II. Discovery, excavation and reconstruction

The Odeion’s discovery, excavation and reconstruction was informed by the appearance of the term ōideion in a great variety of ancient textual sources pertaining to Athens, as summarized in Table 1.

Table 1.

References to ōideia in Athens in ancient texts in approximate chronological order

Table 1. Long description

This table lists references to the Athenian Odeion from the fifth century BCE to the 11th century CE, arranged chronologically. Columns include source, date, term used, building history, architecture, topography and function. Most sources use the term ᾠδϵῖον. Early entries (5th–4th century BCE) give little detail but show varied uses, including law courts, military activity, grain distribution and philosophical gatherings. From the later fourth century BCE onward, authors attribute construction or rebuilding to figures such as Pericles, Lycurgus, and Ariobarzanes. Later sources describe damage in the Mithridatic Wars and subsequent reconstruction. Architectural details increase over time, mentioning columns, seating, gates, large size and a tent-like roof. Topographical notes place the Odeion near the Theatre of Dionysos and related areas. Functions remain diverse, including musical contests, legal use, education and rehearsals.

For the building’s location and appearance, there are only a few crucial passages. The oldest is an enigmatic fragment in iambic trimeter (12.73 PCG) from the lost fifth-century play Thraittai by Cratinus, preserved in Plutarch’s Life of Pericles (13.9, see below).

Vitruvius, in a discussion of structures which serve to receive spectators in open-air theatres during sudden rain showers, mentions an odeum in Athens in the vicinity of the Theatre (De arch. 5.9.1):

The work of Plutarch contains three references to the Odeion. In De exilio (Mor. 605a) and De Stoicorum repugnantiis (Mor. 1033b), it appears as a favourite haunt of philosophers. Plutarch’s most important testimony (the one on which the historical prominence of the building is based and the source of the fragment of Cratinus’ Thraittai) is found in the description of Pericles’ building programme in the Life of Pericles (13.9–11):

The fullest ancient account of monuments in Athens, the first book of Pausanias’ Periēgēsis, complicates the picture. Near the Enneakrounos fountain in the Kerameikos district (i.e. the Ancient Agora), Pausanias saw a theatre called the ōideion (1.8.6), probably Agrippa’s Odeion. Later (7.20.6), Pausanias says that the Odeion of Patras was only surpassed in size and magnificence by a new ōideion at an unspecified location in Athens. The new venue was built by the famous benefactor Herodes Atticus (101–77 CE) in memory of his wife Regilla, who had died in 160. Pausanias clarifies that he had already finished his account of Athens in book 1 when the construction of Herodes’ Odeion commenced. Another passage in Pausanias’ work is relevant, as it can be related to Plutarch’s information that Pericles’ Odeion resembled Xerxes’ tent. Pausanias, too, saw a building resembling a tent, yet does not call it an ōideion (1.20.4):

Finally, in the fifth century CE, Hesychius (s.v. ᾠδϵῖον) defines the Odeion as a place in which the rhapsodists and kithara players competed before ‘the Theatre’ was built.

Identifying and disambiguating the various Athenian ōideia in these texts is challenging, since most sources refer to an ōideion without qualifiers. The term ōideion was not exclusive to Athens; by 346/5, it appears at Samos,Footnote ¹⁰ and in the Roman period (Latinized as odeum) it was employed as a general term for covered theatres (Diod. Sic. 1.48.5; Heraclides Criticus 1.1).Footnote ¹¹ The nomenclature of theatrical spaces was, furthermore, malleable.Footnote ¹² Although some sources seem to contrast ōideia with theatres as non-overlapping terms,Footnote ¹³ others use these terms interchangeably.Footnote ¹⁴ In texts concerning Athens, the lack of identifying qualifications suggests that the term ōideion often served as the proper name of a specific building, presumably Pericles’ Odeion, when no other ōideia required distinction. It is thus economical, though not certain, to treat Athenian references to an ōideion as pointing to that structure. Yet Pausanias complicates this: he notes that the Kerameikos Odeion, identified today as Agrippa’s, was locally called the ōideion, as if no other building deserved the name before Herodes Atticus’ Odeion existed. Notably, he does not apply the term to the structure resembling Xerxes’ tent, but various explanations for this omission have been offered.Footnote ¹⁵

