Periptero sine postico6/16/2023 ![]() A temple finished honored the past a temple under construction honored past and future. Still, continuing work for all to see was an affirmation of collective faith and determination. This seemingly unending process of construction was actually a source of pride for the community, who often could not come up with the funds to finish the work. Yet colossal temples, like colossal medieval cathedrals, were rarely finished, or they at least took a very long time to complete. However, this is what the facts on the ground indicate. It remained looking unfinished and strange, we think, for some four hundred years before construction was taken up again in earnest, only to look even stranger and more unfinished centuries later when finally, by the middle of the fourth century AD, its use as a pagan temple was gradually terminated, transformed in substance and spirit with the addition of a Christian chapel at its southeast corner. It may be hard to imagine that a building so grandly conceived and beautifully executed was only partially realized. ![]() No building could ever be conceived without an end design in mind, and in our case we are confident that it would have been a dipteros, much like the early Classical Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the nearly contemporary Temple of Apollo at Didyma. It is exceptional, however, because the original design was finished only as far as the cella, including the in antis columns of the western front and the eastern back porches none of the exterior mantle of columns, which gives visual substance and style to a Greek temple, was put in place during the Hellenistic phase. The first major phase (here referred to as such because it was the first significant, identifiable stage in the building) was complete, in a sense, since the cella must have been ready and functional by the second half of the third century BC. One could argue in the broadest, most traditional terms that there was an original Hellenistic phase and a Roman Imperial phase, and probably many smaller stages throughout the building process. Unlike many temples, even those that took a long time to complete or were ultimately left unfinished, the Temple of Artemis does not represent a scheme that was conceived at one instance and realized in orderly phases. The design of the Temple of Artemis at Sardis is unusual because it represents a mixture of different planning approaches applied over a considerable period of time.
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