Odeon of Athens

Site plan of the Acropolis at Athens showing the major archaeological remains – the Odeon is number 19.

The Odeon of Athens or Odeon of Pericles in Athens was a 4000 m² odeon built at the foot of the south-east part of the Acropolis in Athens, to the left of the entrance to the Theatre of Dionysus.

History

It was first built in 435 BC by Pericles for the musical contests that formed part of the Panathenaea^[1], for audiences from the Theatre to shelter in in case of bad weather and for chorus rehearsals^[2]. Few remains of it now survive, but it seems to have been "adorned with stone pillars" (according to Vitruvius and Plutarch) and square instead of the usual circular shape for an odeon. It was covered in masts, yards and rigging from captured Persian ships, culminating in a cone like a tent – Pausanias wrote that the 1st century BC rebuild of it was "said to be a copy of Xerxes' tent", and that might also apply to the original building. Plutarch writes that the original building had many seats and many pillars. From a few other passages, and from the scanty remains of such edifices, we may conclude further that it had an orchestra for the chorus and a stage for the musicians (of less depth than the stage of the theatre), behind which were rooms, which were probably used for keeping the dresses and vessels, and ornaments required for religious processions. It required no shifting scenery but its stage's back-wall seems to have been permanently decorated with paintings. For example, Vitruvius tells us^[3], that, in the small theatre at Tralles (which was doubtless an Odeum), Apaturius of Alabanda painted the scaena with a composition so fantastic that he was compelled to remove it, and to correct it according to the truth of natural objects.

The original Odeon of Athens was burned down during Sulla's siege of Athens in the First Mithridatic War in 87–86 BC, either by Sulla himself^[4] or by his opponent Aristion for fear that Sulla would use its timbers to storm the acropolis^[5]. It was later fully rebuilt by Ariobarzanes II of Cappadocia, using C. and M. Stallius and Menalippus as his architects. The new building was referred to by Pausanias in the 2nd century AD as "the most magnificent of all the structures of the Greeks"^[6]. He also refers to a "figure of Dionysus worth seeing" in an odeum in Athens^[7], though this may refer to a different odeon.

References

1. ^ Plutarch, Pericles 13
2. ^ Vitruv. V.9
3. ^ VII.5. § 5
4. ^ Geography, 1.20.1
5. ^ Appian, Bellum Mithridaticum, 38
6. ^ The Family Minstrel, 1 September 1835, p116
7. ^ Geography, 1.14.1

• Böckh, Corp. Inscr. vol. I No. 357
• William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London, 1875

Source

• (Spanish) Diccionario enciclopédico popular ilustrado Salvat (1906–1914)

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities by William Smith (1870).