The development of the Greek columns was entirely dependent of the development of cult buildings. The transition from wooden post to stone columns was part of the larger development in early Greek monumental architecture, but the evolution of one single element did not stand alone, nor was it applied at the same time all over the Greek world. Technical development of roof tiles, stone walls and stone superstructure did change the design of colonnaded buildings. Not only did the buildings grow in dimensions, their layout was correspondingly altered. The interior wooden posts used in the apsidal buildings to carry the thatched roof, gradually moved out of the building becoming a prostyle or peripheral temple with stone columns carrying a tiled gable roof. A change in design that similarly altered the way people could move in and around the cult building. It is often discussed how the use of the sanctuary changed over time or how the technical development of architecture changed the layouts of the building. These questions have not commonly been combined, but the preferred choice of design was dependent on how the ancient people wanted to use their buildings. 

It is clear that different parts of the buildings developed in different periods and different regions. Several local styles were used before all different parts were fully developed and added together in the standardized Doric and Ionic temple around 500 BCE. The ancient people did choose which new inventions that befitted their own purpose in their sanctuary, creating their own local style of design or layout. There were likewise several column styles. They are hard to trace in wooden architecture, but when constructed in stone it is clear that round, fluted and polygonal columns were used side by side, in both time and place. The choice of materials, construction techniques and the decorative parts of the buildings seem to be a regional choice, rather than a chronological. In some Classical temples we can identify a conservative religious layout, long after the new techniques have been invented. A use of columns in locations no longer needed for structural reasons or a column shape no longer commonly used. Columns shape, design and placement can therefore illuminate when the ancient people chose a specific design for aesthetical or functions reasons.

Upon walking toward the entrance of the archaeological site in Delphi, one can today see three drums from an octagonal column of small dimensions. Even if the excavation circumstances of this column remain unpublished, the construction technique and the reconstruction of the column indicate that it has been an Archaic votive column. Polygonal columns are found in Greek architecture from the Geometric period and throughout the Archaic period, during the period when local architectural innovation and design where commonly used. During the 7th and early 6th century BC this developed into a local architectural style of Doric octagonal columns in the eastern Peloponnese, the costal islands and the southern Greek mainland. They were used in secular and religious buildings, as well as freestanding monuments. Most probably these towns made a manifestation of their own identity by using their own architectural style in the Panhellenic sanctuary of Delphi, as they had also done by constructing an Archaic treasury with octagonal columns in the Panhellenic sanctuary of Nemea.

Grave columns and pillars are often mentioned in older research publication as a phenomenon of the Archaic period. The Archaic grave columns has been claimed to be Doric, mainly dated in the 6th century BC and used in the entire Greek world. They were a status symbol, used by the rich to symbolize the funerary games, show off a prize standing on top of it or to associate the deceased with the heroes of the past. When examining these statements closer, one realizes that these assumptions are made on a very small number of excavated funerary columns and few researchers have made a comparison of the published Archaic grave columns. Architectural or freestanding columns are by no means common prior to 500 BC, even if this is the century when they are exploding in numbers. The larger part of all columns in the Archaic period were constructed in sanctuaries, but grave columns seem to be a relatively rare phenomenon. 

Smaller grave columns, often defined as pillars or cippis in modern publications, were much more common. They were used from the Geometric period and onwards, but got a large upswing in numbers during the Hellenistic period. Most of these lack inscriptions, especially from the earlier periods. They design varies much, they can be entirely undecorated and quite roughly cut or highly polished with relief decorations, but they seldom include a proper capital as a column should. The main question is therefore if there has been a shift in definition of a grave column between the 19th and early 20th century scholars and modern studies, or if the hypothesis of an Archaic column is yet another myth base on a few randomly excavated examples? Were freestanding columns really used more commonly as funerary markers during the Archaic period? 

The multi-cultural area of ancient Epirus and southern Illyria invented a distinctive local style of architecture in the late Classical and Hellenistic period, by importing previously used shapes from older local styles of Greek architecture, as the decorative elements from western Peloponnese, the prolonged columns from Macedonia and the Archaic octagonal columns from the eastern Peloponnese. Even if many of the town were founded much earlier, some as Greek colonies, others as local settlements, the large urban development and construction happened in the 3rd century BC. The towns made themselves independent from imported material by using the commonly available hard local limestone for column shaft and sandstone for capitals, materials often counted as improper by modern researchers, but not uncommonly used for Greek columns in the Hellenistic period. Their production of Doric octagonal columns held the same high technological quality as columns elsewhere in the Greek world, sometimes used with an upper story of Ionic fluted columns. After WW2 the polygonal shaped columns were downgraded as a second rate phenomenon, while earlier researchers complied with Vitruvius and counted polygonal columns as an alternative Doric shape. The Doric octagonal columns were used in highly visible and prominent locations in Epirus and Illyria, often in stoas in the city centre and was taken up as a manifestation of identity of the unified tribes of the Epirote League. The re-invention of Doric octagonal columns must therefore have been an intentional aesthetical choice of cultural self-identification within the Greek cultural sphere. 

