Burkhard Emme, Peristyl und Polis. Entwicklung und Funktionen öffentlicher griechischer Hofanlagen, Berlin – Boston (De Gruyter) 2013 (Urban Spaces 1) XVI, 487 S., 55 Abb., 99 Taf., ISBN 978-3-11-028065-4 (geb.) € 139,95

Public architecture can evoke powerful responses, as recent controversies to do with the construction of minarets in German speaking countries make clear. The book „Peristyl und Polis“ opens with a discussion of this modern debate in order to point to the tensions between form, function and meaning that architecture can embody. In the wake of the so-called spatial turn we all now know that societies exist in a dialectic relationship with the buildings they use, each shaping, and in turn being shaped, by the other. Taking this understanding as his point of departure, E(mme) sets out to explore the relationship between architecture and society for one of the most ubiquitous and versatile types of building in ancient Greek culture – the peristyle complex. The aim of the book, as set out in the introduction, is to explain how and why peristyle architecture first emerged in the Greek world, how it developed over time, how peristyle complexes served to bring structure to Greek cities and how these complexes were used and experienced. Chronologically the book covers the Archaic to late Hellenistic period, geographically the entire Greek Mediterranean but with most attention given to examples from Greece and Asia Minor. E. considers an impressive wealth of evidence and gives us many useful discussions of individual sites. The book, however, does more to reinforce expectations than to offer a new vision of either peristyle architecture or polis society. The discussion also suffers from a lack of organization.

„Peristyl und Polis“, a reworking of E.s PhD thesis, is divided into three main parts. The first part sets out the book’s aims and methodology, introduces the archaeological evidence and considers references to peristyle architecture in the ancient literary sources. These are surprisingly few in number, an issue I will return to below. Part two is a site-by-site discussion of individual peristyle buildings grouped according to category: sanctuaries, dining complexes, prytaneia (and related government buildings), gymnasia, market buildings and buildings used by (primarily religious) associations. The third part of the book explores the significance of peristyle complexes over three thematic chapters. The first of these focuses on architecture. It examines what made peristyle buildings suitable for the functions they accommodated and looks at what can be inferred about the way they were used and experienced from their layout and design; the second chapter considers the impact of statues and sculptural decoration; the third explores how peristyle complexes were used to bring structure („städtebauliche Gliederung“) to the urban landscape of cities. Part three concludes with two summaries of the book, one in German, the other in English. There is also a part four which consists of a catalogue of 86 peristyle buildings that usefully summarizes the key information relating to them as well as a bibliography, index and 99 site plans.

The discussions of individual sites in part one are thorough, in the best tradition of German archaeology. Twenty-six sites are discussed in detail and most of the sections include brief considerations of further examples. E. states that he has personally inspected almost all of the buildings discussed in the book and his knowledge of the sites is impressive. He presents the excavation history, an overview of the physical remains and discusses issues of dating and function. While E. considers interpretations of previous scholars, he also offers many new interpretations of these buildings, the most important of which are helpfully listed in the English summary. These include, to give just three examples: refutation of the idea that the so-called „North Market“ at Miletos was anything of the sort – it was a sanctuary throughout its history, the argument that a so-called „gymnasium“ at the same city was actually a sanctuary or centre of public administration, and a proposed new reconstruction of the Heroön of Calydon. There is a slight overemphasis on German language scholarship in this chapter. In considering the Messenian Asklepieion, for example, while Greek publications are cited, publications in German receive more explicit attention in the main text. These site discussions, nonetheless, provide an up-to-date account of modern scholarship and will be useful for anybody interested in these individual buildings.

