dissipated. There is a sadness at the stupidity and weakness of man in anger, and at the total depredation caused by Mithridates, roused by the Delian allegiance to Rome.
But perhaps it is just as well. Are we not better off with our romantic imaginings of the splendours of the past? Would we not be disappointed. would we not have to devalue our assessment of Greek architecture, if we could see it in its original state?
The first thought that comes to one. after wandering through the ruins of Delos, if it has not already been generated at Olympia or Delphi. or even on the Acropolis is that the Greeks, sur- prisingly, were "rotten'
town plan-
ners.
How is it that a people. so very con- cerned with order, so ad- mirably ex- pressed
in
their temple a r chitecture, failed to
achieve it in
their towns?
Why was not
their know- ledge of geo- metry applied to the layout, where no two buildings are related quite at right angies?
From what can still be seen at Delos, neither were they concern- ed with archi- tectural rela- tionships. each treasury. each temple. each agora.
was an entity
田
Faiqestra
Road
Schoo & Stedeli
HOUSE
AT DELOS.
1965
on its own. Each must have lost a great deal in unholy contrasts in scale and design.
As a town, it would have been familiar to us moderns, used to the Victorian legacy of disorder in the majority of our towns. Looking down from Mount Cynthus, at the plan, the main reaction is "what a mess". Somehow or other one im- agines, for instance, the embassy from Naxos full of religious zeal, rushing ashore, stopping at the first available site and shouting "this will do, build our treasury here, waste no time".
At Mykonos, despite its irregulari- ty the street pattern seems to have a
Tounst Prom S
Muscum
reason: at Delos, none, except in the "residential area", where the paths follow the rising contours, giving winding streets, breaking down the formality of the architecture. It is in this area, that a little more sympathy for the Greek architects is generated. Although still formal, the houses of one and two storeys have a quiet elegance, that is softening and humanizing, more so than at Roman Pompeii, with which the mind con- jures comparisons.
The detail of stonework is fine, the decorative mosaics of the "House of Dolphins" one would be pleased to have in one's own bath room. And of course the white sculptures, what remain, though headless, standing in the bright sunlight against the deep blue sky, are superb. Would we feel the same, if confronted with them at every turn, as was the case in the hey-day of Delos?—very possibly not.
Is this not the real answer to the architecture of ancient Greece?— that there was just too much of it? All had to be of the best, of the highest level of achievement; there was no soft-peddling to make the fortissimo sound louder.
Perhaps it is now possible to re- solve the question posed earlier. In Mykonos the nature of the people causes its architecture, a living thing reflective of themselves. In Delos the architecture must have asserted a strong influence on its people, an architecture directed to religious ceremony and observance which re- flected a philosophy, by which man endeavoured to live.
Precinct of the Egyptian
God's
*Theatre
Christian
Dried w
of Butt's
Church
House !
akt
Romer
Zvenue
Agen
Bord
"font of ity persone in
Late
Temple of
Precinct of the
Prests of Peveden
Shrine # Leto
Templect
+
the Monade
Temple of Artemis
Porture of Philip Agora of Macedon
"Clave
DELOS
Cave
Shnne of Apoito
Mount Cynthus
Sanctuary of Zeus and Athena
[House of the Dolphins
House of the Macks
Cistern
Guest House
Roman Villa
54
Far East Architect & Builder May, 1966
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