Given the confusing nomenclature, it is unsurprising that scholars have struggled to distinguish and locate the ōideia mentioned in ancient sources. Systematic study of Athenian topography began in the Ottoman period, but early visitors showed little interest in the Odeion. Those exploring the area west and south of the Acropolis often misread the visible ancient buildings as philosophical schools and prioritized identifying the Areopagus (a site mentioned in the Bible). Interest in Athens’ theatrical landscape increased only with classically trained travellers, who sought the Odeion using ancient texts, including the testimonies discussed above. The first recorded attempt is that of André Guillet, whose 1669 travel account, though partly fabricated, drew on local information. He placed the Odeion west of the Acropolis near the Pnyx, but conflated it with the Theatre of Dionysos and offered an imaginative reconstruction (fig. 2 SM).Footnote ¹⁶

James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, who visited Athens between 1751 and 1753, identified the extant building today known as Herodes Atticus’ Odeion as the Theatre of Dionysos and, following Vitruvius, suggested that Pericles’ Odeion had stood further east, in the area where the true Theatre of Dionysos was later excavated.Footnote ¹⁷ Richard Chandler, who visited Athens in 1765, placed the Pnyx and the Theatre of Dionysos at their presently accepted sites and identified the building known today as Herodes Atticus’ Odeion as ‘the’ Odeion, amalgamating all ōideia of Athens mentioned in the texts into one site.Footnote ¹⁸

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, in his wildly popular Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce (1788), may have been the first to propose the presently accepted site of Pericles’ Odeion, east of the Theatre of Dionysos (fig. 3 SM).Footnote ¹⁹ Nevertheless, the idea is today usually attributed to William Leake, who in his Topography of Athens (1821) offered an explicit substantiation by combining the passages of Vitruvius, Pausanias and Plutarch.Footnote ²⁰ In the 19th century, excavations at the South Slope of the Acropolis confirmed the suspected locations of the Theatre and Sanctuary of Dionysos, the porticus Eumenicae mentioned by Vitruvius and Herodes Atticus’ Odeion (fig. 4). With these sites fixed, the literary passages on Pericles’ Odeion offered a straightforward path to its location east of the Theatre of Dionysos, as Wilhelm Dörpfeld concluded in a 1892 article.Footnote ²¹ Dörpfeld’s verdict was reasonable; but alternative locations for the Odeion were still viable.Footnote ²² Nevertheless, the identification was soon confirmed in new excavations.

Figure 4.

View of the Acropolis of Athens, looking north. In front of the Acropolis, from left to right: Herodes Atticus’ Odeion; the porticus Eumenicae; the Theatre of Dionysos; the site of Pericles’ Odeion (iStock/fabdrone). © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/Hellenic Organization of Cultural Resources Development (H.O.C.RE.D.) (L. 4858/2021). The monument is under the jurisdiction of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Athens City.

The Greek Archaeological Society performed excavations east of the Theatre of Dionysos under Panagiotis Kastriotis from 1914 until 1927 followed by Anastasios Orlandos from 1928 to 1931.Footnote ²³ Among the notable objects found in 1914 were geison fragments, an inscription mentioning the Cappadocian king Ariobarzanes, column elements, stone seats with owl supports (fig. 5 SM) and a marble head tentatively identified as Ariobarzanes due to its supposed Oriental appearance (fig. 6 SM). Kastriotis interpreted a destruction layer with ash, carbonized wood, burnt tiles and metal clamps as evidence of Sulla’s fire in the Mithridatic War.Footnote ²⁴