It is, however, not clear how this detailed analysis of individual sites is meant to serve the broader interpretative arguments of part three. Some of the case-studies feature prominently in part three while others do not; conversely, buildings that are important for the argument there are not considered here. As a result, it is not clear why it is that these particular buildings – of the 86 in E.s catalogue – have been selected for such detailed consideration. Some of the choices are decidedly eccentric, such as the pi-shaped building at Brauron, which is neither a peristyle building nor a predecessor of a later peristyle complex. Other buildings that arguably do deserve more attention are not taken as case studies. For example, the well-known late 4^th-century Square Peristyle Building on the Athenian Agora is overlooked in part two. It is, however, discussed in part three, where E. states that it is the largest known peristyle building from the late Classical period. This fact alone suggests it is important enough to have warranted inclusion in part two. The agora of Pella, at present the earliest fully enclosed peristyle agora in the Greek world, is similarly ignored in part two and only mentioned in passing in part three. It is also puzzling why the Roman Agora at Athens receives detailed discussion when the, in many ways rather similar and contemporary, Tetragonos Agora at Ephesos does not.

Further problems relate to E.s classification of buildings in this section according to categories, some of which seem to be defined rather arbitrarily. Prytaneia, one of E.s categories, are, for example, notoriously difficult to recognize in the archaeological record and it might have been better just to speak more generally of „political and administrative buildings“ – particularly when E. has included the Athenian Metroön in this category, a building that was not a prytaneion nor, strictly speaking, an „Amtslokal“. The inclusion of the Roman Agora under „Marktanlagen“, while other agoras are not discussed here, also raises questions about the distinction between these two types of space (or indeed whether there is any meaningful distinction), which E. does not address. There is a section on agoras in part three, together with sections on two other important categories of peristyle building: palaces and houses. Again it is not clear why these categories of peristyle are dealt with in the third, more interpretative part of the book, and others in the second, more descriptive part. Furthermore, the discussion of houses in part three includes a digression on the impact of the Greek peristyle on Roman domestic architecture, which feels out of place considering that there is no such discussion for the corresponding connections between Greek and Roman public architecture.

There are certainly many interesting good ideas in the three interpretative chapters of part three, particularly those to do with how peristyles were experienced by ancient users. Chapter 3.1 contains some insightful comments on how monumental entrances may have shaped the transition from outside to inside on entering a peristyle, as well as a stimulating discussion of the issue of visibility within such complexes, wisely avoiding, for reasons set out in the introduction, attempts to use computer reconstruction. Chapter 3.2 is similarly enlightening as to the impact that statues and other sculptural decoration would have had on visitors to peristyle complexes, though the limitations of the evidence here are apparent. The only case study E. is able to find where there is good in situ archaeological evidence for statue bases is the Messenian Asklepieion and even there lack of inscriptions on most of the bases means that we can only speculate as to what these statues were. Nonetheless E. is right to emphasize the difference between these statues, probably votives or honorifics, set up during the „life“ of the complex and the (semi-)cultic statues in the complex’s western wing, which were set up in purpose-built oikoi to create a much more controlled viewing experience. E.s detailed discussion of the Kallistratos Inventory from Delos (ID 1417) provides a vivid sense of the range of cultural artifacts that could be displayed in a peristyle sanctuary, although his assumption that most of these objects were statues is questionable and the inscription is less instructive as to where exactly these objects stood than E. suggests.

