Late Classical (c. 400-323 BC)

With growth now concentrated in outlying areas, there was understandably less temple building in mainland Greece in this period than there had been in the 5th century, but the Doric temples at Tegea and Nemea in the Peloponnese were important, the former for admitting Corinthian capitals to columns engaged on its interior walls. In eastern Greece, on the other hand, there began a series of new temple constructions rivaling those of the Archaic period but consciously copying the Archaic in their plan and elaboration of detail. Some are simply replacements, such as that at Ephesus replacing an earlier temple destroyed by fire, or the rather later one at Didyma. Similarly, the town of Priene in Ionia, although built on a new foundation after the mid-4th century, was laid out as a grid of streets on a principle developed by the 5th-century architect Hippodamus, who had applied the same scheme to his home city, Miletus, and to the port of Athens, Piraeus. The new Athena Temple at Priene is the best example of classic Ionic known, with no eccentricity of plan or detail. The eastern Greeks had long worked for their neighbours in the Persian towns of Lycia and Caria, supplying monumental tombs of native pattern decorated with sculpture in Greek style. At Xanthus, the capital of Lycia, a tomb resembling a Greek temple raised high on a platform had been built by the end of the 5th century; and similar structures were made there in the 4th century, culminating in the great tomb built in mid-century at Halicarnassus for King Mausolus of Caria, a king who has given his name to all such monumental mausoleums. The fine architectural detail and the sculpture (British Museum, London) executed by Greek artists of the first rank show a total Hellenization of local taste and exemplify the high quality that Greek art in foreign lands had attained at this time. The 4th century saw much greater diversity of architectural forms than ever before. Theatres received marble seats and elaborate stage buildings. Circular temples (tholoi) appeared in mainland Greek sanctuaries--Doric in style but with the new Corinthian columns within. A small-scale tholos with Corinthian columns was also used for the choragic monument of Lysicrates in Athens. The two-storied stoa became an essential element in the planning of marketplaces or administrative areas. Architects were at pains to adapt the rigid orders to architectural forms and needs more complicated than those of the basic Greek temple plan. Hellenistic period The successors to Alexander's empire split the new Greek world, which now ran to the borders of India in the east and the Sudan in the south, into separate kingdoms. The generals who ruled them established dynastic control and created a court life that provided a type of stimulus to the arts that had not been experienced in Greece since the Bronze Age. The Attalids, who had become the rulers of Pergamum in northwest Asia Minor, constructed there a new capital city in which influential schools of sculpture and architecture flourished. The Seleucids ruled the Eastern world as far as Persia, and under them the art of architecture in particular evolved in near-Baroque forms that were to have their effect on Roman architecture. In Egypt the Ptolemies, at the new capital city that bore Alexander's name and was founded by him, built the famous lighthouse and library; and there another important sculptural school developed. In the Aegean world, Rhodes proved an important centre and so, of course, did the Macedonian homeland in the north. By comparison, the great cities of central Greece declined in importance; but Athens in particular had a hold on the imagination of Greeks everywhere for its former role against the Persians and the achievements of the Classical period, and as a result it benefited from the gifts of the new kingdoms, especially in building. Alexander's aspirations and closer knowledge of Eastern and Egyptian ways led the new rulers to take more seriously their roles of near divinity. This gave considerable impetus to the art of portraiture, since these rulers thus deserved commemoration as much as any god; in fact, even private citizens aspired now to some heroic status after death, so that portrait monuments for tombs and honorific statues became more common. Except for this growth of portraiture, however, the mood in the arts during the Hellenistic period was to intensify and elaborate styles developed by Classical Greece. Palatial architecture aimed at effects never contemplated hitherto; and even domestic architecture for the first time had palatial pretensions. Trade and the newly acquired resources of the East opened up new possibilities for the artist, in both materials and inspiration; the results, however, generally tended to elaboration and grandeur such that the finer qualities of balance and precision characteristic of earlier periods are often difficult to discern in later works. The Classical form of the Doric temple was out of favour in the new age, and the few that were built are elaborate in plan and detail, impairing the sober quality of the order. This age appreciated the Ionic and the more flamboyant Corinthian forms, and at any rate most new temple building was done in the new eastern areas of the Greek world, where Ionic had been the usual idiom. The 3rd-century architect Hermogenes of Priene codified the Ionic order in his books, and his buildings popularized new features in plan, notably the broad flanking colonnades ("pseudo-dipteral"), where the earlier Ionic temples of eastern Greece had set ranks of columns. For the first time the Corinthian order was used for temple exteriors, and work was resumed on the great Temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens, financed by an Eastern king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The two-storied stoa became an architectural form of importance, serving as hotel, emporium, or office block, and the design of central market and administrative areas depended largely on the disposition of such buildings. An Attalid king paid for a fine stoa for Athens' marketplace, recently restored; and his city of Pergamum seems to have been important in developing stoa design. Monumental tombs were naturally still required for ruling families, but nobles and the nouveaux riches could also aspire to them now, designing some as minor sanctuaries for the heroized dead. The finest Macedonian tombs of the period displayed a painted architectural facade below ground, leading to a painted and elaborately furnished vaulted underground chamber. The variety of administrative and court requirements for buildings led to original designs that broke still more decisively with the colonnade orders of Classical temples. A few important examples of particularly original designs are the famous lighthouse (Pharos) of Alexandria with its tiers of masonry 440 feet high; the library of Alexandria; the clock house Tower of the Winds at Athens; monumental fountains and assembly halls; and a new elaboration of stage architecture for theatres, in which for the first time the acting took place on a raised stage. To the established decorative repertory of moldings and carved ornament was added a variety of floral and animal forms that enriched the surface decoration of buildings. In the East especially these forms were combined in original ways that, together with compositions that defied the logic of the Classical orders, tended to a style that in many respects anticipates the Baroque. Slowly, too, the advantages of arch and vault, avoided hitherto by Greek architects, were exploited; but architecture was still basically that of mass on mass, and it was left to Rome to make significant progress in construction methods.