Decimus Cossutius

Early life and origins

Decimus Cossutius^[a] is the first known Roman architect,^[2] and one of the earliest Romans known to have resided in Athens.^[3] He was a Roman citizen, and a member of the gens Cossutia, a minor plebeian family.^[4] On the grounds of the forenames (praenomina) and epithets (cognomina) used by the gens, Mario Torelli suggests that they originated in Italy, perhaps in the upland region of Sabina near Rome.^[5]

Decimus is the first known prominent member of the gens Cossutia, which became important in the supply, carving and architectural employment of stone in the Roman world.^[6] He probably originated in Campania, a wealthy region to the south of Rome heavily influenced by Greek culture.^[2] He may have trained as an architect either in Campania or in Greece;^[7] Elizabeth Rawson suggests that Cossutius's family may have lived in Athens.^[8] The later Roman architectural writer Vitruvius, who lived in the 1st century BCE, writes of Cossutius as being among antiqui nostri ('our ancestors'), whom he contrasts with Greek architects. Herbert Abramson infers from this that he was probably a Roman citizen by birth rather than by acquisition.^[9] Torelli suggests that Cossutius, like the contemporary Greek architect Hermogenes of Priene, may have been a quarry-manager as well as an architect,^[10] and that his family may already have had mining interests which aided him in securing architectural work.^[10]

Work on the Temple of Olympian Zeus

Around 175 BCE,^[12] Cossutius was commissioned by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes to continue the construction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens.^[2][b] Vitruvius uses the rare Latin verb architector to describe Cossutius's role, which James Anderson considers to imply that he was responsible for the design and planning of the whole project.^[17] The temple's construction had been initiated by the Athenian tyrants Hipparchus and Hippias (known as the Peisistratids after their father, Peisistratus) around 515 BCE, and it had been planned to be the largest temple in mainland Greece,^[c] constructed in the Doric order and based upon a stylobate measuring 107 by 41 metres (350 by 130 ft).^[19] However, the tyranny of the Peisistratids was overthrown around 510 BCE, and construction of the temple abandoned;^[12] some of its column drums were built into the city's defensive walls in 479 BCE.^[20]

Cossutius's architectural style followed the norms of the Greek tradition, with no discernible Italic influence.^[16] Earlier efforts to finish the temple, at some point after the death of the statesman Lycurgus in about 325 BCE, had used marble from Mount Pentelicus,^[12] considered of particularly high quality and widely used in monuments and sculptures in fifth-century Athens.^[21] Cossutius's continuation used the same material, but changed the order of the temple to Corinthian.^[12][d] The total structure was 110 by 43 metres (360 by 140 ft) in area, with two rows of columns in its peristasis (colonnade), an additional third row of columns along the east and west sides, a width of eight columns across its front, and of twenty (rather than the twenty-one planned for the Peisistratid temple) along each side.^[23] He built on top of the existing substructures, which were slightly adjusted in places, and retained the lower steps on the west front (the remainder being replaced with marble);^[24] he also reused column drums intended for the Peisistratid temple as foundations for his own columns.^[25] Hugh Plommer describes the style of capitals used by Cossutius as "stiffly orthodox", which he views as a reaction against the "impurity" of contemporary buildings elsewhere in the Mediterranean which mixed elements of different architectural orders.^[26] In addition to the strictly architectural aspects of the temple, Cossutius designed the decoration of the epistyle (the architrave beam) and the temple's ornamental sculpture.^[27] A statue base, dating to the period of the Roman Republic, found within the temenos (sacred precinct) of the temple bears an inscription in Greek honouring "Decimus Cossutius, son of Publius, a Roman".^[29] This is considered to refer to the architect.^[30]

Vitruvius's account is the only ancient text describing in detail Cossutius's work on the Temple of Olympian Zeus;^[31] he left no written plans for how the work was intended to continue.^[32] Vitruvius uses it as an exemplar of a hypaethral temple (that is, one where the central cella was open to the air, rather than being roofed).^[33] R. E. Wycherley treats this as evidence that it was intended to be unroofed in its final iteration, though Wolfram Hoepfner believes that it was intended to be roofed, based on parallels with other large temples with double colonnades,^[34] and that Vitruvius or his source was misled by the fact that this roof was never constructed.^[32] Noting that it was usual practice for the order of columns to increase in elaboration from the exterior of the temple to the interior, Hoepfner suggests that Cossutius planned either to employ Composite columns, which combined elements of the Corinthian and Ionic orders, or to invent his own form of capital.^[32][e]

By the time of Antiochus's death in November of 164 BCE,^[38] parts of the temple had been constructed to the height of the architrave, but the structure was unfinished. Building work was stopped,^[20] probably as the king's death removed its source of funding.^[39] According to Vitruvius, the work was highly regarded by experts and laypeople in architecture alike; Wycherley considers that its key components were probably complete by the time Vitruvius saw it.^[33] The Roman dictator Sulla, who besieged and captured Athens in 86 BCE, took columns from the temple to Rome: Wycherley considers these to have been unused parts, perhaps originally intended for the inner peristasis, from Cossutius's project.^[40] The eventual completion of the temple's construction, finished under the Roman emperor Hadrian in 138 CE, largely followed the template begun by Cossutius.^[41]

Other architectural work

Two inscriptions of Cossutius's name, in Latin characters, have been found at Antioch, Antiochus's capital, scratched into the channel of an aqueduct dated to the second century BCE.^[43] These may have been made by Cossutius himself or workers in his employ, and have been taken as evidence by Glanville Downey that Antiochus employed Cossutius in his project to construct a new district for Antioch, known as Epiphania, which included the construction of a new agora (marketplace) and bouleuterion (assembly building).^[44] Downey suggests that he may have been tasked with designing the city's temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and perhaps other monuments.^[45] Anderson points out that the fact that the Antioch inscriptions were made in Latin letters indicates that Cossutius's workforce included Latin speakers, and infers from this that Cossutius was normally based in Italy, rather than in Athens.^[7] He may also have worked on buildings in other Greek cities funded as gifts by Antiochus.^[2] The first marble temple in Rome was constructed in the 140s BCE, and Anderson speculates that Cossutius may have been responsible for its construction, if he were still alive.^[46]