In 1915, a rectangular isodomic wall emerged. By 1926 it had been fully exposed (fig. 7; fig. 8 SM).Footnote ²⁵ To everyone’s great surprise, it appeared that the Odeion had had a rectangular shape: the textual sources mentioning a tent-like shape, as well as the Cratinus fragment in which Pericles was said to wear the Odeion on his head, had led to the idea that the Odeion had been a round building.Footnote ²⁶ Such a design was assumed in a drawing by Alessandro Sanquirico published in 1823 (fig. 9). Based on the ancient sources, the numismatist Athanasios Rousopoulos identified depictions of a remarkable, colonnaded building with a high triangular roof on Athenian coins as the Odeion (fig. 10 SM).Footnote ²⁷ The isodomic wall led to speculation that, while the Odeion’s plan was rectangular, its roof had been circular and supported by columns, which matched the two-dimensional depiction of the building on the coin. Kastriotis furthermore thought that the Odeion was depicted on a small circular bone object, possibly an entrance token, inscribed with Αἰσχύλου (‘of Aeschylus’) and seating numbers (fig. 11 SM).Footnote ²⁸

Figure 7.

Drawing of the excavation of the Odeion indicating isodomic wall attributed to the Odeion, underneath later structures (unknown artist, from Kastriotis (Reference Kastriotis1919a) 3; CC BY-ND 4.0).

Figure 9.

Reconstruction drawing of the Odeion by Alessandro Sanquirico; signed G. Castellini (public domain; from Ferrario (Reference Ferrario1823) pl. 102 after p. 678).

Further excavations revealed more significant structures, including column bases and a gate near the Sanctuary of Dionysos, identified as the ‘Propylaion of Dionysos’, which Andocides mentions in relation to the Odeion.Footnote ²⁹ Orlandos’ Reference Orlandos1931–Reference Orlandos1932 campaigns uncovered wall paintings, including a panel depicting a laurel wreath, a Panathenaic amphora and a palm branch (fig. 12), suggesting that the excavated building had a link with Panathenaic contests and thus supporting the identification as the Odeion, which is associated with the Panathenaia in several sources.Footnote ³⁰

Figure 12.

Panel painting depicting a laurel wreath, a Panathenaic amphora and a palm branch (from Orlandos (Reference Orlandos1931) 27; CC BY-NC-ND).

In the 1960s, Georgios Dontas discovered additional pillar foundations of the building in an area further south (fig. 13 SM), revealing its full dimensions of 62.4 × 68.6m and confirming that the structure had been a hypostyle hall with a 9 × 10 grid of columns.Footnote ³¹ This find revealed the Odeion as the largest roofed non-temple building in the Greek world. Various reconstructions were offered, by John Travlos (fig. 14), Anne-Lou Robkin (fig. 15) and Manolis Korres.Footnote ³² Subsequent explorations have been minor and large parts of the central area remain unexcavated.

Figure 14.

Plan of the Odeion depicting excavated and hypothetical parts (Travlos (Reference Travlos1971) fig. 502).

Figure 15.

Reconstruction of the Odeion by Anne Lou Robkin (from Robkin (Reference Robkin1976) 201–2).

The insight that the Odeion was a hypostyle hall may have been surprising, but it clarified a comment by Diodorus Siculus (1.48.5). He describes a rectangular colonnaded room in the mortuary temple of the Egyptian king Ozymandyas (Ramesses II) in Thebes (Luxor) as built ‘like an ōideion’. The room is identified with a well-preserved hypostyle room in the Ramesseum, which bears some resemblance to the similarly sized Athenian building (fig. 16 SM).Footnote ³³ This resemblance provides another, perhaps clinching, argument that the Athenian building is indeed the Odeion. Yet the hypostyle hall also has parallels in Greece itself: examples include the similarly sized Telesterion of Eleusis (54 × 54m) and the Thersilion of Megalopolis (66.6 × 52.4m), both of which have porticoes on the south side, and smaller buildings at Argos (fifth century) as well as at Delos, Dodona and Sikyon (third century).Footnote ³⁴ Like the Odeion, the hypostyle halls of Argos, Dodona and Megalopolis are located next to the local theatre.

