QUIZDELPHI
Lecture 11 layout -- Mid-term and Museum -- Greek cities outside Greece: Priene (Asia Minor) in late classical-hellenistic times (IV-I cent BCE)
Colonization • Colonization was a natural activity for Greeks since the Late Bronze Age, and will continue also in Hellenistic times taking different forms and meanings. The period between 750-550 BCE is considered as the peak of Greek colonization in the Mediterranean
A founder (oikistes, ktistes) was appointed. He first sought sanction from Delphi, then led the expedition, chose the site and devided the land. When dead, he received heroic honours. Normally a colony became a new polis, with a strong bound with mother-land (common festivals and rituals, commercial and political relationships, etc.)
Pausanias, VII, 2, 10 The Ionians who settled at Myus and Priene, they too took the cities from Carians. The founder of Myus was Cyaretus the son of Codrus, but the people of Priene, half Theban and half Ionian, had as their founders Philotas, the descendant of Peneleus, and Aepytus, the son of Neileus. The people of Priene, although they suffered much at the hands of Tabutes the Persian and afterwards at the hands of Hiero, a native, yet down to the present day are accounted Ionians.
LECTURE 12 LAYOUT The identity of Greek cities: commonalities between Athens and Priene (Lect 11) Life inside a city: houses and everydaylife
Priene
Priene city plan, cfr. Gates 264
Cemeteries outside the living spaces--normative memory of the past--dead ancestors • Agorà--(male, adult) citizens--unstable political present • Central cult place--Gods of the polis--timeless eternity of the Gods Cfr. Alcock-Osborn, chapter 5 The Greek World
Priene, bouleuterion
Priene, bouleuterion altar
Priene, the theater
Priene, the theater
Priene, the theater
Priene, Athena’s temple
Priene, Athena’s temple
Priene, streets and houses
Priene, mount Mycale and view on the agorà area
Priene, view towards the sea
Priene, city’s wall
The identity of a Greek polis Agorà: stoa(s), bouleuterion, prytaneum--other public buildings as the gymnasium and the theater Central cult center, sacred precinct devoted to the main God of the city--and other temples and sacred buildings Cemeteries
Domestic spaces Until now we’ve rarely seen remains of houses: we mainly talked about public buildings, as temples, palaces and bouleuteria, or tombs.
The reasons: --houses were built with less resistant material (wood, or mud-bricks) --people did not pay the same care they had for public buildings (cfr. our attititude for monuments) -- in the past archaeologists were not very interested in less visible and less impressive remains (with the exceptions of sites as Pompei and Ephesos).
--The ability to read and interpret this material has improved a lot. Moreover historians from the 70s of last century are more interested in people’s everyday life
Priene, streets and houses --Infrastructures (drainage) --common walls --no openings on the streets except the front door
Priene, example of house. Cfr. Gates 268
Priene, west gate street
Dedication from Alexander the Great to Athena Polias, from Priene. British Museum. “King Alexander dedicated the Temple to Athena Polias” Polias=guardian of the city, one epithet of Athena
Priene, house of Alexander. During the siege of Miletus in 334 BCE Alexander lived in this house, which later became a monument and a place where people could worship him
Upper part of a marble statue of Alexander, found in the house, now in Berlin Antikensammlung
Priene city plan, cfr. Gates 264 House of Alexander
Gymnasium • Primary and secondary school • Center for Greek education (paideia), which was intellectual and physical
