Spaces of Everyday Life in Democratic Greece

I. Spaces of everyday life in Athens

agora

acropolis

Athens

acropolis

agora

The Agora, Athens, Greece, 5th-2nd cen. B.C.

I. A. What are the typical buildings on the agora in Athens?

The Agora in Athens

Painted stoa

Royal stoa

Temple of Hephaistos

Bouleuterion

Prytaneion(public hearth)Middle stoa

Pnyxsea

Stoa of Zeus

I. A.

The Agora in Athens

The Agora at Athens

I. A. 1. How were stoas used to define the space of the agora in the Classical period?

Reconstruction of the Painted Stoa in Athens

I. A. 2. On the agora, what building functioned as the official “home” of the whole people of the city?

City hearth (Skias) in AthensThe Agora at Athens

memory of the Mycenaean megaron

Houses near the Agora at Athens Houses in Olynthos, Greece

II. The Classical Oikos as epitome of Greek democratic values

3.oikos = hearth, house, household

Priene, Turkey (ancient Ionia) Olynthos, Greece

II. A. What does the anonymity (lack of individuality) and modest size of private residences reveal about the function of domestic space in the Classical period?

1.4.

oikos agora opposite poles

Athens Athens

II. B. What does the inward-turned quality of the Classical oikos suggest about the family’s relationship to the larger collective in Greek democratic city-states?

Two oikoi in Athens

III. Basic configuration of the modest, anonymous, court-centered Greek house . . . . A. What were the typical materials, size, entrances, fenestration, facade, and relationship to neighboring houses and to street of the Greek courtyard house?

Late Classical oikos in AthensClassical oikos in Olynthos

III. A.

with peristyle court

III. B. Plan: Typical rooms of the Greek oikos.

1. courtyard – living, lighting, (centripetal organization like the agora).

2. andron – “men’s room”

3. hearth – descendant of the Bronze-Age megaron, problematic, not present in remains except in kitchens.

4. shop or workshop (?) – whole house as center of small- scale production?

Oikos at Ano Liossia, Greece, 5th-4th cen. B.C.

III. B.

1. courtyard – living, lighting, (centripetal organization like the agora).

2. andron – “men’s room”

3. hearth – descendant of the Bronze-Age megaron, problematic, not present in remains except in kitchens.

4. shop or workshop (?) – whole house as center of small- scale production?

a symposium in an andron

1. courtyard – living, lighting, (centripetal organization like the agora).

2. andron – “men’s room”

3. hearth – descendant of the Bronze-Age megaron, problematic, not present in remains except in kitchens.

4. shop or workshop (?) – whole house as center of small- scale production?

Oikos at Ano Liossia, Greece, 5th-4th cen. B.C.

megaron inspired hearth?just kitchen?

III. B.

oikos

Athens

IV. Gender: the Greek Oikos as organizer and mediator of major social relationships: men and women

andron of an oikos

Olynthos Priene

Contrast the clear architectural seclusion of women among the Hausa people in Kano, Nigeria

8.

IV. A. Is there blatant architectural evidence that women were secluded when they were in the oikos?

1. Through the arrangement of key rooms in plan?

Oikos (on the Areopagus Hill), Athens5.

IV. B. How might the architecture of Greek oikos have worked passively to separate women?

Oikos at Olynthos Model of an oikos at Olynthos

IV. B. 1.

Oikos at Ano Liossia

IV. B. 2. How might different patterns of use have created a de facto separation of men and women within the house?

6.

IV. B. 1.

Oikos at Ano Liossia

IV. B. 3. How did the architecture of the house facilitate women’s control and surveillance of guests moving in and out of the house without her exposed to the public eye?

Oikos at Olynthos

the feminine scopic eye