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The Development of the Plan of the Thersilion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
Mr. Benson in the preceding paper has given an account of the new facts which have been brought to light by the complete clearing of the Thersilion. With regard to these points of fact there can be no question and in the deductions to be drawn from them we are for the most part agreed. It remains to be seen whether from the remains before us we can reconstruct a building of any known Greek design, in other words, whether we can discover what was the builder's plan and how he developed it. At first sight a large columned hall of this nature appears to be un-Greek in character: the only parallel we can produce for it is the late Hall of the Mysteries at Eleusis, which however only resembles it in the badest characteristics. Where we do find halls which resemble this building however is in the East. The Hall of the hundred columns at Persepolis (Perrot et Chipiez, v. p. 723) presents several striking analogies: like the Thersilion it is a large square building on one side flanked by a portico while we have two doors on each of the other three. Now, as is clearly shown by the character of the building, the Thersilion belongs, in its original plan, to the earliest period after the foundation of Megalopolis by Epameinondas. That is sufficiently proved by the 
cramps and the. use of tufa rather than conglomerate for the foundation bases. Moreover just at this period we have a direct communication between Persia and Megalopolis in the person of Antiochus, who visited Susa as a delegate from the Arcadian league in 367 B.C. (Xen. Hell. vii. 1, 33–38 J.H.S. Supp. Pap. I. p. 128), and it is quite possible, whether he was the dedicator of the theatre thrones or not, that he brought back the idea of such a columned hall from the East. But it can have been only the general idea that was so brought to Megalopolis: the arrangement of the columns in the Thersilion is entirely different from that of its prototypes in the East, while the inward slope of the floor is also a new element. Thus, though this building may have owed its origin and shape to the East, its plan, as I will endeavour to show, is taken from a common Greek type, and is in fact simply that of a Greek theatre.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1893
References
1 Here I follow the reading of the MSS. as against that of Rose, and Müller-Strübing, , and others (v. J.H.S. xii. p. 360)Google Scholar.
2 Here it is obvious that in most Greek theatres only the semicircle opposite the scena is an arc of the ima circinatio, but theoretically, according to Vitruvius, the whole of the block of seats forms the arc of a circle.
3 Here I adopt a Megalopolitan foot of 308 m., which is that shown by Mr. E. A. Gardner to have been the unit of measure used in the construction of this building.
4 This much, however, may be said. The layer of white chips mentioned by Mr. Benson as lying under the tile layer (not above it, as Mr.Schultz, says, Megalopolis, p. 20Google Scholar), if not in itself a paving, at any rate gives us a floor level, and that is a simple slope. It may indeed be an actual paving, as it is some two inches thick, and is spread in a regular layer over nearly all the building.
6 Mr.Richards, (Megalopolis, p. 141)Google Scholar shows that the Δ form is simply a Megalopolitan Δ but in this inscription in order to read at all it must = ΔΑ.
6 Mr. Schultz, however, informs me that ‘there would have been no danger from the thrust inwards if the roof principals were properly constructed and tied in…The load could easily be made to bear vertically on the columns.’
7 It is true, as has been pointed out to me by Mr. Schultz, that these pillars carried wood beams or framed wooden girders, and so even with this span might have carried a great weight. But at the same time this, so far from being the strongest, is the weakest point in the building, and could never have been chosen to support a clerestory.
8 It is true, as Mr. Schultz has reminded me, that the architrave here must have been of stone and not of wood, as in the interior building. But such a large gateway would naturally be divided by one or more central piers, just as in the case of the entrance from the theatre şide; thus there would be no necessity for any long bearing, while none of the symmetrical effect gained by the correspondence in width between the parodos and scena would be lost.
9 Mr. E. A. Gardner has suggested to me that the cill course in these parts of the walls is probably original and formed the tread to gateways at the end of the parodoi.