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The Upper Theatre at Balboura

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Lionel Bier
Lionel Bier
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
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Extract

The archaeological survey of Balboura in northern Lycia conducted between 1985 and 1990 under the direction of J. J. Coulton permitted the recording of a number of architectural monuments including two theatres. The first, located at the edge of the valley 200 metres south of the Roman town, was studied during the 1987 season and has been presented in a previous issue of Anatolian Studies as an unfinished monument of the late Roman period. The second theatre, situated on the steep southern slope of the acropolis hill some 70 metres above the floor of the gorge, was surveyed in the summer of 1990 and is the subject of this paper (Figs. 1, 2, 3).

The monument was first described—briefly and without drawings—by Spratt and Forbes who made a hurried survey of the city site in 1842. Peterson and Von Luschan came through in 1882 and later published without comment the first photograph showing the impressive levelling platform that supported the scene building. The only study in modern times has been that of de Bernardi Ferrero which appeared in the second volume of her monumental corpus of classical theatres in Asia Minor. Time apparently did not permit a thorough survey which is hardly surprising considering the enormous scope of her undertaking but her observations, as far as they go, are sound, and her photographs numerous and well chosen. De Bernardi Ferrero's graphic documentation is inadequate, however, especially as regards the original appearance of the stage building which, although almost thoroughly denuded, provides more surface clues than her drawings indicate. Her late Hellenistic designation for the building, which remains unexcavated and has produced no inscriptions, is, in any case, accepted here.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 44 , December 1994 , pp. 27 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1994

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References

1 The present study formed part of the survey of Balboura conducted under the auspices of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and supported also by the British Academy, the Oxford University Craven Committee, and Merton College, Oxford. We are grateful to the General Directorate of Monuments and Museums of the Turkish Ministry of Culture, to the staff of the Fethiye Museum, and our Turkish Government representative, Bay Nurettin Celem of Eskişehir Museum for much practical assistance. I wish to thank Janet DeLaine for her help in the survey of the theatre, and J. J. Coulton for his incisive criticism at every stage of this project.

2 Bier, L., “The Lower Theatre at Balboura,” (1990) AS XL, 69 ffGoogle Scholar.

3 Spratt, T. A. B. and Forbes, E., Travels in Lycia, Milyas and the Cibyratis (1847) I, 269 fGoogle Scholar.

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6 Webster, T. B. L., Griechische Bühnenaltertümer (Studienhefte zur Altertumswissenschaft, Heft 9 (1963), 11 ff.Google Scholar; Monuments Illustrating New Comedy 2nd. ed. (1969), 78 ff.Google Scholar; Monuments Illustrating Tragedy and Satyr Play, 2nd. ed. (1967). See also Bieber, M., The History of the Greek and Roman Theater (1939), passimGoogle Scholar.

7 The ancient sources have been collected and discussed in RE 5 (1934), col. 2473 ffGoogle Scholar. (“technitai”). For summary, see Pickard-Cambridge, A., The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (1953), 288 ffGoogle Scholar.

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16 Ibid., pls. 25 and 37 for reconstruction.

17 Teatri classici II, figs 173 (Pinara), 187 (Patara). This block was discovered in the debris by Janet DeLaine.

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23 Ibid., 61 ff.

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26 Von Gerkan, Das Theater von Priene, pl. XVIII.

27 See Dinsmoor, , The Architecture of Ancient Greece, 301 and n. 2Google Scholar.

28 The basic publication is Bacon, F., Clarke, J. and Koldewey, R., Investigations at Assos (1902), 121 ffGoogle Scholar. and plan. p. 123. The scene building measures 19·14 m. long and 7·02 m. deep.

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34 Ibid., 174 f. According to his rudimentary account, the front wall of the stage building at Halicarnassus was more than two metres thick and would have supported a scaenae frons articulated by plinths, columns and aediculae. This he dates on the style of its fallen decoration to the late second century B.C. Poorly preserved examples at Mytilene on Lesbos and Orchomenos in Boeotia were apparently built along the same lines.

35 Cf. M. Waelkens, “The Adoption of Roman Building Techniques in the Architecture of Asia Minor,” in Roman Architecture in the Greek World, ed. S. Macready and F. Thompson, passim.

36 Coulton, J. J., “Roman Aqueducts in Asia Minor,” Roman Architecture in the Greek World, 80Google Scholar. Waelkens, , “The Adoption of Roman Building Techniques,” 98Google Scholar.

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40 For photographs, see Teatri classici IV, fig. 228, 229. For a recent discussion of the city and its monuments, see Knoblauch, P. and Witschel, C., “Arykanda in Lykien,” Archäologischer Anzeiger (1993), 229 ff.Google Scholar, who state that the stadium is difficult to date because of the succession of building phases.

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43 I would like to thank Richard Stone for guidance in the subject of cements and mortars.

44 See, for example, Dinsmoor, , The Architecture of Ancient Greece, 301Google Scholar, n., and Winter, F., “The Stage of New Comedy,” Phoenix (The Classical Association of Canada) 37 (1983), 40 fGoogle Scholar.

45 Personal communication, J. J. Coulton. See preliminary report by Catling, P. and Roberts, P. on the Balboura survey pottery study in AS XLI (1991), 19Google Scholar.

46 Teatri classici II, 91 ffGoogle Scholar. Dr. Coulton informs me that “N. Milner…confirmed the existence of a Julio-Clauden inscription on the pillar at the end of the parapet of the analemma of the theatre at Oenoanda,” and that Milner feels that it is probably associated with the original construction.

47 See, for example, the cenotaph of Gaius Caesar at Limyra, Borchhardt, J., in JDAI 89 (1974), 217 ffGoogle Scholar.

48 Bier, , “The Lower Theatre at Balboura,” 78Google Scholar.

49 See Magie, D., Roman Rule in Asia Minor (1950), 19Google Scholar; Seddon, L., The Agora Stoas at Assos, Aigai and Termessos, Diss. U.C.L.A. (1987), 102Google Scholar.

50 Ghione, P., “I communi del regno di Pergamo,” in Memorie Reale accad. delle scienze LV (1905), 132 (66)Google Scholar; Hansen, E., The Attalids of Pergamon (1971), 288Google Scholar; Seddon, , The Agora Stoas, 111, 115Google Scholar; Coulton, , AS XXXII (1982), 130Google Scholar.

51 AS XXVI (1976), 196Google Scholar; Coulton, , AS XXXII (1982), 121 ffGoogle Scholar.

52 Coulton, , AS XXXII (1982), 121Google Scholar.

53 See the terracing of the sanctuary of Demeter, AA (1970), 392Google Scholar. For pseudo-ashlar masonry with an undecorated projecting string course, see AA (1976), 327Google Scholar, fig. 23. Polygonal masonry at Pergamon does not resemble that of the upper theatre at Balboura. See AA (1977), 309Google Scholar.

54 See Seddon, , The Agora Stoas, 99 ffGoogle Scholar.

55 RE 5 (1934) col. 2497Google Scholar. See Milner, N., AS XLI (1991), 90 for the technitai in the Roman periodGoogle Scholar.