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Chapter 2 (part 18)
9. Layer IX, the acropolis of the Roman city of Ilion (p.211)
The
castle hill offers us a completely different picture at the time of the
uppermost, IXth layer. Instead of a hill built up in several
terraces and higher in the middle, we now find a large, evenly high
plateau; the center of the hill has been cleared away and earthworks
have been made all around. And instead of the simple dwelling houses
and a temple that was originally insignificant and only became more
stately in the Hellenistic period, we see a large area decorated with
votive offerings of all kinds, in the middle of which rises the marble
temple of Athena, renovated by Augustus. A marble propylaion forms the
entrance and marble porticoes the enclosure of this precinct. On the
southern slopes of the hill are also two theatre-like buildings, one of
which was a skenian theatre, the other perhaps the bulleuterion. But
even now the sanctuary of Athena does not occupy the entire upper
surface of the hill. In the western part of the Acropolis there are
other buildings, unfortunately of unknown purpose. Several of them were
destroyed in the first years of the excavation, in order to uncover the
lower strata, without plans being made of them; (p.212) some that have
survived have so little characteristic ground plans that their
importance cannot be ascertained.
The entrance to Athena's
precinct was in squares G 10 - 8 between the two theaters C and B, i.e.
approximately at the same place where the main entrance to the castle
was in all earlier layers. At its beginning was once the Gate T of the
VI layer, at its end was the Gate FO of the II layer. Only its southern
part has been fully uncovered so far. On its east side there seems to
have been a columned hall IX E leaning against Theater B, in front of
which statues were set up. The walls of this hall can be seen on photo
18 and are denoted by the letters h and i. The wall h must have been
built or thoroughly repaired in late Roman times, because some
inscriptions from the time of Emperor Claudius (cf. Troy 1893, p. 138) have been built into it. When
we have reached the upper end of the staircase, we see the foundations
of a building IX D in front of us, which, despite the total destruction
of its superstructure, is clearly recognizable as a gate building from
its ground plan. The walls that have been preserved (cf. Plate VII)
consist of large, regular blocks of very soft, porous limestone, which
is quarried at Ilion and is the characteristic building material of
almost all Roman foundations. Not weatherproof in the open air, this
stone was only allowed to be used for walls located underground.
Fig.79: Floor plan of the Propylaion of the Athena precinct and the adjoining porticoes.
In
fig.79 the preserved floor plan of the Propylaion is shown in the right
half, and an attempt at an addition is shown in the left half. The
front and back walls, and also the lower portions of the side walls,
are thicker than the rest, having supported pillars with their stepped
base. The thinner walls have been the bearers of the closed walls and
the middle wall of the gate. Several white marble building elements
found nearby could be used as supplements as they matched the
dimensions of the floor plan. The entablature, as it can be drawn from
these pieces, I repeat in fig.80 from a sketch published in the book Troy
(1882), p. 233. The shape of the capital (D=0.56m), the low height of
the architrave (0.40m) in relation to the height of the frieze (0.58m),
the upper straight end of the incisions of the triglyphs (width 0.35m)
and finally the shape of the sima also proves to us that we have before
us a Roman building.
The floor plan,
completed on the basis of the foundations and building elements,
consists of a four-column porch in the Doric style and a lower back
hall, which was probably equipped with two columns between two antae.
The shape of the ante and its connection to the adjoining columned
halls are questionable; possibly the gate building protruded a little
in front of the columned halls. The wall lying between the vestibule
and the back hall contained the gates of the district, of which there
appear to have been three. Its shape is derived from a few column drums
in the Corinthian style with door walls attached on both sides (p.213),
which belonged to one of the central pillars d. A half-column c must be
added next to each of them as a cornerstone.
Columned halls
adjoined the Propylaion on both sides, which at the same time served as
the southern boundary of the sacred precinct of Athena. In fig,79 a
piece of the foundations is drawn on the right and a completed piece of
this southern stoa on the left. Plate VII shows how much of the
foundations are still preserved. At the beginning of the excavations,
larger pieces were preserved, but some of them were broken off by the
stone robbers when the deeper layers were uncovered, and some even
earlier.
 Nevertheless, the existing remains are sufficient to
supplement the hall in the floor plan. Only the manner of their
termination in the east and west and the form of their (p.214)
connection to the eastern and western Stoa remain in doubt. Although we
do not know exactly the architecture of the column building, because
the stones belonging to it have certainly not been found, we may
supplement it according to the structural members of the Propylaion;
for since the stoa seems to have been built at the same time as the
gate building, it must also have had the same architecture. In fig.79 I
have therefore assumed the distance between the columns to be about
2.50 m, just like in the gate building.
Fig.80: Entablature and capital from the Propylaion of the Athena precinct.
A
well-preserved piece of the southern foundation wall of the South Stoa
can be seen in the photograph of photo 19, namely the beautiful ashlar
wall e appearing in the foreground. On its southern face, harder and
better-worked limestone is used in the two upper strata, evidence that
the wall should be visible as a retaining wall from about this height.
