Decimus Cossutius

"Cossutius" redirects here. For other members of the family, see Cossutia gens.
Decimus Cossutius
CitizenshipRoman
OccupationArchitect
Years activec. 175 BCE
Known forContinuation of the construction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens
FamilyGens Cossutia
PatronAntiochus IV Epiphanes

Decimus Cossutius[a] (fl. c. 175 BCE) was an ancient Roman architect. He is both the first known Roman architect known by name and one of the earliest Romans known to have resided in the city of Athens. A Roman citizen from a minor plebeian family, he may have trained in architecture either in Campania or in Greece, and possibly had personal or family business interests in marble quarrying. Around 175 BCE, he was commissioned by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes to continue the construction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, which had been unfinished since its first phase of construction was abandoned around 510 BCE.

Cossutius planned his continuation of the Temple of Olympian Zeus as a large building in the Corinthian order, with two rows of columns in its peristasis (colonnade) and an additional third row of columns along the east and west sides. It is debated whether he intended the central cella to be roofed or open to the air, but no roof had been constructed by the time of Antiochus's death in November 164 BCE. Without its patron, construction ceased: parts of the temple, including the outer colonnade of the southeast corner, had been built up to the height of the epistyle (architrave beam). According to the Roman architectural writer Vitruvius, Cossutius's work was highly regarded by experts and laypeople in architecture alike.

The Temple of Olympian Zeus was eventually finished under the Roman emperor Hadrian in 138 CE; this final phase largely followed Cossutius's plan. Cossutius may also have worked for Antiochus on other projects; scratched inscriptions bearing his name are known from an aqueduct at Antioch, Antiochus's capital, perhaps made by workers in his employ. Glanville Downey suggests that Antiochus may have employed Cossutius in his project to construct a new district for Antioch, known as Epiphania, and that he may have designed the city's temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

Biography

Early life and origins

Decimus Cossutius[a] is the first Roman architect known by name,[2] and one of the earliest Romans known to have resided in Athens.[3] He was a Roman citizen, and the first known prominent member of the gens Cossutia, a minor plebeian family which became important in the supply, carving and architectural employment of stone in the Roman world.[4] On the grounds of the forenames (praenomina) and epithets (cognomina) used by the gens, Mario Torelli suggests that they originated in Italy, perhaps in the upland region of Sabina near Rome.[5]

Cossutius probably originated in Campania, a wealthy region to the south of Rome heavily influenced by Greek culture.[2] He may have trained as an architect either in Campania or in Greece;[6] Elizabeth Rawson suggests that Cossutius's family may have lived in Athens.[7] The later Roman architectural writer Vitruvius, who lived in the 1st century BCE, writes of Cossutius as being among antiqui nostri ('our ancestors'), whom he contrasts with Greek architects. Herbert Abramson infers from this that he was probably a Roman citizen by birth rather than by acquisition.[8] Torelli suggests that Cossutius, like the contemporary Greek architect Hermogenes of Priene, may have been a quarry-manager as well as an architect,[9] and that his family may already have had mining interests which aided him in securing architectural work.[9]

Work on the Temple of Olympian Zeus

Around 175 BCE,[11] Cossutius was commissioned by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes to continue the construction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens.[2][b] Vitruvius uses the rare Latin verb architector to describe Cossutius's role, which James Anderson considers to imply that he was responsible for the design and planning of the whole project.[16] The temple's construction had been initiated by the Athenian tyrants Hipparchus and Hippias (known as the Peisistratids after their father, Peisistratus) around 515 BCE, and it had been planned to be the largest temple in mainland Greece,[c] constructed in the Doric order and based upon a stylobate measuring 107 by 41 metres (350 by 130 ft).[18] However, the tyranny of the Peisistratids was overthrown around 510 BCE, and construction of the temple abandoned;[11] some of its column drums were built into the city's defensive walls in 479 BCE.[19]

