Hippodamus of Miletus and the foundation of the panhellenic colony of Thourioi, 444/443 BCE

Abstract

The urbanism of ancient Greece comes under the archaeological and the textual sources that the researcher has the opportunity to consult for analyze the way that the Greeks structure the space in order to inscribe their representation of the kosmos in the materiality. Hippodamus of Miletus was a philosopher-urbanist of classical antiquity, born around 500 BCE in the Ionian city of Miletus, on the coast of Asia Minor. From the passages of Aristotle about his work, constituted a kind of conflation of meanings in the historiography of the nineteenth century between his name and the origin of the orthogonal plan, method consisting in the arrangement of narrow pathways between avenues in longitude and latitude intercrossed at right angles. This view only began to be deconstructed with evidences stemmed from archaeological excavations of the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, which dropped the beginnings of this urban layout in the Greek world three hundred years. The goal of the research that we propose is to map the historiography of the Greek urbanism starting from Hippodamus of Miletus, discussing in particular his relationship with the urban planning of the colony of Thourioi (444/443 BCE), panhellenic foundation in Magna Graecia. Putting a perspective that not all orthogonal plants are hippodamian, we intend articulate textual references about Hippodamus with the analysis of archaeological evidence and literary information (Diodorus Siculus) about the sections of Thourioi's urbanism (avenues, alleys, lots, tribes). Ergo, try to understand the urban cut in the historical context of pre-Socratic theoretical thinking, earning their political, social and religious ties. (AU)