The case studies that E. has chosen to look at in chapter 3.3, in order to examine how peristyle buildings were used to structure the urban landscape of entire cities, present problems that E. should at least have acknowledged. While knowledge of the city plans of ancient Miletos and Pergamon is fairly complete – though even here there are problems of interpretation to do with dating and function – this is hardly true of Megalopolis and even less so for Athens. At Megalopolis the agora is well known and two important peristyle complexes have been discovered there, the Sanctuary of Zeus Soter and the Demosia Oikia; the stoas around the agora are also useful for thinking about the enclosure of public space. But the rest of the city is not well known. Knowledge of the topography of Athens is even patchier. Whole areas of the civic centre remain buried beneath the modern town and several major buildings known from literary sources and inscriptions, and which may potentially have been peristyle buildings, such as the Theseion, the Gymnasium of Ptolemy and the Prytaneion, have yet to be discovered. The fragmentary picture that results has repercussions for what the evidence allows us to say about the use of peristyle architecture to shape the city. Unfortunately, the limitations of the evidence are not reflected on here. Due to a lack of peristyle buildings at Athens E. discusses buildings that were not really peristyles at all, such as the presumed court buildings in the north of the square and the archaic Building F, excavated beneath the Tholos. Furthermore, in discussing this last building E. ignores the extremely pertinent and ongoing controversy about what exactly Building F was and when the Classical Agora became the agora of the city. John Papadopoulos has argued that Building F was a private house or workshop and that the agora only became the main public square of the city in the second quarter of the 5^th century BC. That interpretation, if right, would have profound repercussions for E.’s interpretation of the urban development of Athens, which rests on the assumption that the Classical Agora already existed in the 6^th century and that Building F must therefore be a public building. This issue should at least have been mentioned here.

Two of E.s most important arguments in part three are: (i) that the first peristyle complexes were generally not built to accommodate completely new functions but rather to house activities that had previously taken place either in the open or in other buildings at the same location, and (ii) that while the first peristyles were very specialized in terms of function, the second half of the Hellenistic period witnessed an increase in complexity whereby it became more common for peristyle structures to include a greater number of rooms for housing a greater variety of activities. Although both arguments are largely persuasive, in the case of the first it is worth stressing that there is some danger of circular reasoning inasmuch as archaeologists have a tendency to assume that the function of predecessors of later buildings was the same as their successors’, when often there is little concrete evidence. For instance, the interpretation that the buildings beneath the Athenian Metroön must have been a forerunner of the state archive rests solely on that being one of the main functions of the later building. As a caveat to the second argument I would suggest that E. has perhaps been rather selective in the examples he has chosen to illustrate it. The late 3^rd-/early 2^nd-century Messenian Asklepieion was indeed a more complex building than the late 4^th-century sanctuary of Zeus on the agora of Megalopolis. However, the Demosia Oikia, also on the agora of Megalopolis, was arguably a closer analogy for the Asklepieion and that building upsets E.s chronological development because it was, as E. himself discusses, built in the 4^th century. I am also unconvinced that the Roman Agora at Athens represents a completely different, more multi-purpose, conception of commercial space than earlier peristyle markets, as E. suggests on the grounds that there was a fountain and potentially a cult place in its southern wing. The fountain was rather small and unobtrusive and the identification of the cult place far from certain; the best indications are that the complex as a whole was primarily a food market and that trade was the most important and most visible function.

Some of E.s other overarching arguments to do with the significance of peristyle buildings are rather self-evident. In chapter 3.1 we learn that peristyle architecture was inward looking and that peristyle buildings served to create exclusive spaces to distinguish insiders from outsiders. „Exklusivität“ is a word that crops up a lot throughout the book. Yet differentiating users and non-users is surely what most buildings do and the argument that this is what peristyle buildings were designed to achieve is rather obvious. In chapter 3.2 E. argues that the types of statues erected in particular peristyle buildings were designed to contribute to the creation of particular „Lebenswelten“, stressing the ubiquity of statues of Herakles and Hermes in gymnasia as an example. Yet, this thematic use of sculpture will be familiar to any scholar of the ancient world and E. has little new to add as to how exactly these statues were experienced or affected the use of the complexes in which they stood. Equally unsurprising are the connections that E. stresses in chapter 3.3 between the emergence of stoas and peristyle buildings and between both types of building and the emergence of other types of specialized public architecture such as theatres and stadia all at around the same time in the late Classical/early Hellenistic period. The increasing differentiation of public space in the late Classical/early Hellenistic polis is well known and E. offers no new explanations for these phenomena. Similarly, his conclusion that sanctuaries underwent a parallel development towards segregation of different areas will be familiar to anybody familiar with the history of spatial development of Olympia, Delphi or Epidauros.