Vitruvius describes Cossutius as possessing both scientia ('knowledge') and sollertia, a word which P. H. Schrijvers translates as 'practical skill'.[20] His architectural style followed the norms of the Greek tradition, with no discernible Italic influence.[15] Earlier efforts to finish the temple, at some point after the death of the statesman Lycurgus in about 325 BCE, had used marble from Mount Pentelicus,[11] considered of particularly high quality and widely used in monuments and sculptures in fifth-century Athens.[21] Cossutius's continuation used the same material, but changed the order of the temple to Corinthian.[11][d] The total structure was 110 by 43 metres (360 by 140 ft) in area, with two rows of columns in its peristasis (colonnade), an additional third row of columns along the east and west sides, a width of eight columns across its front, and of twenty (rather than the twenty-one planned for the Peisistratid temple) along each side.[23] He built on top of the existing substructures, which were slightly adjusted in places, and retained the lower steps on the west front (the remainder being replaced with marble);[24] he also reused column drums intended for the Peisistratid temple as foundations for his own columns.[25] Hugh Plommer describes the style of capitals used by Cossutius as "stiffly orthodox", which he views as a reaction against the "impurity" of contemporary buildings elsewhere in the Mediterranean which mixed elements of different architectural orders.[26] In addition to the strictly architectural aspects of the temple, Cossutius designed the decoration of the epistyle (the architrave beam) and the ornamental aspects of its architecture.[27] A statue base found near temple in the early nineteenth century bore an inscription in Greek honouring "Decimus Cossutius, son of Publius, a Roman",[29] and is thought to refer to the architect.[30]

Vitruvius's account is the only ancient text describing in detail Cossutius's work on the Temple of Olympian Zeus;[31] Cossutius left no written plans for how his work was intended to continue.[32] Vitruvius uses it as an exemplar of a hypaethral temple (that is, one where the central cella was open to the air, rather than being roofed).[33] R. E. Wycherley treats this as evidence that it was intended to be unroofed in its final iteration, though Wolfram Hoepfner believes that it was intended to be roofed, based on parallels with other large temples with double colonnades,[34] and that Vitruvius or his source was misled by the fact that this roof was never constructed.[32] Noting that it was usual practice for the order of columns to increase in elaboration from the exterior of the temple to the interior, Hoepfner suggests that Cossutius planned either to employ Composite columns, which combined elements of the Corinthian and Ionic orders, or to invent his own form of capital.[32][e]

By the time of Antiochus's death in November of 164 BCE,[38] parts of the temple had been constructed to the height of the architrave, but the structure was unfinished. Building work was stopped,[19] probably as the king's death removed its source of funding.[39] According to Vitruvius, the work was highly regarded by experts and laypeople in architecture alike; Wycherley considers that its key components were probably complete by the time Vitruvius saw it.[33] The Roman general Sulla, who besieged and captured Athens in 86 BCE, took columns from the temple to Rome: Wycherley considers these to have been unused parts, perhaps originally intended for the inner peristasis, from Cossutius's project.[40] The eventual completion of the temple's construction, finished under the Roman emperor Hadrian (r. 117 – 138 CE) and generally assumed have been dedicated in 131/2 CE,[41] largely followed the template begun by Cossutius.[42]

Other architectural work

Two inscriptions of Cossutius's name, in Latin characters, have been found at Antioch, Antiochus's capital, scratched into the channel of an aqueduct dated to the second century BCE.[44] These may have been made by Cossutius himself or workers in his employ, and have been taken as evidence by Glanville Downey that Antiochus employed Cossutius in his project to construct a new district for Antioch, known as Epiphania, which included the construction of a new agora (marketplace) and bouleuterion (assembly building).[45] Downey suggests that he may have been tasked with designing the city's temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and perhaps other monuments.[46] Anderson points out that the fact that the Antioch inscriptions were made in Latin letters indicates that Cossutius's workforce included Latin speakers, and infers from this that Cossutius was normally based in Italy, rather than in Athens.[6] He may also have worked on buildings in other Greek cities funded as gifts by Antiochus.[2] The first marble temple in Rome was constructed in the 140s BCE, and Anderson speculates that Cossutius may have been responsible for its construction, if he were still alive.[47]

