#propylon

Temple of Bel  (3D)

Palmyra (Tadmor), Syria

32 CE

Tetrapylon of Aphrodisias

Aphrodisias, Asia minor (Turkey)

2nd century CE

The Tetrapylon was the monumental columnar entrance to the sanctuary of Aphrodite. It has sixteen columns (4 X 4) supporting elaborate pediments on each side. A complete stone-for-stone reconstruction or anastylosis of the structure, using 85% original blocks, was completed in 1991. It is a richly ornamented prestige building in the style of the Antonine period (mid-later second century CE). One entered on the east side, from a major north-south street, and passed through the gate into a large open forecourt before the sanctuary proper. Looking back from the inside at the west façade of the gate, the visitor would see an even richer elaboration of the architecture that marked this as the interior. One moved through the gate from the public space of the street to the space of Aphrodite. The broken-recessed west pediment is decorated with high-quality relief work of Erotes hunting in acanthus foliage and with deeply carved architectural ornament in an encrusted imperial style that represented majesty and grandeur. A figure of Aphrodite framed in an acanthus calyx in the central lunette was erased in the Christian period and replaced with a crudely engraved cross.

The Sebasteion and its Propylon

Aphrodisias, Asia minor (Turkey)

1st century CE

12 M high

The Sebasteion was a grandiose temple complex dedicated to Aphrodite and the Julio-Claudian emperors. Its construction stretched over two generations, from c. 20 to 60 CE, from the reign of Tiberius to that of Nero. The complex was paid for by two prominent Aphrodisian families. It consisted of a Corinthian temple and a narrow processional avenue (90 x 14 m) flanked by two portico-like buildings, each three-storeyed (12 m high), with superimposed Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. These North and South Buildings, which defined the processional avenue, carried marble reliefs in their upper two storeys for their whole length. The reliefs were framed by the columnar architecture so that the two facades looked like closed picture-walls. Some 200 reliefs were required for the whole project, and more than 80 were recovered in the excavation. They featured Roman emperors, Greek myths, and a series of personified ethne or 'nations' of Augustus' world empire, from the Ethiopians of eastern Africa to the Callaeci of western Spain. The Sebasteion reliefs are close to contemporary historical interest in the visual culture and city life of the Greek East under the Roman empire.

The South Building was sponsored by two brothers, Attalos and Diogenes, and their family. Some eighty percent of its reliefs survive, and its program can be followed in detail. The third storey juxtaposed figures of the traditional gods with figures of the early Roman emperors and scenes of their conquests (Claudius over Britannia, Nero over Armenia). The emperors are here shown as new, active members of the traditional Olympian pantheon. In the lower storey, there was a remarkable series of mythological scenes, featuring Greek and local heroes and their exploits (Herakles, Telephos, Bellerophon, Achilles, Aineias). The heroes, great benefactors of mankind, make clear points of comparison for the emperors above. Some of the reliefs also make closer connections between the local goddess Aphrodite, her son Aineias, and the Julian emperors in Rome. The sequence of the reliefs can be reconstructed from their find-places in the excavation.

The subjects of the reliefs in the third storey are Roman emperors, imperial victory, and the Olympian gods. The emperors are represented as powerful warrior divinities and are mixed with the old gods as near-equal partners. They are, as one of the building inscriptions calls them, Theoi Sebastoi Olympioi, or 'Olympian Emperor Gods'. World rule is secured by the pantheon of old and new divinities. The reliefs were arranged in groups of three: a wider relief flanked by two narrower ones, with the wider relief placed above the doorway into each of the 15 rooms behind the façade. The main early Roman emperors are present: Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero, with younger princes and imperial women. Their most important activity is victorious war over barbarians, and they are represented in hellenistic heroic style.

The North Building was built by two brothers, Eusebes and Menandros, and their family. Its third storey featured a series of universal allegories (Day, Ocean) mixed with imperial scenes (Nero with his mother Agrippina). This series is the least well-preserved of the complex. The second storey contained the long series of personified nations of the Augustan empire, each pictured as a statue between the columns of the architecture. An inscribed label named each figure -- for example, ethnous Dakōn, 'of the people of the Dacians'. The idea was a visual listing of Augustan world empire. The places and peoples were among those claimed as conquered or brought into the empire under Augustus. The selection emphasised wilder peoples on the edges of empire. Few in Aphrodisias can have heard of many of them. The idea, the list, and the images were probably borrowed directly from a monument in Rome.