However, the understanding of the Odeion as a hypostyle hall with 90 columns also raised doubts about the building’s function as a theatre. Indeed, ancient sources describe the Odeion not only as a venue for musical contests, but also as a law court, a grain distribution centre and a philosophers’ haunt. Some scholars propose that the Odeion was rather designed as a Panhellenic meeting hall or a music school.Footnote ³⁵ Yet, as Timothy Power points out, the etymology of the term ōideion as a ‘place of song’ demonstrates its basic association with music; even if other functions are attested, the annual musical contests in the Panathenaia took place here.Footnote ³⁶ Power suggests that the Odeion’s infrequent use for its intended purpose only contributed to its prestige.Footnote ³⁷

III. A Persian palace in Athens?

Despite (or perhaps because of) the Odeion’s ambiguous reconstruction and functionality, research on the building has increasingly focused on its reported Persian features: the use of wood from Persian ships in its roof and the building’s resemblance to Xerxes’ tent. In 1923, soon after the first excavations, the exploration of the Persian shape of the Odeion began with a bold idea from Ioannis Svoronos.Footnote ³⁸ He suggested that the Odeion might have taken the form of rectangular domed buildings seen in Persian architecture, such as the Sassanid palace in Sarvestan and the Palace of Ardashir in Firuzabad, both in what is now Iran. Among the parallels, the pointy-domed 13th-century Shahcheragh Shrine in Shiraz, Iran, stood out (fig. 17 SM).Footnote ³⁹ Svoronos thought that the Odeion had featured a similar dome, imitating the bulb of a squill (referenced by Cratinus with schinokephalos, ‘squill-headed’) because of its apotropaic properties (fig. 18). To support his idea, Svoronos associated the Odeion with similar buildings sporting a bulbous roof represented on Corinthian coins of the Imperial period (fig. 19 SM). These, he argued, represented the Odeion of Corinth mentioned by Pausanias (2.3.6), itself perhaps a Roman copy of the Athenian Odeion.Footnote ⁴⁰ Kastriotis was open to Svoronos’ comparisons.Footnote ⁴¹

Figure 18.

Reconstruction of the Odeion by Ioannis Svoronos (public domain; from Svoronos (Reference Svoronos1923) pl. 2.3).

In another line of thinking, the Odeion’s Persian characteristics influenced the development of the Theatre of Dionysos. James Allen suggested in 1941 that the wood from Persian ships washed ashore after the Battle of Salamis, later utilized in the Odeion’s construction according to Vitruvius, might have been used to build bleachers in the area where the Theatre of Dionysos was later erected.Footnote ⁴² However, there is a lack of textual and archaeological evidence for this idea. Allen’s scenario has not gained widespread acceptance.Footnote ⁴³

In 1944, Oscar Broneer proposed that Xerxes’ tent, captured at Plataia, had been erected near the Theatre of Dionysos and given its name to the skēnē, imagined as a Near Eastern-style palace façade with paraskēnia.Footnote ⁴⁴ Pericles’ Odeion, in this view, was a ‘petrified’ version of the palace hall. Broneer linked this to fifth-century ‘Persian’ tragedies (Phrynichus’ Halōsis Milētou and Phoinissai, and Aeschylus’ Persae) arguing that the palace imagery and Persian-style royal costumes in these plays reflected the presence of the tent. His theory has found little support.Footnote ⁴⁵ It cannot explain why the tent would have been put up beside rather than on the later stage-building site, and the term skēnē may instead derive from real performance tents used by travelling actors.Footnote ⁴⁶ The idea would be stronger if the stage building itself imitated Xerxes’ tent, but Vitruvius clearly distinguishes scaena and odeum (De arch. 5.9.1, also 5.5.1–7.2). Though Broneer’s theory is not accepted today, some scholars still view the Odeion and Theatre as related: Robkin proposed that the Odeion copied a real tent that once served as a tragic backdrop,Footnote ⁴⁷ and Lucia Athanassaki sees Euripides’ description of Ion’s birthday tent (Ion 1128–66) as a visual analogue to the Odeion.Footnote ⁴⁸

