Excavated evidence long ago convinced most archaeologists that the ancient Greeks knew little about the graceful art of arch building and practiced it less. Greek architects apparently preferred to cover the space between their classic columns with great stone beams called traves; discoveries indicated that the arch came into its own as a triumph of Etruscan and Roman engineering. Now Mario Napoli, superintendent of Excavations for Antiquities in Salerno, has dug up a chiseled arch that he feels sure is genuine Greek.
Napoli's arch, built in the 5th century B.C., at about the same time as the Parthenon, was found in the ruins of Elea, an ancient Greek port in the Magna Graecia area of southern Italy. The city dates from 535 B.C., when roving Ionic Greeks landed there after the Persians had driven them out of Phocaea in Asia Minor. Elea flourished as a trading center, a home of philosophers, and a watering place for wealthy Romans (Brutus took refuge there after he did in Julius Caesar). Though it had acknowledged the rule of Rome, the city remained Greek to the core until it vanished some time around the 8th century A.D.
Last year, after almost five years of systematic excavations of Elea, Napoli unearthed the arch in a high promontory that cut the old city in half. Built of reddish brown stone, measuring 20 ft. 2 in. high, 8 ft. 10 in. wide at the base and 20 ft. deep, the curving stone construction apparently held up an overpass on the road between the two parts of town. After months of careful analysis, Napoli only recently became convinced that it was Greek, and that the settlers who built it must have learned arch making in their former home in Asia Minor. The arch could not have been Etruscan: those artisans never got to the city. It was not Roman: they arrived long after the city was built. Moreover, Greek lettering on a marker at the base invokes the blessing and protection of the Greek god Zeus.
"Greek architecture," says Napoli, "reflects their airy feelings, their groping for space, for sky and sun. The arch simply didn't suit their tastes." But in southern Italy, he reasons, good marble is scarce, and the Greek settlers were forced to rely more upon arches than they had in the past. Napoli now speculates that the Etruscans, who are credited with teaching the Romans about arches, learned arch making from early Greek traders.