There are two main reasons why the discussion of such issues lacks depth here. In the first place, there is no real attempt to link the discussion of the evolution of peristyle buildings to historical debates about the nature of polis society in Classical and Hellenistic times. The lion’s share of attention goes to buildings so that the reader is given rather more „Peristyl“ than „Polis“. Secondly, the discussion is surprisingly untheoretical for a book that opens with a modern analogy and a figure illustrating the complexity of the relationship between space and society. This suggests that it would have been useful to draw on the extensive literature on the space-society relationship that has been generated by the humanities and social sciences over the last few decades. This work could have offered ways of thinking about what exactly was particular to Greek society about the meaning and significance of peristyle architecture. There is, however, no theoretical underpinning to the discussion here. The interpretative concepts used, „Exklusivität“, „städtbauliche Gliederung“, „Sinngebung und Sinngehalt“, are nowhere defined or explicitly discussed. Inferences are made about the ways in which architecture determined use and shaped the urban landscape as though such things can simply be read from archaeological remains and reconstructed site plans. The bibliography is extensive but strikingly does not include a single title that does not directly have to do with Classical archaeology. Furthermore, among the archaeological titles works by scholars who have taken a more theoretically informed approach to ancient public space are conspicuous by their absence. The work of Susan Alcock and Fikret Yegül could have been profitably engaged with here. A more puzzling omission for a German book is the work of Paul Zanker.

When it comes to the meaning of peristyle architecture, perhaps the main reason that the book falls short of the promise of the introduction is that peristyle buildings are not really much like minarets at all. Minarets certainly are deeply imbued with cultural meaning, perhaps the most potent architectural symbol of Muslim culture; they are also constructed to serve a single predominant purpose – to provide an elevated position for the Muezzin to make the call to prayer. Peristyle architecture by contrast, as E.s book ably demonstrates, was remarkably versatile, could be employed for a wide range of different purposes and was not a clear symbol of anything in particular. As E. himself points out peristyles were not unique to the ancient Greeks. He cites examples mentioned by Herodotus in ancient Egypt and, in returning to the question of the minaret in his conclusion, points out how they have also become a common feature of mosques. The cloisters of medieval monasteries and universities also spring to mind. Buildings associated with particular spheres of activity such as temples, gymnasia or prytaneia, or indeed mosques and minarets, may conjure up a range of connotations for the cultures that use them. The category „peristyle buildings“, however, is of a different order altogether – it represents classification by form rather than function. The fact that peristyle architecture did not make a deep impression on the Greek cultural imagination is suggested by the scarcity of literary references. The only ancient literary source that E. is able to find to peristyles, which unequivocally has to do with enclosed colonnaded squares of the type he is interested in as opposed to temples with a continuous external colonnade, is by Vitruvius and is therefore outside both the period and the culture that is his focus. It is hard to think of a modern type of building type that can be used for so diverse a range of purposes but a modern office block, which might accommodate a solicitor’s practice, an advertising bureau or even a doctor’s surgery is perhaps a closer parallel than the minaret. Like office architecture in modern cities peristyle buildings seem to have been something that most ancient Greeks took for granted much as most of us take our office blocks for granted.

Without reinforced concrete, electric lighting or air-conditioning, surrounding a rectilinear area of open space with a continuous colonnade was surely the most natural way for pre-modern societies to use architecture to demarcate areas for different functions and different types of users, whether in private or public space; this arrangement was particularly suited to warm climates where much activity could take place out of doors and where colonnades could provide shelter from extremes of heat or cold or rain. Still, the extent to which the peristyle was used by the Greeks – both in terms of the diversity of function and the numbers of individual buildings to be found in most larger cities – certainly was unique to the world of the polis. The Greeks may well have taken these buildings for granted but from our privileged vantage point as outside observers we can see their importance and agree with E. that they have something important to teach us about polis society. This book is only partially successful in casting light on what exactly it is that peristyle buildings can teach us but it is a step in the right direction and should serve as the foundation for future research.