CHAPTER V.

PERSIAN, LYCIAN AND JEWISH ARCHITECTURE.

Books Recommended: As before, Babelon; Bliss, Excavations at Jerusalem. Reber. Also Dieulafoy, L’Art antique de la Perse. Fellows, Account of Discoveries in Lycia. Fergusson, The Temple at Jerusalem. Flandin et Coste, Perse ancienne. Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Persia; History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia; History of Art in Sardinia and Judæa. Texier, L’Arménie et la Perse; L’Asie Mineure. De Vogüé, Le Temple de Jérusalem.

PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE. With the Persians, who under Cyrus (536 B.C.) and Cambyses (525 B.C.) became the masters of the Orient, the Aryan race superseded the Semitic, and assimilated in new combinations the forms it borrowed from the Assyrian civilization. Under the Achæmenidæ (536 to 330 B.C.) palaces were built in Persepolis and Susa of a splendor and majesty impossible in Mesopotamia, and rivalling the marvels in the Nile Valley. The conquering nation of warriors who had overthrown the Egyptians and Assyrians was in turn conquered by the arts of its vanquished foes, and speedily became the most luxurious of all nations. The Persians were not great innovators in art; but inhabiting a land of excellent building resources, they were able to combine the Egyptian system of interior columns with details borrowed from Assyrian art, and suggestions, derived most probably from the general use in Persia and Central Asia, of wooden posts or columns as intermediate supports. Out of these elements they evolved an architecture which has only become fully known to us since the excavations of M. and Mme. Dieulafoy at Susa in 1882.

ELEMENTS OF PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE. The Persians used both crude and baked bricks, the latter far more freely than was practicable in Assyria, owing to the greater abundance of fuel. Walls when built of the weaker material were faced with baked brick enamelled in brilliant colors, or both moulded and enamelled, to form colored pictures in relief. Stone was employed for walls and columns, and, in conjunction with brick, for the jambs and lintels of doors and windows. Architraves and ceiling-beams were of wood. The palaces were erected, as in Assyria, upon broad platforms, partly cut in the rock and partly structural, approached by imposing flights of steps. These palaces were composed of detached buildings, propylæa or gates of honor, vast audience-halls open on one or two sides, and chambers or dwellings partly enclosing or flanking these halls, or grouped in separate buildings. Temples appear to have been of small importance, perhaps owing to habits of out-of-door worship of fire and sun. There are few structural tombs, but there are a number of imposing royal sepulchres cut in the rock at Naksh-i-Roustam.

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS. The Persians, like the Egyptians, used the column as an internal feature in hypostyle halls of great size, and externally to form porches, and perhaps, also, open kiosks without walls. The great Hall of Xerxes at Persepolis covers 100,000 square feet—more than double the area of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. But the Persian column was derived from wooden prototypes and used with wooden architraves, permitting a wider spacing than is possible with stone. In the present instance thirty-six columns sufficed for an area which in the Karnak hall contained one hundred and thirty-four. The shafts being slender and finely fluted instead of painted or carved, the effect produced was totally different from that sought by the Egyptians. The most striking peculiarity of the column was the capital, which was forked (Fig. 21). In one of the two principal types the fork, formed by the coupled fore-parts of bulls or symbolic monsters, rested directly on the top of the shaft. In the other, two singular members were interposed between the fork and the shaft; the lower, a sort of double bell or bell-and-palm capital, and above it, just beneath the fork, a curious combination of vertical scrolls or volutes, resembling certain ornaments seen in Assyrian furniture. The transverse architrave rested in the fork; the longitudinal architrave was supported on the heads of the monsters. A rich moulded base, rather high and in some cases adorned with carved leaves or flutings, supported the columns, which in the Hall of Xerxes were over 66 feet high and 6 feet in diameter. The architraves have perished, but the rock-cut tomb of Darius at Naksh-i-Roustam reproduces in its façade a palace-front, showing a banded architrave with dentils—an obvious imitation of the ends of wooden rafters on a lintel built up of several beams.

see caption and text
FIG. 21.—COLUMN FROM PERSEPOLIS.

These features of the architrave, as well as the fine flutings and moulded bases of the columns, are found in Ionic architecture, and in part, at least, in Lycian tombs. As all these examples date from nearly the same period, the origin of these forms and their mutual relations have not been fully determined. The Persian capitals, however, are unique, and so far as known, without direct prototypes or derivatives. Their constituent elements may have been borrowed from various sources. One can hardly help seeing the Egyptian palm-capital in the lower member of the compound type (Fig. 21).

