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A Note on the Origin of the Triglyph

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

R. M. Cook
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Extract

There are several explanations current about the origin of the triglyph. First, that the frieze of triglyph and metope started from a decorative feature of Mycenaean art and survived—invisibly to us–until eventually Doric architecture emerged. Secondly, that triglyphs are the fossilised remains of barred wooden windows, which early Greeks needed but their successors did not. Thirdly, that triglyphs are the flattened vestiges of an upper row of columns, abandoned by the timid masons of the seventh century. Fourthly, that the triglyph represents the end or a facing of the end of a wooden beam, this though in all ascertainable early instances the beams run from the course above the triglyph. Fifthly, and liable to the same objection, that the metopes were originally the ends of beams and the triglyphs bars between them. To each of these explanations—and probably to any other that has been or can be devised—there are serious objections. But since the treatment and the prominence of the orthodox triglyph give it an appearance of being an important structural member and particularly one of wood, the most popular explanation is the fourth, which derives the triglyph from the wooden beam. If this is accepted, the argument may reasonably be pushed further.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 46 , November 1951 , pp. 50 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1951

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References

1 See most recently Bowen, M. L., BSA XLV 113–125.Google Scholar

2 Demangel, R., BCH LV 117–63, etcGoogle Scholar. This differs from the fifth theory in that the windows need not be at the level of the beams.

3 Zancani-Montuoro, P., Palladio IV 2, 49–64Google Scholar (I quote Miss Bowen). Cf. also H. Kahler, Das griechische Metopenbild, 11–26.

4 There is no cogency in objections that in the early buildings there could not have been beam ends at the front or at corners: porches could be connected by beams to the end walls, and anyhow once the frieze had been converted into a decorative feature it might well be tidied and extended all round a building.

5 Washburn, O. M., AJA XXIII 33–49.Google Scholar He usefully summarises the versions of the beam end theory.

6 See Hope Bagenal, O. in Perachora I 42–51.Google Scholar There are advantages in Washburn's theory that early temples had flat roofs of unfired clay, (AJA XXIII 33–49)Google Scholar, but the evidence so far is for pitched roofs.

A model from Ithaca (BSA XLIII, pl. 45, 600) has chequers painted on its roof. These are not, I think, tiles or even shingles, but the potter's whimsical decoration as on other fragments of the same model and on a model from the Argive Heraeum (AM XLVIII, pl. 7). Inappropriate decoration is common enough in Greek Geometric art (cf. e.g. the figurines Hesperia Suppl. II, figs. 35 and 40).

7 For Thermon see AD II, pls. 50–2A and text; Payne, H. G. G., BSA XXVII 124–32Google Scholar and Necro-corinihia, 96 and 254. For Calydon, , Dyggve, E., Das Laphrion, 149–63, 236–9.Google Scholar

8 According to the dating conventionally accepted for Greek pottery, which is here pegged to the Thucydidean date for the foundation of Selinus. By the same system of chronology we have temple B, Calydon c. 610–600; the Heraeum, Olympia c. 590–80 (Searls, H. E. and Dinsmoor, W. B., AJA XLIX 62–80)Google Scholar; the temple of Artemis, Corcyra c. 590–85 (H. G. G. Payne, Necrocorinthia, 244); the temple of Apollo, Corinth c. 540 (Weinberg, S. S., Hesperia VIII 191–9).Google Scholar

9 Rodenwaldt, G., noting the simplicity of Geometric temples, argued that the Doric style could not have been the outcome of a continuous architectural tradition; but he borrowed the triglyph from domestic building (AM XLIV, 175–84).Google Scholar

10 Cf. H. G. G. Payne, Necrocorinthia, ch. xvii and especially 250 n. 3. W. Dörpfeld has argued that by which according to Pindar (0. XIII, 21–2) was invented at Corinth, is meant the low pediment that goes with the tiled roof (AM XXXIX 168). This use of ‘eagle’ for ‘pediment’ arises presumably from the similarity in shape between the low pediment and the outstretched wings of the bird.