Under renässansen började en idealisk bild av den grekiska arkitekturen byggas upp. Detta utifrån studier av den romerske författaren Vitruvius. En bild av en strikt arkitektonisk “ordning” formades. Vi har den doriska, den joniska och den korintiska stilen med sina olika arkitektoniska element. Men reflekterar den bilden hur man egentligen valde att bygga?

I dagens avsnitt gästas vi av Therese Emanuelsson-Paulson, postdoc vid institutionen för arkeologi och antikens kultur vid Stockholms universitet, som kommer ge oss en snabbkurs i vad grekisk arkitektur egentligen är.

Den här historiepodden handlar om allt mellan Zeus och Hades: arkitektur, slag, sex, enskilda personer, religion och mytologi, mat, bajs, konst och mycket mer. En perfekt podd för dig som vill veta mer om Romarriket, antikens Grekland, Egypten och flera av de andra folk och kulturer som levde och verkade runt Medelhavet under den här perioden.

Twenty-sided polygonal columns were incorporated in the Pergamene architecture, a style developed when Eumenes II and his successors monumentalized the capital of their shortly before expanded kingdom in the second century. There were earlier faceted columns in unfinished buildings at Pergamon, whereas finished polygonal columns appear in the Aegean islands at least from the third century onwards in the Doric order, as Vitruvius confirms. The polygonal columns  of the Aegean, the earlier unfinished faceted columns in Pergamon and the lack of proper stone for construction altogether inspired the use of the new shaft shape, the polygonal column, which was easily produced from the local andesite and a quicker economical choice. Therefore, the polygonal column became an inexpensive fashion for a short period of time.

Zwanzigseitige polygonale Säulen wurden ein Element der pergamenischen Architektur, als Eumenes II und seine Nachfolger die Hauptstadt ihres kurz vorher erweiterten Königreichs im zweiten vorchristlichen Jahrhundert monumentalisierten. Frühe facettierte Säulen gibt es in unvollendeten Gebäuden in Pergamon, fertige polygonale Säulen tauchen auf den Ägäischen Inseln spätestens im dritten vorchristlichen Jahrhundert in der dorischen Ordnung auf, wie Vitruv bestätigt. Beides lieferte wichtige Anregungen, um den in Pergamon lokal vorhandenen und damit günstigen Andesit, der als Baumaterial kaum feine Ausarbeitung zu-lässt, effizient zu solchen polygonalen Säulen zu verarbeiten, die daher für eine begrenzte Zeit lokal in Mode kamen.

The inscription on the Sanctuary of Demeter in Pergamon states that it was dedicated by Queen Apollonis, spouse of king Attalus I and the mother of the two succeeding kings Eumenes II and Attalus II. Exactly when this building project was constructed and if it was really constructed by the queen, or her sons has long been discussed, but it was probably built slightly earlier than Eumenes II’s large construction program. It was a fitting building project to undertake as a queen, being both a sanctuary and to a female goddess. The construction of sanctuary introduces a new column shaft shape, the polygonal column. Polygonal columns quickly became fashionable and commonly used in Pergamon, both the town and the newly largely expanded kingdom. Even if the Queen’s constructions of the sanctuary still remains unfinished, the stoa and the propylon introduces this new architectural style of polygonal columns in Pergamon, which under Queen Apollonis son Eumenes II becomes part his grand project of creating the new royal architectural style used in the large expansions of the town to become a metropole befitting for his greatly expanded kingdom. The largely used polygonal columns in the Pergamene architectural style was therefore probably selected and introduced by a woman, the Queen Apollonis.

Archaic polygonal columns are found in Amanthus, Idalion, Kition, Marion and Palaepaphos, where the latter is the only site with numerous examples and the polygonal shape might even be more common than other column shapes. The inspiration for polygonal columns has been sought in Egyptian or Mycenaean architecture, but probably the Assyrian and Hittite use of polygonal columns down to the 7th century BC is a more likely source of inspiration. These columns mainly carries Leaf or Helmet capitals, where the former is inspired by Assyrian or Phoenician capitals, while the later might be a local invention. In the same period similarly shaped polygonal columns with Doric capitals appears in Greece, likely originating from the same inspiration or possibly secondary inspired from Cyprus. Simultaneously in both regions, the polygonal columns vanish around 500 BC, when the war with the Persians escalates. 

A decorated column is not a necessary; a wooden pier would often suffice. Columns and decorated architecture in general, were most often used to express once wealth, status or identity, either within the own group or collectively towards other groups of people. The use of polygonal votive columns dedicated in the open air sanctuary in Palaepaphos seems therefore to be a local religious tradition similar to the Phoenician or Canaanite sanctuaries. The column from Kition also originates in a sanctuary, next to a Phoenician temple. It is therefore possible that the few polygonal columns found in other sites, mainly sanctuaries are also dedicated by either people for Palaepaphos or of a similar tradition, possibly Phoenicians. When polygonal columns disappear around 500 BC likely either the people left or the polygonal columns were for some reason too closely connected to the invading occupying power.