The doors and windows had banded architraves or trims and cavetto cornices very Egyptian in character. The portals were flanked, as in Assyria, by winged monsters; but these were built up in several courses of stone, not carved from single blocks like their prototypes. Plaster or, as at Susa, enamelled bricks, replaced as a wall-finish the Assyrian alabaster wainscot. These bricks, splendid in color, and moulded into relief pictures covering large surfaces, are the oldest examples of the skill of the Persians in a branch of ceramic art in which they have always excelled down to our own day.

LYCIAN ARCHITECTURE. The architecture of those Asiatic peoples which served as intermediaries between the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Assyria on the one hand and of the Greeks on the other, need occupy us only a moment in passing. None of them developed a complete and independent style or produced monuments of the first rank. Those chiefly concerned in the transmission of ideas were the Cypriotes, Phœnicians, and Lycians. The part played by other Asiatic nations is too slight to be considered here. From Cyprus the Greeks could have learned little beyond a few elementary notions regarding sculpture and pottery, although it is possible that the volute-form in Ionic architecture was originally derived from patterns on Cypriote pottery and from certain Cypriote steles, where it appears as a modified lotus motive. The Phœnicians were the world’s traders from a very early age down to the Persian conquest. They not only distributed through the Mediterranean lands the manufactures of Egypt and Assyria, but also counterfeited them and adopted their forms in decorating their own wares. But they have bequeathed us not a single architectural ruin of importance, either of temples or palaces, nor are the few tombs still extant of sufficient artistic interest to deserve even brief mention in a work of this scope.

In Lycia, however, there arose a system of tomb-design which came near creating a new architectural style, and which doubtless influenced both Persia and the Ionian colonies. The tombs were mostly cut in the rock, though a few are free-standing monolithic monuments, resembling sarcophagi or small shrines mounted on a high base or pedestal.

In all of these tombs we recognize a manifest copying in stone of framed wooden structures. The walls are panelled, or imitate open structures framed of squared timbers. The roofs are often gabled, sometimes in the form of a pointed arch; they generally show a banded architrave, dentils, and a raking cornice, or else an imitation of broadly projecting eaves with small round rafters. There are several with porches of Ionic columns; of these, some are of late date and evidently copied from Asiatic Greek models. Others, and notably one at Telmissus, seem to be examples of a primitive Ionic, and may indeed have been early steps in the development of that splendid style which the Ionic Greeks, both in Asia Minor and in Attica, carried to such perfection.

JEWISH ARCHITECTURE. The Hebrews borrowed from the art of every people with whom they had relations, so that we encounter in the few extant remains of their architecture Egyptian, Assyrian, Phœnician, Greek, Roman, and Syro-Byzantine features, but nothing like an independent national style. Among the most interesting of these remains are tombs of various periods, principally occurring in the valleys near Jerusalem, and erroneously ascribed by popular tradition to the judges, prophets, and kings of Israel. Some of them are structural, some cut in the rock; the former (tomb of Absalom, of Zechariah) decorated with Doric and Ionic engaged orders, were once supposed to be primitive types of these orders and of great antiquity. They are now recognized to be debased imitations of late Greek work of the third or second century B.C. They have Egyptian cavetto cornices and pyramidal roofs, like many Asiatic tombs. The openings of the rock-cut tombs have frames or pediments carved with rich surface ornament showing a similar mixture of types—Roman triglyphs and garlands, Syrian-Greek acanthus leaves, conventional foliage of Byzantine character, and naturalistic carvings of grapes and local plant-life. The carved arches of two of the ancient city gates (one the so-called Golden Gate) in Jerusalem display rich acanthus foliage somewhat like that of the tombs, but more vigorous and artistic. If of the time of Herod or even of Constantine, as claimed by some, they would indicate that Greek artists in Syria created the prototypes of Byzantine ornament. They are more probably, however, Byzantine restorations of the 6th century A.D.

The one great achievement of Jewish architecture was the national Temple of Jehovah, represented by three successive edifices on Mount Moriah, the site of the present so-called “Mosque of Omar.” The first, built by Solomon (1012 B.C.) appears from the Biblical description6 to have combined Egyptian conceptions (successive courts, lofty entrance-pylons, the Sanctuary and the sekos or “Holy of Holies”) with Phœnician and Assyrian details and workmanship (cedar woodwork, empaistic decoration or overlaying with repoussé metal work, the isolated brazen columns Jachin and Boaz). The whole stood on a mighty platform built up with stupendous masonry and vaulted chambers from the valley surrounding the rock on three sides. This precinct was nearly doubled in size by Herod (18 B.C.) who extended it southward by a terrace-wall of still more colossal masonry. Some of the stones are twenty-two feet long; one reaches the prodigious length of forty feet. The “Wall of Lamentations” is a part of this terrace, upon which stood the Temple on a raised platform. As rebuilt by Herod, the Temple reproduced in part the antique design, and retained the porch of Solomon along the east side; but the whole was superbly reconstructed in white marble with abundance of gilding. Defended by the Castle of Antonia on the northwest, and embellished with a new and imposing triple colonnade on the south, the whole edifice, a conglomerate of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Roman conceptions and forms, was one of the most singular and yet magnificent creations of ancient art.

