Front matter (continued 2)
Reading edition
Within the original Erechtheum at the east end marked off by a partition-wall was to be the shrine of Athena Polias. The western chamber of Poseidon-Erechtheus, the exact counterpart of the eastern, was to receive the altars and paintings. The intervening central chamber of proportions in harmony with those of the north porch was to contain the thalassa and the sacred olive, which would require that the temple be in part hypaethral. Furtwängler (Sitzb. Mün. Akad., 1904, p. 371) rightly indeed objects to Dörpfeld's theory that the western cella in the original temple was to be an opisthodomus, on the ground that if the eastern cella contained a divinity, the western ought also. Furthermore, for those who believe that the magnificent north porch determines the front of the Erechtheum, the western cella would have been situated on the side, not at the rear of the temple. The interior wall-pilasters on either side of the doors were intended in the original to carry heavy cross-beams. In the temple as built, the eastern pair were carried up only five courses above the orthostates, i.e. as high as the partition-walls. Their completion was rendered unnecessary when the builders decided to put in the καμπύλη σελίς.
Figure 12 The original plan of the Erechtheum.
When this original plan had to be abandoned, not only was the large central chamber reduced in breadth, but was divided into a front and rear cella. In the first of these, which one entered immediately from the north porch (ἐσελθοῦσι) were placed the three altars and on the walls, the paintings of the Butadae. In the inner cella (ἔνδον) were the trident-mark and the thalassa. It is perfectly clear why Pausanias found no door leading from the first chamber of the διπλοῦν οἴκημα into the ναὸς τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς. In the original plan, the cella of Athena and the large central chamber of the tokens were connected by a door in the middle of their partition-wall, while the cellae of Athena and Poseidon-Erechtheus were not to be in immediate connection. These relations were preserved in the curtailed plan. The meaning of the door in the west wall is also simple. In the original plan the sacred olive tree and the thalassa were to stand in the large central chamber, but in the curtailed plan the sacred olive was left outside the temple and in the Pandroseum. A closed wall between the two tokens would have separated them completely. They belonged together, and a door was a poor substitute for a common chamber but it was the only means of connection possible.
The north porch in the original plan was to admit to both thalassa and sacred olive, but in the curtailed temple which left the olive outside, it could admit directly to the latter only by the addition of the little door in the southwest corner. The extreme simplicity of this door which is without such simple ornamentation as that of the south door suggests that in the original plan it was not intended to stand beside the elaborate north door. The little door as well as the one in the west wall were not features of the original Erechtheum, and their presence was therefore not made more noticeable by the addition of mouldings of any kind.
This interpretation, if correct, warrants the statement of the general principle that the Greek architect sought, in case of curtailment of his plan, to preserve as far as possible the essential features, and the relations of the parts to one another, of the original. The builder of the Erechtheum saved his west façade in modified form and found a place for the west cella in the reduced central chamber.
The Erechtheum as originally planned was an altogether symmetrical structure. The splendid north portal was to lead immediately into the cella of the tokens, on either side of which were the shrines of the divinities that had contended for the land of Attica. The balance of structure would have reflected a balance of cults. The original Erechtheum, in short, was an architectural sentence finely illustrating the μέν and δέ of Greek feeling. With the Parthenon and the Propylaea, it was to form a group of symmetrical monuments to crown the Athenian acropolis in a manner worthy of the Periclean Age.