Dontas’ discovery that the Odeion had been a hypostyle hall gave a new direction to the exploration of the Persian features. In 1979, Hubert von Gall, like Svoronos long before him, looked to Iran for parallels.Footnote ⁴⁹ Hypostyle halls are well-known in Achaemenid Persian architecture, in particular at Persepolis, the dynasty’s residence built on an artificial terrace supporting grand royal palaces with ‘forests’ of columns. In antiquity, these structures were already renowned, as shown by their appearance in the work of Diodorus Siculus (1.46.4, 17.70.3). Hubertus von Gall drew attention to the largest building at Persepolis, the so-called Throne Room (or Hall of a Hundred Columns), an enormous hypostyle chamber (66.5 × 66.5m) begun by Xerxes I and finished by Artaxerxes I. In its dimensions, the Throne Room offers a particularly close parallel to the Odeion (66.4 × 60.2m) and the two buildings sport columns with a similar interaxial spacing (6m). To von Gall, these correspondences implied that the Athenian building was a copy of the Persian one. He further argued that both the Throne Room and the Odeion were designed like tents.Footnote ⁵⁰ The connection of the Odeion with the Throne Room of Persepolis is accepted by many scholars.Footnote ⁵¹

Leslie Shear acknowledged that the Odeion draws inspiration from Achaemenid architecture. However, he proposed that this influence did not come directly from Persepolis, but rather through the intermediary of the Persian royal tent, which arrived in Greece with Xerxes’ invasion. Thus, Plutarch and Pausanias were correct in recording that the Odeion resembled Xerxes’ tent. Shear dismisses the idea of a direct influence from Iran because Achaemenid palaces were characterized by flat roofs, whereas the Odeion featured a hipped roof (assuming Plutarch’s testimony is accurate).Footnote ⁵² The Odeion, with its roughly square shape, would imitate the central part of a palatial Achaemenid tent.Footnote ⁵³

The similarities in dimensions between the Throne Hall and the Odeion may appear significant. However, the correspondence could still be coincidental and is, in fact, not exact. For instance, the column grid of the Throne Room consisted of 10 × 10 columns, believed to symbolically reflect the 100 soldiers depicted in relief, whereas that of the Odeion is thought to have been 9 × 10. Though the axial intercolumniation might be the same (a somewhat speculative assumption because only a few column bases of the Odeion have been identified) it is not impossible that architects from different cultural backgrounds utilized this arrangement independently. Beyond the dimensions and extensive columniation, the Odeion differed significantly from the Throne Room.Footnote ⁵⁴ The latter sported two entrances on every side and had a rich sculptural relief programme, depicting the king engaged in combat with lions, monsters and soldiers, along with column capitals shaped like double bulls. Such features are not known to have existed at the Odeion.

In addition, the proposed correspondence rests on selective use of evidence. If the Odeion’s hypostyle form derived from Achaemenid models, then other Greek hypostyle halls should also show Persian influence, yet claims to this effect are unsubstantiated.Footnote ⁵⁵ The type did not spread in Greece only after the Odeion’s construction, since the Telesterion and the hypostyle hall at Argos predate it.Footnote ⁵⁶ Nor are hypostyle halls uniquely Persian; the Egyptian Ramesseum is a case in point. Ioulia Kaoura notes that no features of the Odeion can be identified as exclusively Achaemenid or foreign to Greek practice, and that the shapes of both Xerxes’ tent and the Odeion remain uncertain.Footnote ⁵⁷ She nonetheless concedes that the building’s open south porch and slender columns could have evoked a tent, reinforced by literary descriptions of one-sided tents such as that of Ptolemy II (Ath. 5.197a).Footnote ⁵⁸

IV. The Odeion as a victory monument

Despite the hazy nature of the Odeion’s reconstruction and Persian characteristics, the fact remains that Vitruvius referred to its inclusion of wood from Persian ships, and both Plutarch and Pausanias believed that the building was designed to resemble Xerxes’ tent. Drawing inspiration from ancient and modern interpretations of the Odeion’s skeuomorphism as a Persian tent or palace, scholars have attributed various symbolic meanings to the building, some of which are compatible.

