Greek equivalent being phátnōma, gastḗr, kaláthōsis [2. 45-52 with additional terms for details of the lacunar]. Lacunaria were as a rule three-dimensionally recessed and decorated with paintings or reliefs (mostly ornamental). In the temple or columned building, the place where they were first app…

[German version] Wall decoration with a structure imitating architecture misleadingly described in Vitruvius (7,5) as stucco facing in the sense of the 1st Pompeian style ( Stucco;  Wall paintings); as an archaeological technical term incrustation (from Latin   crustae sc. marmoreae, Greek πλάκωσις/ plákōsis) in contrast describes solely the interior facing of walls of lesser material with marble slabs (however, the relationship of this ‘genuine’ incrustation to the 1st Pompeian style which imitates incrustation and therefore is frequen…

[German version] (πνύξ/ pnýx). Conspicious large hill built with houses in the urban area of Athens to the west of the Acropolis (Athens II. 3, Hill of the Muses). From the late 6th century BC this was the place of the people's assembly (Ekklesia). Initially they held sessions on a gently sloping piece of ground following a natural semi-circle, which was almost undeveloped; the only structure was a rostrum (βῆμα/ bêma). In the late 5th century BC the whole site was architecturally shaped and in the process turned through c. 180°. The lavishly and representatively built orchestra-sha…

[German version] Distinct  ornamentation in the decorative canon of Ionic architecture, in modern architectural terminology also known as the ‘Ionian  kymation’: a profiled ledge with an arched cross section whose relief or painted ornamentation consisted of an alternation of oval leaves and lancet-shaped spandrel tips and which often concludes at the lower end with pearl staff (astragal) corresponding to the rhythm of the egg-and-dart moulding. Apart from decorating the  epistylion or the  frieze…

[German version] According to Varro (Ling. 5,161) and Vitruvius (6,3,1f.) the customary formation of the roof opening of all types of the  atrium in the Roman  house. The funnel-shaped roof surfaces of the compluvium, which slope inward, conduct rainwater into the  impluvium, a basin at the atrium's centre. In the older displuvium the roof surfaces slanted outwards. Höcker, Christoph (Kissing) Bibliography E. M. Evans, The Atrium Complex in the Houses of Pompeii, 1980 R. Förtsch, Arch. Komm. zu den Villenbriefen des jüngeren Plinius, 1993, 30-31.

[German version] Ancient technical term related to  building technology (IG VII 3073, 121; 142). In Greek stone block construction, anathyrosis refers to the partial removal of material from contact surfaces between two stone blocks or column sections (usually by picking). By this minimization of the contact zone between two construction elements, not visible from the outside, their fit could be improved; viewed from the outside, the joints formed a network of superfine lines. The disadvantage of the anathyrosis is an increased pressure on the reduced bearing surfaces, w…

[German version] Architectural term recorded in Vitruvius (3,2,6; 3,8-9), used to label one of the forms of temple listed there. The pseudodipteros type was, according to Vitruvius (7 praef. 12), developed at the Temple of Artemis at Magnesia [2] on the Maeander by the architect Hermogenes [4], who omitted the inner row of columns of a dipteros. The characteristic result of this is the unusually wide ambulatory (Greek pterón) around the cella. In this sense e.g. the temple at Sardis, which also is dedicated to Artemis, is likewise considered a pseudodipteros.…

[German version] Gates that went beyond purely military aspects (for these cf.  Fortifications) are to be found in Greek architecture from the 6th cent. BC onwards ─ initially as imposingly designed entrances to sanctuaries, and from about 400 BC also in secular contexts (entrances to the  Agora,  Gymnasium,  Stadium or  Assembly buildings, e.g. in Miletus, Priene, Olympia). The development and extension of the própylon as a decorative entrance gate to a  sanctuary can be reconstructed, for example, from the Acropolis of Athens (cf.  Athens II. with locati…

[German version] Modern term for various buildings of the dynasty of the Ptolemies serving the ruler cult; the first Ptolemaeum is considered to be a building built by  Ptolemy [3] II adjacent to the tomb of  Alexander [4]  the Great (later amalgamated by Ptolemy [7] IV with Alexander's tomb into a connected mausoleum complex). There are further Ptolemaea e.g. in Athens (Gymnasion), Limyra (?) and Rhodes (Temenos). Höcker, Christoph (Kissing) Bibliography J. Borchardt, Ein Ptolemaion in Limyra, in: RA 1991, 309-322  Will, vol. 1, 329.

[German version] (Χερσίφρων; Chersíphrōn) from Cnossus. Father of  Metagenes; these two being the  architects of the archaic  dipteros of Artemis at Ephesus (2nd half of the 6th cent. BC), as recorded in Strabo (14,640), Vitruvius (3,2,7) and Pliny (HN 7,125; 36,95). Both of them wrote about this temple in a work which was evidently still known to Vitruvius (Vitr. De arch. 7,1,12), and is one of the earliest formulations of ancient architectural theory ( Architecture, theory of); through his develo…

[German version] As well as the column/monumental column, there was another possibility available for the displaying of monuments, in their placement on free-standing monumental pillars (on the incorporation of monumental pillars in buildings, cf. pilaster), a form of honouring rulers primarily found in Greece in the vicinity of sanctuaries. An early example of a pillar-mounted monument is the bronze Nike of the Messenians and Naupactians sculpted by Paeonius [1] and placed before the eastern front of the temple of Zeus at  Olympia, atop - and…

[German version] Roman mosaicist, signed a figural mosaic found at Oberwenigen near Zurich ( Attillus fecit). Höcker, Christoph (Kissing) Bibliography A. Blanchet, La mosaïque, 1928, 56 L. Guerrini, s.v. A., EAA 1, 906.

[German version] Modern term for the problem arising in Greek stone constructions of the Doric order in the attempt to effect a regular sequence, around a corner of,  triglyph and  metope in the  frieze above a row of columns. In canonical Doric structure, every other triglyph rests over the centre of a column. At angles this becomes unfeasible where the depth of the architrave ( Epistylion) exceeds the breadth of a triglyph, since in that case either the architrave is no longer centred on the aba…

[German version] Modern term coined by the ancient historian Ch. Meier [1. 435-439], which refines, in a democratic-pluralistic context, the technical-qualitative self-image of the artisan class in the classical Greek period, as well the political self-awareness which interacts with it; Könnenbewußtsein encompasses in this sense an important aspect, resp. subarea of the Greek term téchnē (cf. also Demiourgos [2] and [3], Crafts, Artist, Art, Technique, technítai , Technology). Especially in the building trade of the 5th cent. BC, besides o…

(‘Chamber, room, cell, booth’). [German version] [1] Enclosed cella in an ancient temple Technical term coined by Vitruvius (4,1 and passim) for the space enclosed by walls within an ancient  temple (Greek: σηκός, sēkós). The formal development of the Greek temple cella from early Greek domestic architecture ( House), together with the related development of the peripteral temple ( Peristasis), is still a subject for debate. In monumental stone structures from the 7th cent. BC onwards, the cella served for the safe-keeping of the cult image or the image of the god, and…

[German version] (Latin). A primitive hut of perishable building materials; as a rule, a wood and clay construction, roofed with reeds, tree bark or turf (house), in Roman literature, originally described as humble housing (Varro Rust. 3,1,3; Verg. Ecl. 1,68; Plin. HN 16,35) and predominantly classified as for primitive peoples (cf. the huts of the Dacians and Marcomanni in reliefs on the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius in Rome). The principle of the 'natural house', which had been described…