Lesser Propylon

Eleusis, Attica, Greece

54 BCE

Behind the Great Propylaea, the pilgrims in Eleusis came to the so-called Lesser Propylon, a monumnetal gateway into the sanctuary of Eleusis, a gift to the goddesses by Appius Pulcher during his consulate in 54 BCE. It had two richly and differently decorated sides.On the outside of the sanctuary, the southern side had Antae extended forward of the doors, and two unique Corinthian columns supporting a roof of long vestibule with Doric entablature. (Shown on the pictures above) 

This gate replaced an earlier Peisistratid gate at the same location.

On the inner, northern side, the gates were flanked by Caryatids and the inner end was divided into 3 by short walls, parallel to exterior walls (Shown on the pictures beneath)

Roman Gate

Si (Seeia), Hauran, Syria

1st/2nd century CE

The third, or outermost gate, that at the end of the long paved road that leads up from the valley, is one of the two monuments connected with the sacred precinct that show the influence of Roman domination in Si. 

The plan and arrangement of this middle arch, with its flanking pilasters and quarter-columns, is substantially correct, but the side openings are much plainer. Here there are only the shorter pilasters which carried the arches, and the terminating members of this face are tall plain pilasters of the Corinthian order. The well preserved piece of the monument shown in a photograph 3 in my earlier publication is presented in a drawing made to scale in this later study, and is marked X in Ill. 342. 

The caps of the lower order of pilasters, and the compound caps of the quarter-columns and the taller pilasters were found in the ruins much mutilated. The architrave and cornice, shown in photographs are drawn to scale in the present work. In addition to these, the main cornice was found, and parts of the raking cornice which was placed over a ressaut above the quarter-columns, and shows that there was a gable over the middle arch. The western face of the gateway was treated in a much simpler manner, and in the Ionic order, as is shown in Ill. 342. I found no carved details belonging to this face excepting the pilaster caps (Y in Ill. 342). The lower order of pilasters on this face had simply moulded caps, and the architrave and cornice had plain Ionic mouldings, the frieze apparently being quite plain, and in strong contrast to the over-elaborate decoration of the east face. 

This rich carving, shown in the drawing, was applied to the pannels of the pilasters and the three members of the entablature. The former is illustrated in my drawing (Detail of X), where the minor order of pilasters is given panels with an interlacing pattern of grape-vine treated in a very realistic manner, and the major order is treated with similar panels carved with a rinceau which is probably to be taken for acanthus, unless it represents some native plant, and it has large flowers in its spaces. The vine panels compare favourably with work of the early Antonine period in this region, but the other panels are more like some of the carving in the Tychaion at Is-Sanamayn , which is dated in the reign of Commodus; for they show the tendency to employ deep line-incisions and incised triangles, methods of carving which are characteristic of the Christian carving of Northern Syria. 

The quarter-columns are not fluted in the ordinary Classical fashion, but reeded, and they have no bases. The carving of the entablature is extravagantly rich. Here the lower band is carved with the large letters of a beautifully wrought inscription; it is separated from the upper band by a row of large beads. The upper band is adorned with a widely spaced maeander with faces and animals in its panels. The cymatium consists of a row of beads, an egg-and-dart, and a cavetto carved with a delicate three-leaved vine. The carving of the frieze is a rinceau which resembles that of the major order of pilasters, its bed-mould is a well wrought egg-and-dart. The cornice consists of a dentil-band and two narrow mouldings below a band of consoles; the soffits of the con- soles are adorned with leaves or honeysuckles, and the lacunae with grotesque faces. Above this, in place of a regular corona and sima, there is flat cavetto, a fillet, and a narrow band. An interesting bit of sculpture belonging to this gate is the figure of Nike which adorned the keystone of the eastern face of the middle arch. 

Hadrians Propylon and Temple

Termessos, Pisidia, Asia Minor (Turkey)

2nd century CE

Hadrians Propylon was a gate building to which a wide staircase leads up in two sets of stairs. The stairs are almost entirely preserved, and the presence of the columns is attested by the discovery of column drums and a cantilevered architrave 2.20 m long, which spanned the central intercolumniation. Frieze and cornice pieces were also found.  A corner piece of cornice with gutter strips running horizontally on both sides proves that no gable crowned the column structure. The cornice is profiled on both sides, on the outside with dentils, consoles, hanging plate and gutter strips with lion heads, on the inside only with large S-shaped Cyma. The width of the door is 1.70 m, its height 4.22 m.