The old Homeric castle wall, over which our wall in the picture goes,
had long since been buried and is no longer noticeable at this point.
In
1882 I saw a small piece in the square E 6 of the west stoa of the
Athena district: a substructure of two marble steps, on which the
footprints of columns were visible. How far the hall extended to the
south and north could no longer be determined. But there can be little
doubt that it once occupied the entire western side of the sacred
precinct. During the excavation of the second layer of the FN gateway,
the stepped structure was destroyed, and the marble blocks now lie by
the walls of this gateway. The remainder then preserved consisted of
two layers of soft porous as the foundation and two tiers of marble as
the stylobate. Since the latter still wore a rough stripe on their
front edge as a work customs, the stoa can never have been completely
finished. The ax width of the columns was 2.30 m, their lower diameter
0.59 m. How the pillars and the superstructure were designed is not
known. The depth of the columned hall has also not been determined,
although it must remain questionable whether the walls drawn in square
E 6 belong to our hall. If this was really the case, as I have assumed
on Plate VII, then to the west behind the colonnade there were closed
rooms.
We are somewhat better informed about the eastern
boundary of the Athena district, which was formed by the Eastern Stoa
(IX M). Admittedly, no stone from the superstructure has been preserved
here either, but the entire floor plan can still be determined by the
foundations. The good preservation of these foundation walls is due to
the fact that they were built from large blocks, reached down to a
depth of more than 7m and are therefore still preserved in the lower
layers despite the great destruction of the upper parts. We have
already seen the stately western foundation wall several times in the
pictures, for example in photos 15, 16 and 26 and in the sections of
fig.76 (p.196) and Plate VIII below.
Photo 30: xxx
You can see the thickness of the
foundations even better on photo 30 (p.215), which shows a view
from the south-east into the interior of the northern part of the hall;
a is the western and d the northern foundation wall, b are irregular
round foundations for interior columns; the ashlar walls c visible in
the background on the left and resting on small stones belong to the
large altar building, on the right in the rear building one overlooks a
large piece of the Simoeis valley.
 Fig.81: Stonemason signs on building IX M.
The large blocks of soft
porous are cut regularly and walled up as stretchers and binders. They
often bear large carved letters, which can also be seen in some
photographic images. Mainly there are combinations of two letters,
which presumably reflect the names of the workers and are therefore
so-called stonemason symbols. I put together some of these letters in
fig.81, several of them occur very frequently. A specific dating of the
Stoa is not possible based on these letters, but according to the
opinion of the experts they fit very well with the time of the first
emperors, i.e. with the beginning of the ninth stratum. The form of the
letters makes it impossible for the Stoa to have been built at the time
of Lysimachus.
 Fig.82: Ground plan of the East Stoa, northern part
The
whole floor plan of the hall, as shown in Plate VII, consists of two
parts, an approximately 50m long single-aisled hall in the south and an
approximately 17m long two-aisled facility at the northern end.
In
fig.82 a large part of the building is shown in plan. The single-aisled
hall is partly drawn (from f to g) in its present state, but with an
indication of the columns, partly (from g to i) in an addition. In the
two-aisled parts (n to m), round foundations (a to e) have been
preserved for the inner columns, by which the distance between these
columns is secured. Presumably the outer columns of the whole hall had
the same distance. Otherwise we know nothing about the columns and
(p.216) their entablature. It struck me that the inner pillars of the
northern part do not harmonize well with the outer pillars that are to
be added to the front wall. One can therefore surmise that the inner
row of columns is a later addition and was built after the front row
had come in omission. However, since this assumption is not without
doubts, I do not know how to explain the striking phenomenon
satisfactorily. From the strong rear wall of the hall, which was at the
same time the eastern border of the sacred precinct and also of the
acropolis, only a very small part at the buttress p is uncovered. It
seems possible to me that the whole wall was equipped with the same
buttresses because of the great earth pressure.
On the north
side of the sacred precinct one would like to assume a stoa, following
the example of the other sides, but as far as we know there was no such
thing. However, in the north-eastern part of the castle several pieces
of ashlar walls have been found (e.g. IX N and IX O), the importance of
which could not be determined, but it is hardly possible that they
supported porticoes. A simple border wall appears to have formed the
northern end of the district. Although only a few pieces of it have now
been preserved, it will probably have been present on the whole north
side before the excavations began. During the construction of the large
north-south ditch and during the excavation in H 3, it was broken off
in the first years of the excavation.
It was not possible to
determine whether there was a gate and a second staircase to the
Acropolis on the north side in the IX layer. One could assume that the
Greek steps already known to us, which have survived to the north of
Tower VI g, were still used in the IX layer; but that seems impossible
to me considering the terrain conditions, especially since the altar is
built over the upper end. I would rather suspect an ascent to the
sanctuary on the strong foundation IX N or between this and the hall IX
M, although no trace of a staircase has been found there so far. The
section in fig.53 gives a good idea of the thickness of Wall IX N.
