The largest planned Greek temple was begun around 530 B.C. in the Heraion of Samos (GR) and construction continued over the next 200 years. In order to reconstruct the places of the 155 columns, it was necessary to catalogue about 600 fragments of the column bases, consisting of Spira and Torus, for which the relevant pieces were drawn to scale 1:1. With the help of these drawings, 71 Spirae and 48 Tori were reconstructed. By means of typological comparisons, a relative chronology of the Samian Column Base was achieved, and from that an image of the temple's architecture with its different building phases was obtained. Furthermore striations proved that the enormous marble drums (their weight is about 2,5 tons with a diameter up to 2.30 m) were all worked turning around themselves. This important fact for the history of technology reveals the effective production of the tornos, a lathe, identified by Pliny to explain the technique by which the temple was built.
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The largest planned Greek temple was begun around 530 B.C. in the Heraion of Samos (GR) and construction continued over the next 200 years. In order to reconstruct the places of the 155 columns, it was necessary to catalogue about 600 fragments of the column bases, consisting of Spira and Torus, for which the relevant pieces were drawn to scale 1:1. With the help of these drawings, 71 Spirae and 48 Tori were reconstructed. By means of typological comparisons, a relative chronology of the Samian...
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