The Trophy, or the Odeon of Pericles (2003)

The Trophy is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation, in which he condenses his study and his concerns regarding crusial questions about the so-called Odeon of Pericles. For this monument of classical antiquity, supposedly constructed by Pericles even today we know next to nothing about it, except for its floor plan, which was revealed during the excavation at the site.

Therefore, our knowledge about the form, the date and the use of the monument will be limited exclusively to the interpretation of the information given in the philological sources: we have a multi-column edifice, which was confirmed by the excavation, and a polyhedron (πολύεδρο) of which the roof was constructed using the wood from the sunken Persian ships at Salamina. A different approach to this information leads inevitably to the conclusion that this multi-column monument is more closely linked to Themistocles, who built it as a trophy after his great victory, as well as that of the Athenians, and much less with Pericles, around three decades after the Persian Wars.