 A dedication inscription on the architrave dedicates the building to Emperor Hadrian. A few steps behind this Propylon lie the ruins of a temple. It was an Ionic peripteros with a cella about 8 meters wide. Fluted columns drums up to 2 m in diameter were found, alonh with Attic wall and column bases, and Ionic capitals.

South Agora Gate

Aphrodisias, Asia minor (Turkey)

1st century CE

The last great project in the South Agora was the Agora Gate, a monumental columnar facade designed to close the urban scenography of this great public piazza.

The so-called Agora Gate was a colossal baroque facade which closed the east end of the South Agora. It was built in the mid-second century CE and consisted of an eight-bayed, two-storeyed columnar scaenae frons (stage front) framed by two pyrgoi (towers), beneath which ran two barrel-vaulted entrance tunnels. This façade accumulated a great display of portrait statuary representing Antonine emperors and local benefactors. A deep basin or nymphaeum was constructed in front of the façade in the fifth century CE from re-used material, including a remarkable series of balustrade reliefs with mythological subjects taken from an unknown second-century building.

Nabataean Gate

Si (Seeia), Hauran, Syria

1st century BCE

The entrance to the middle court has been styled the Nabataean gate for the reason that all of its details are Nabataean in character. As the general plan of the precinct shows, the gate is not parallel with the gate of entrance to the theatron, or at right angles to the side walls of the middle court. We were unable to make as large, or as complete, a clearing about this structure as about the two preceding buildings, and, for this reason, the plan was not so clearly determined.

The part which was most easily cleared, and from which much of the debris was removed, represents the southern half of the space between the side walls of the court. In this half there were brought to light three doorways diminishing in size from the north. The northern half of the space at this end of the court is piled high with fallen building stones in which many architectural fragments of the Roman period appear. It would seem that the gate originally consisted of five openings; but that the northernmost two had been dispensed with in the second century to make room for a small, but richly decorated, building of Classical design. No traces of the plan of this structure can be discovered without the removal of many tons of debris. 

The existing portions of the gate show the east face of a wall with three doorways in it, the fallen details show that these doorways had lintels with pediments above them. Within the doorways, and between them, are four walls projecting over 5 metres to the westward. The southernmost wall formed one side of a square structure, like a tower; the other walls terminate without signs of ornamental features. It thus appears that there was a sort of open vestibule inside each doorway. Whether these were roofed or not is not evident. The doorways were approached by three steps. Three courses of the wall, and the decorated jambs of the doorways to a corresponding height, are preserved in situ. Above and around these remains were heaped the details from which the accompanying restoration was drawn. 

All the ornament here is interesting. It differs in many details from the ornament of the temples and the gateway already studied, though it is closely related to it; and it is quite as free from Hellenistic influence. The large doorway presents some entirely new motives, the two scroll designs and the incised oves have not been encountered in other Nabataean work, and the palmettes of the cymatium are of a novel form. The vegetable ornament of the innermost band of the lintel and the jamb, with its heart-shaped leaves and clusters of berries, appears in its curved form, as on the lintel, in the lower band of ornament in the frieze of the gateway of the theatron. The rope design of the slender torus which comes next is common in all Nabataean and other oriental ornament; but the small oves sheathed with a slender reed and separated by little billets, resembling, to a certain extent, some very archaic specimens of egg-and-dart in Asia Minor, has not occurred in any of the monuments that we have studied here in Si. The next moulding is unique in architectural carving, though it has come down to the present day in Oriental textile patterns. The cavetto which comes just within the outermost band is carved with leaves like those seen in a similar moulding on the jambs of the temple of Baal Shamin. In Frag. V which was a frieze-cornice, incised oves, like those in S, appear, but the two patterns above are unique. The grape-vine ornament in Frags. W and X are reminiscent of the principal portal of the temple of Baal Shamin (Frag. 5, Ill. 327). Taking into consideration the facts that some of these designs of ornament are almost identical with designs known to belong to the last quarter of the first century BCE and that others, like the rope set below an archaic egg-and- dart, are found in ornament that is known to belong to the time of Agrippa II (Ill. 338), and may be dated between 50 and 100 CE, it seems logical to place the date of this gate somewhere between the two, that is, early in the first century CE. The interesting base (Frag. Y) was found, apparently in place, in front of the right jamb of the largest of the three exposed doorways. It is probable that it carried a statue or a votive column.