The origins of architectural craftsmanship in ancient Greece are to be found in the archaic arts of tectonics. The first Greek architects, appearing under that name around the 6th century BC, rose out of and based their work on this age-old tectonic tradition, which semantically undergoes a transformation during the time from Homer to Plato, the latter relegating the tektones to a lower rank in the order of craftsmanship. Through a detailed reading of the ancient Greek testimonies of the tectonic tradition, the paper means to show that the tektones were in the Homeric tradition hailed as versatile, first rate craftsmen creating wonders out of matter, but in classical times they fall from their high status of old. In Plato's writings tectonics ends up at the lower end of the epistemological and ontological scale, although he still describes the work of the world god, the Demiurge, by using te vocabulary of tectonics.