An important and sensible line of inquiry is that the Odeion commemorated the Greek achievement of defeating the Persians.Footnote ⁵⁹ This clearly resonates with the literary sources for the Odeion, in particular the testimony of Vitruvius on the inclusion of war spoils in its construction.Footnote ⁶⁰ As is well known, the Persian Wars were etched in the collective memory of the Athenians, whose city the Persians had reduced to ashes.Footnote ⁶¹ At the time when the Odeion was created, in the later fifth century, this memory was significant, as the Achaemenid Empire remained a formidable power in the Aegean. In this political context, the Odeion’s shape was well-suited to aggrandizing Athens and justifying its imperial rule.Footnote ⁶²

The Odeion’s location near the Acropolis also deserves consideration. The memory of the Persian invasion was especially closely connected to the Acropolis, which had been the focus of the attack on Athens and was, according to Herodotus (8.53), entirely burned down. The Periclean edifices of the citadel, built to replace those destroyed, are thought to evoke a message of Persian sacrilege and Athenian victory in their use of materials, iconography and the preservation of ruined buildings nearby.Footnote ⁶³ Athens’ theatrical landscape developed and functioned against this spectacular backdrop full of memories of the Persian invasion. A scholiast on Aelius Aristides, Huper tōn tettarōn 161.13 reports that the Theatre was adorned with sculptures of Themistocles and Miltiades, Athenian generals in the Persian Wars, with captured Persians by their sides. Tragedies such as Phrynichus’ Halōsis Milētou and Aeschylus’ Persae brought this history to the stage in the Theatre. In this landscape, the Odeion may have functioned as a victory monument. In fact, as Power has pointed out, the Odeion itself was a venue for poetry and music addressing the vanquishing of Persia, including Timotheus of Miletus’ Persae,Footnote ⁶⁴ and may have underscored Athens’ hegemony in the field of music.Footnote ⁶⁵ The Oriental shape of the pavilion, he argues, would have fit the style of kitharōidia, which to Athenian audiences suggested Oriental glamour as it was thought to have been imported from Asia.Footnote ⁶⁶

Tied to the idea that the Odeion commemorated the defeat of the Persians is the notion that it emphasized the imperialism and self-assertion of Periclean Athens as a new world power following the victory over the Persians.Footnote ⁶⁷ Many scholars have speculated along these lines: Ruediger Meinel thought that the Odeion was a competitive statement of the Athenian democracy against Sparta, where a Persian stoa and skias stood;Footnote ⁶⁸ Shear argues that the Odeion emphasized the Athenian right to hegemony in the Greek world, accommodating the Athenian people like the Great King would his subjects;Footnote ⁶⁹ and the Odeion is also thought by some to have been the object of criticism among the Athenian people, who rejected its extravagance and ‘Medism’, or saw it as a threat to the old aristocracy.Footnote ⁷⁰ Ariobarzanes’ motivation to rebuild the Odeion, by contrast, has been interpreted as an expression of piety to his Persian ancestors or a means to stress his Persian pedigree to his Cappadocian subjects.Footnote ⁷¹

It is difficult, however, to decide which (if any) of these theories are correct, as we are not sufficiently informed by the literary sources about the ways in which the ensemble of buildings on and surrounding the Acropolis was perceived in antiquity.Footnote ⁷² The Odeion may have been designed with the memory of the Persian invasion in mind, but this symbolism could also have been generated in the gaze of later onlookers. The evocative stories about the use of Persian wood and the skeuomorphism as Xerxes’ tent date to between four to six centuries after the construction of the building, which then no longer existed in its original form.Footnote ⁷³ It is impossible to establish the accuracy of these stories, yet they certainly fit the interest of the Roman period, when the victory of Athens in the Persian Wars was a historical landmark.Footnote ⁷⁴

V. ‘Skenomania’

Whatever the significance of the Odeion’s Persian pedigree, its tent skeuomorphism also deserves consideration on its own terms. The notion of the luxurious tent is contradictory: a tent, normally seen as a temporary and modest structure unworthy of lavish spending, might appear to stand in stark contrast to opulence. Therefore, a luxurious tent can become a striking symbol of the wealth and extravagance of the person who owns or commissions it. This contrast underlies a fascination in various Greek texts with rich tents, such as Alcibiades’ Persian tent, set up by the Ephesians at Olympia,Footnote ⁷⁵ the tent of Ptolemy II in Alexandria with its luxurious decorationFootnote ⁷⁶ and Alexander the Great’s tent of 100 couches, where he entertained his guests with lavish banquets and concerts.Footnote ⁷⁷ On these parallels, the tent shape of Pericles’ Odeion evokes extravagant, perhaps non-Greek luxury.

