This is an online event.
Sponsored by: AIA-San Francisco Society
Since 2010, selected U.C. Berkeley graduate students and Dr. Andrew Stewart have been studying the Classical and Hellenistic architectural and free-standing sculpture found in the Athenian Agora since the start of excavations in 1931, publishing our results seriatim in Hesperia, the journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. This talk summarizes our work to date on the sculptural embellishment of three of its temples: the Temple of Apollo Patroos, the Hephaisteion, and especially the Temple of Ares. Built around 430 at the rural community of Pallene in central Attica as a cult center for the venerable four-deme League of Athena Pallenis, this temple was moved to the Agora in the Augustan period and rededicated to Ares (i.e., the Roman god Mars) alongside Athena. Although the temple was damaged by the invading Herulians in A.D. 267 and totally destroyed by Christian iconoclasts in the 6th century A.D., we have succeeded in identifying over 100 fragments of its sculptural embellishment, comprising figural acroteria, pediments, metopes, porch friezes, and cult statues, together with a possible link to the great Athenian plague of 430-426.
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