During the early period (until 700 BCE), Greek construction consisted mainly of houses with a few temples. The common material for these buildings was mud and bricks made of clay mixed with straw. In some areas, however, stone was more easily available and used in irregular blocks, with mud and small stones filling up the gaps in between them. The buildings had a stone foundation, with timber beams to support the walls and ceiling. Roofs were either thatched or made of a flat outer layer of clay, and supported by wooden posts. 

From the 7th to the 5th centuries, Greece saw a tremendous increase in the construction of temples and public buildings, and their style of construction made its way to other buildings as well. Walls were increasingly made of precisely cut stone blocks, and beams and pillars were also made out of stone. Large blocks of stone were cut either by brute force or by inserting wooden wedges into small cavities in the rock and then wetting them so that they would swell slowly, breaking the stone in the process. A similar technique was used by the medieval Indian kings in making their huge temples.

The use of heavy stone blocks also required a much more substantial foundation. They were much thicker than the structure above them, and individual columns had their own foundations.

The stone blocks were then so finely shaped that no cement was required to hold them together. Rather, their natural weight was supplemented by wooden or lead dovetail clamps between adjacent blocks in keeping them in place. These were later reinforced by thin iron pieces whose ends hooked into the blocks of stone, holding them together. Roofs were tiled and supported by wooden framework. Columns were constructed from cylindrical sections of stone stacked one above the other, and held by wooden clamps through the centres of adjacent sections.

Walls were made in a variety of bonds (brick laying patterns) to provide structural strength as well as for maximum utilisation of available building material. These varied from the common isodomic system which had rows of cuboidal blocks arranged edgewise and lengthwise alternatively, to the polygonal system in which the wall face is made of multi-sided blocks with either straight or curved edges.

The arch, an important structural feature, was brought to Greece from Egypt and Asia, probably through the expeditions of Alexander the Great¹. However, the structural benefits of the arch were not fully utilised by Greeks, unlike the Romans. This was probably because the Greeks lacked the strong mortar the Romans used to hold blocks together, and building an arch using only the precise fit of the stone blocks to hold them in place was a difficult task².

An important aspect of construction was the building of walls and other structures to facilitate both attack and defense. A common battle tactic was the building of platforms by stacking timbers in a lattice next to the city wall. City walls were also thickened and ports were made for defensive weapons to be fired from behind the wall. Towers at strategic points along the wall were as many as four to five storeys high, the height providing added range to siege weapons such as the catapult.

To shape the blocks of stone used in building walls and columns, the Greeks used a variety of tools. Set squares and levels ensured the evenness of faces, chisels of various shapes were used to shape the blocks accurately, and finishing was done with the help of abrasive stones and files.

By the end of the 5th century, multiple pulley blocks and winches were used to lift the heavy stone blocks; evidence of ramps to lift heavier blocks is also seen.

1,2. J.J. Coulton, “Civilisation of the Ancient Mediterranean”, (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988),p. 296.

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