The retaining wall resting on the older remains of the wall once
reached up to the Hieron plateau and was therefore over 14m high.
Consisting of soft porous blocks on the inside, it was clad with harder
material on the visible north side. Several of the letters and symbols
carved into their blocks can be seen on photos 20 and 21; all of which we have noted are compiled in fig.83. Since there
are some among them that also appear in the same way (p.217) in
building IX M (cf. fig.81), the two buildings must come from the same
time.
 Fig.83: Mason's marks on the wall IX N.
Within the precinct enclosed by the three Stoen and the
northern wall, which formed approximately a square of about 80m, near
the northern boundary was the Temple of Athena Iliad. Its small remains
were not recognized at first, although the discovery of numerous marble
blocks of a temple on the northern slope of the hill in squares H 1 and
H 2 had long pointed to this area as the location of the temple.
However, they could not be easily recognized because the stone
foundation of the temple had broken off down to the last ashlar before
the excavations and only a sand-filled ditch remained. It is
understandable that at first this was thought to be anything but a
temple foundation. This sand ditch was
already found during Schliemann's first excavations; and also in the
work of 1882, when I myself was present (p.218), part of it was
uncovered without our understanding of its meaning. Only when it became
apparent that the ditch formed a closed square did we recognize that
the foundations of the great Athena temple were made of sand.
Foundations of buildings with sand were not only common in antiquity,
but are sometimes still used today when the subsoil is poor. As an
ancient example of such a construction I would like to mention the
treasury of Sybaris in Olympia (cf. Die Ausdigungen von Olympia II, p. 48) and as a modern example the district court in Ehrenbreitstein (cf. Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung 1899, No. 46) . When
the architect of the Athena temple was commissioned to erect a large
marble temple on the Acropolis hill at Ilion, he must have found the
enormous masses of rubble that had accumulated over the course of
thousands of years during the excavations to determine the depth of the
foundation. At the place where the temple was to be built, namely on
the northern slope, the height of the rubble, as we now know, was over
13m. This is the depth the architect would have had to dig down the
foundations to reach solid ground. In order to save on costs and still
give the temple a solid foundation, he resorted to the practical means
of creating a layer of sand about 3.50 m deep as the lower foundation
and only building a stone foundation about 5 m deep on top of it. For
this purpose, he first had an almost 9 m deep ditch dug, which, as
shown in Plate VI and fig.86, formed a square (a, b, d, 1) in plan. The
ditch was around 3.6m wide on the short sides and around 2.60m wide on
the long sides, both of which were significantly wider than the
thickness of the foundation walls.
 Fig.84: Corner of the foundation of the Temple of Athena, ground plan
To
prevent the walls of the ditches from collapsing when the sand was
brought in and poured in, they were supported by vertical wooden posts,
as shown in Figure 84 in the plan and in Figure 85, which were probably
held in place by crosspieces. The posts, whose locations are still
clearly visible, were 0.15m thick and spaced 0.45m apart. The space
between them was lined with small stones in some places. In the ground
plan (Figure 84) the posts are shown as black squares. In Figure 85 a
wooden post is drawn on the right edge of the ditch and on the left
edge the earth lying between two posts; the post itself is only
punctured on the left.
 After
the trenches had been prepared in this way, pure sand was laid in
individual layers, washed in with water and probably tamped down.
Several of these layers are clearly distinguished from one another by
the different coloring of the sand used, as can be seen in the drawing
(fig.85). The number of individual layers was probably greater than
indicated in the drawing. When the ditch was filled with sand to a
height of 3.70 m, the actual temple foundation was built from ashlars.
Since it was not the full width of the ditch, empty strips remained at
both (p.219) sides, which, as can be seen in fig.85, were filled in
with boulders. While the latter still exist in some places, stone
robbers have removed the ashlar foundation itself down to the last
stone.
Fig.85: The foundation of the Temple of Athena; section.
The
fact that here the ashlars have been stolen to a great depth, while in
the other buildings of the IX layer only the upper parts of the
buildings have broken off, but the foundations have been spared,
appears particularly striking when one considers that immediately next
to received a ashlar wall IX Q from the sand ditch. In fig.86 it
extends from b to c; in the section (fig.85) it is designated as the
"porch" of the temple and hatched crosswise, insofar as it is still
present. I find an explanation for this striking fact only by assuming
(p.220) that the stone foundation of the temple itself was of harder
limestone, which was better to use and therefore more valuable than the
soft porous of the other foundations. The porch of our temple, made of
soft stone, was broken off only so far as was necessary to remove the
hard blocks below. As desired confirmation of this assumption, I can
add that several pieces of a hard porous material have actually been
found in the rubble that now lies over the sand.
[Continue to Chapter 2, part 19]
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