I tentatively suggest that in addition to the general evocation of luxury, the choice of a tent-like design may have intentionally or unintentionally recalled a scene from the Iliad (9.182–204). In this passage, an envoy led by Odysseus visits Achilles’ opulent tent adorned with couches and purple rugs. Inside, they find Achilles playing the lyre and singing heroic songs to his friend Patroclus. Perhaps the imagery of this scene influenced the staging of music competitions in the Odeion, since such events could have been interpreted as a re-enactment of the epic scene. This idea must remain hypothetical, yet it aligns with Gregory Nagy’s observation that competitive performances of the Homeric works were a central element of the Panathenaia and likely took place in the Odeion, as supported by Hesychius’ definition of ᾠδϵῖον as the place where rhapsodes competed.Footnote ⁷⁸ The holding of these concerts at the Odeion may have recalled the Homeric scene and enriched the musical celebrations.

Tent skeuomorphism in architecture plays on the striking contrast of the tent as a temporary, mobile lodging and the durability and permanence of conventional architecture. When a permanent structure is designed to resemble a tent, it presents an architectural paradox of transient permanence, as seen in many modern examples of tent skeuomorphism in architecture (fig. 20 SM).Footnote ⁷⁹ It can be considered part of a wider phenomenon of skeuomorphism in Greek architecture symbolizing the immortalization of ephemeral, perishable elements, most famously the sculpted guttae, mutules, triglyphs and modillions in stone buildings instead of wooden pegs, beams and supports.

The paradox of transience and permanence helps to explain the ancient fascination with the vestiges of notable tents, as seen in examples encountered by Pausanias during his travels through Greece, including Artaphernes’ tent near Marathon (1.32.7), Orestes’ tent in front of the temple of Apollo at Troizen (2.31.8), the skēnōma at Sparta (3.17.6) and the bronze threshold of Agamemnon’s tent at Aulis (9.19.8). The persistence of traces of ancient structures that were not meant to last was a wonder to Pausanias and his local informants. Here, historical and mythical celebrities seemed to traverse the gap between the distant past and the present. Pericles’ Odeion, too, can be regarded as adhering to this principle, as it preserved the memory of Xerxes’ tent and with it the glory of Athens’ part in defeating the Persians. The Odeion’s later rebuilding by Ariobarzanes was a resurrection of that memory as well as of the glory of Pericles’ Athens.

VI. ‘Having the Odeion on his head’

Within the process of interpretation of the Odeion, the enigmatic fragment from Cratinus’ Thraittai, the earliest attestation of the building presented at the beginning of this article, has always played a special role. The passage is usually explained as a joke on Pericles’ strange head, shaped like a squill. This was his reason for always wearing a helmet.Footnote ⁸⁰ This idea is taken from Plutarch’s indication, immediately before his citation of the Cratinus fragment (Per. 3.4–5), that Pericles had a strangely shaped head and was therefore always represented in sculpture with a helmet. Plutarch also says that Pericles was called schinokephalos, a term derived from schinos, a synonym of skilla, the sea onion or squill (Urginea maritima). The bulb of this plant can reach an impressive size, comparable to the ‘head of a 10-year-old child’.Footnote ⁸¹ In a modern Greek tradition (at least in the 1920s), this plant was placed on graves, churches and houses for its protective qualities.Footnote ⁸²