Footnotes

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ a b Also spelled Quossutius, by Vitruvius.[1]
  2. ^ R. E. Wycherley commented in 1964 that "why Antiochos selected a Roman is still a mystery".[12] Andrew Stewart suggests that Antiochus's time as a hostage in Rome, between c. 187 and 178/177 BCE, gave him "a healthy respect for Roman efficiency and engineering skill".[13] Olga Palagia writes that Antiochus's patronage of Cossutius reflected his broader association with Rome,[14] while James Anderson considers it a result of his "Romanophile instincts" dating from his captivity.[15]
  3. ^ Larger temples were known in Ionia, specifically the Heraion (temple of Hera) on the island of Samos;[11] the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, whose construction began around 560–550 BCE, was of similar size.[17]
  4. ^ This made the building the first known large temple to use Corinthian columns on the outside, rather than purely internally, though Hugh Plommer considers that earlier examples probably existed.[22]
  5. ^ As parallels, Hoepfner adduces the Belevi Mausoleum, constructed probably in the early third century BCE,[35] which used Composite columns, and the later Temple of Apollo Sosianus, constructed in Rome between 34 and 20 BCE,[36] which used novel variations on the Corinthian order.[37]

References

  1. ^ Anderson 1997, p. 19.
  2. ^ a b c d Campbell 2007, p. 315.
  3. ^ Habicht 1997, p. 12.
  4. ^ Rawson 1975, pp. 36–37; Russell 2013, p. 205 (for the family's involvement in the stone industry). For the rank of the gens Cossutia, see Jiménez 2000, p. 13.
  5. ^ Torelli 1980, pp. 318–319.
  6. ^ a b Anderson 1997, p. 21.
  7. ^ Rawson 1975, p. 37.
  8. ^ Abramson 1974, pp. 2–3, citing Vitruvius, De architectura 7, pr. 18.
  9. ^ a b Torelli 1980, p. 319.
  10. ^ Abramson 1974, pp. 4–5.
  11. ^ a b c d e Sakka 2024, p. 165.
  12. ^ Wycherley 1964, pp. 168–169.
  13. ^ Stewart 2014, pp. 91–92. For the dates of Antiochus's captivity, see Scolnic 2014, p. 4.
  14. ^ Palagia 1997, p. 92, n. 5.
  15. ^ a b Anderson 1997, p. 22.
  16. ^ Anderson 1997, p. 20.
  17. ^ Klein 2010, p. 211; DeLaine 2024, p. 29.
  18. ^ Sakka 2024, p. 165. For the temple's order, see Campbell 2007, p. 208.
  19. ^ a b Campbell 2007, p. 208.
  20. ^ Schrijvers 1987, p. 51, citing Vitruvius, De architectura 7, pr. 15.
  21. ^ Gill 2013, p. 475.
  22. ^ Plommer 1963, p. 264.
  23. ^ In architectural parlance, the temple was octastyle and dipteral: Campbell 2007, p. 208; Wycherley 1964, p. 170 (for the number of columns).
  24. ^ Wycherley 1964, p. 170.
  25. ^ Abramson 1974, p. 2.
  26. ^ Plommer 1963, pp. 262–264.
  27. ^ Frazer 1898, p. 178.
  28. ^ Rawson 1975, p. 43, n. 9.
  29. ^ Dodwell 1819, p. 391 (the original report of the inscription); Abramson 1974, p. 3; Carlà-Uhink 2017, p. 322. The inscription is known by the reference number IG II–III2 4099, or IG III.1.561.[28]
  30. ^ Carlà-Uhink 2017, p. 322.
  31. ^ Abramson 1974, p. 2, citing Vitruvius, De architectura 7, pr. 15.
  32. ^ a b c Hoepfner 1997, p. 294.
  33. ^ a b Wycherley 1964, p. 169.
  34. ^ Hoepfner 1997, pp. 291–293.
  35. ^ For the date, see Webb 1996, p. 76.
  36. ^ For the date, see Stamper 2005, p. 120.
  37. ^ Hoepfner 1997, pp. 294–295.
  38. ^ Campbell 2007, p. 208. For the date of Antiochus's death, see Momigliano 1994, p. 38.
  39. ^ Stewart 2014, p. 92.
  40. ^ Wycherley 1964, pp. 170–171. For the date of Sulla's siege of Athens, see Dillon & Garland 2005, p. 513.
  41. ^ Camp 2001, p. 201.
  42. ^ Boëthius & Ward-Perkins 1970, p. 382.
  43. ^ Downey 1961, p. 103, n. 81.
  44. ^ Downey 1961, p. 103. The inscriptions are numbered as IGLS 825.[43]
  45. ^ Downey 1961, pp. 101–103.
  46. ^ Downey 1961, p. 103.
  47. ^ Anderson 1997, p. 23.

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