George Wicker Elderkin

Problems in Periclean Buildings George Wicker Elderkin

Excerpt: ... the inner chamber of the ★★★★★★? ★★★★★★ and the ???? ??? ★★★★★★ . Now the traditional intimacy of Athena and Erechtheus would lead one to expect such communication and thus the cella of Athena which gave the official name to the temple would have a share in the magnificent north portal, the main entrance to the building. The attempts to raise the eastern portico to the dignity of the ★★★★★★??? ? ???? ??? ★★★★★★??? are unsatisfactory. Thus Penrose (op. cit., p. 95): "It may seem a difficulty to explain why the most magnificent portico should lead to a subordinate shrine, but the eastern portico with its six columns, although of smaller diameter, was scarcely if at all of less importance, and the doorway could not have been much inferior in width and height. The difference of level also obviously gives preëminence to the eastern site." These considerations neither qualify the difficulty nor do they lessen the preëminent magnificence of the north porch. Apart from the demands of the text of Pausanias, there is another point to be observed. From the north porch there was a doorway opening into the Pandroseum. Thus the north porch gave admission to a temenos, but not according to present theory to the eastern cella of Athena. In the inner chamber where Pausanias saw the well, he must have found a door, the second of the two mentioned in the Chandler inscription, which opened into the eastern cella (Fig. 7). When he had seen the objects there, he retraced his steps past the well and the mark of the trident, and entered by the small door in the west wall, the Pandroseum, where stood a temple which was ★★★★★★? ?? ??? ??? ★★★★★★ . That Pausanias on approaching the Erechtheum should call it ★★★★★★??? and then on leaving should call it ???? ??? ★★★★★★ is not only quite in keeping with that stylistic tendency which Robert has termed oratio...