As indicated above, before the Odeion’s excavation, the Cratinus passage was taken to imply that the building had been circular.Footnote ⁸³ However, the discovery that, in fact, it sported a rectangular ground plan complicates the standard reading: if the Odeion was rectangular, the comedy’s audience would not have understood the humour in the statement that Pericles was wearing the Odeion on his head.Footnote ⁸⁴ This problem led Svoronos to his unlikely reconstruction of the building as crowned by a bulb-like cupola.Footnote ⁸⁵ Since the discovery of the isodomic wall, it has generally been assumed that Pericles’ hat in the Cratinus fragment refers to the Odeion’s sloping roof. However, this reference does not solve the problem of the rectangular plan and its comical effect has been variously explained.Footnote ⁸⁶ The theories proposed do not offer immediate, compelling explanations of the comical effect, which will perhaps remain unknown as long as the play’s full text or information about its staging are unavailable. Yet Plutarch’s explanation of the Cratinus passage should not necessarily be trusted either; he could have misunderstood it, because he was working with collections of excerpts rather than with full texts.Footnote ⁸⁷ Gianfranco Mosconi has rightly pointed out that Plutarch’s information on the shape of Pericles’ head may be a late legend, especially as it was standard practice to depict generals with helmets.Footnote ⁸⁸ There is even some doubt whether Pericles was actually referred to in the passage in the first place.Footnote ⁸⁹

In harmony with the aforementioned hints that plays staged at the Theatre of Dionysos often seem to refer to the nearby and visible Odeion, I would tentatively propose that the line from Thraittai alludes to a hypothetical architectural element of the Odeion: an atlas sculpture. We have virtually no material evidence for the Odeion’s superstructure. Yet, if Pericles’ Odeion was indeed supported by atlantes, including a bearded Atlas possibly resembling Zeus, this feature may have invited theatrical allusion in the Theatre of Dionysos. Actors could have gestured towards the structure to their right, using the atlas as a visual joke aimed at Pericles, thereby giving rise to the description of him as ‘having the Odeion on his head’. The presence of atlas-style sculptures in later theatre architecture is well-documented, as seen in examples such as the theatrum tectum at Pompeii, the scene building of the theatre at Iaitas, the bema of the theatre at Sabratha and that of Phaidros at Athens’ own Theatre of Dionysos. The stage building of Herodes Atticus’ Odeion had a lavish sculptural programme as well.Footnote ⁹⁰ The strongest potential parallel can be seen in the Ancient Agora, where the entrance to Agrippa’s Odeion was embellished with colossal atlantes, featuring snake or fish tails and modelled after the Poseidon and Hephaestus in the Parthenon pediments (fig. 21). The surviving portions of the capitals of the piers behind these figures display an egg-and-dart motif beneath sprouting acanthus leaves.Footnote ⁹¹ Although it remains uncertain whether the inclusion of atlantes in the design of Agrippa’s Odeion cites a similar arrangement in Pericles’ Odeion, these examples serve as an illustration of the possible feature of Pericles’ Odeion that Cratinus may have jestingly referenced: the sculptures in Agrippa’s Odeion can be said to have worn the building on their heads and the lush vegetal ornamentation above their heads could have merited the designation schinokephalos.

Figure 21.

Atlantes at the Odeion of Agrippa at the Ancient Agora, Athens (Wikimedia Commons/George E. Koronaios/CC BY-SA 4.0). © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/Hellenic Organization of Cultural Resources Development (H.O.C.RE.D.) (L. 4858/2021). The monument is under the jurisdiction of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Athens City.

Slight support for the hypothesis that an atlas at the Odeion was interpreted as Pericles is offered by the well-known rumour, likewise discussed by Plutarch (Per. 31.4), that Pericles was depicted in the shield of the chryselephantine Athena statue in the Parthenon. This rumour may be a late invention;Footnote ⁹² but what is relevant is that a ‘cameo’ of Pericles was recognized in a high-profile sculpture in one of his projects. While we do not know if the Odeion had atlantes, or what they would have looked like, a depiction of a bearded god or mythological figure could have been regarded as a depiction of Pericles by the public, especially in a project that the general himself had supervised. This suggestion must remain tentative, but may offer a fresh perspective on Cratinus’ joke and the Odeion’s architecture.