The temple of Zerubbabel (515 B.C.), intermediate between those above described, was probably less a re-edification of the first, than a new design. While based on the scheme of the first temple, it appears to have followed more closely the pattern described in the vision of Ezekiel (chapters xl.-xlii.). It was far inferior to its predecessor in splendor and costliness. No vestiges of it remain.

6. 1 Kings vi.-vii.; 2 Chronicles iii.-iv.

CHAPTER VI.

GREEK ARCHITECTURE.

Books Recommended: As before, Reber. Also, Anderson and Spiers, Architecture of Greece and Rome. Baumeister, Denkmäler der Klassischen Alterthums. Bötticher, Tektonik der Hellenen. Chipiez, Histoire critique des ordres grecs. Curtius, Adler and Treu, Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia. Durm, Antike Baukunst (in Handbuch d. Arch.). Frazer, Pausanias’ Description of Greece. Hitorff, L’architecture polychrome chez les Grecs. Michaelis, Der Parthenon. Penrose, An Investigation, etc., of Athenian Architecture. Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Primitive Greece; La Grèce de l’Epopée; La Grèce archaïque. Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens. Tarbell, History of Greek Art. Texier, L’Asie Mineure. Wilkins, Antiquities of Magna Græcia.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. Greek art marks the beginning of European civilization. The Hellenic race gathered up influences and suggestions from both Asia and Africa and fused them with others, whose sources are unknown, into an art intensely national and original, which was to influence the arts of many races and nations long centuries after the decay of the Hellenic states. The Greek mind, compared with the Egyptian or Assyrian, was more highly intellectual, more logical, more symmetrical, and above all more inquiring and analytic. Living nowhere remote from the sea, the Greeks became sailors, merchants, and colonizers. The Ionian kinsmen of the European Greeks, speaking a dialect of the same language, populated the coasts of Asia Minor and many of the islands, so that through them the Greeks were open to the influences of the Assyrian, Phœnician, Persian, and Lycian civilizations. In Cyprus they encountered Egyptian influences, and finally, under Psammetichus, they established in Egypt itself the Greek city of Naukratis. They were thus by geographical situation, by character, and by circumstances, peculiarly fitted to receive, develop, and transmit the mingled influences of the East and the South.

see caption and text
FIG. 22.—LION GATE AT MYCENÆ.

PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS.7 Authentic Greek history begins with the first Olympiad, 776 B.C. The earliest monuments of that historic architecture which developed into the masterpieces of the Periclean and Alexandrian ages, date from the middle of the following century. But there are a number of older buildings, belonging presumably to the so-called Heroic Age, which, though seemingly unconnected with the later historic development of Greek architecture, are still worthy of note. They are the work of a people somewhat advanced in civilization, probably the Pelasgi, who preceded the Dorians on Greek soil, and consist mainly of fortifications, walls, gates, and tombs, the most important of which are at Mycenæ and Tiryns. At the latter place is a well-defined acropolis, with massive walls in which are passages covered by stones successively overhanging or corbelled until they meet. The masonry is of huge stones piled without cement. At Mycenæ the city wall is pierced by the remarkable Lion Gate (Fig. 22), consisting of two jambs and a huge lintel, over which the weight is relieved by a triangular opening. This is filled with a sculptured group, now much defaced, representing two rampant lions flanking a singular column which tapers downward. This symbolic group has relations with Hittite and Phrygian sculptures, and with the symbolism of the worship of Rhea Cybele. The masonry of the wall is carefully dressed but not regularly coursed. Other primitive walls and gates showing openings and embryonic arches of various forms, are found widely scattered, at Samos and Delos, at Phigaleia, Thoricus, Argos and many other points. see caption and text
FIG. 23.—POLYGONAL MASONRY. The very earliest are hardly more than random piles of rough stone. Those which may fairly claim notice for their artistic masonry are of a later date and of two kinds: the coursed, and the polygonal or Cyclopean, so called from the tradition that they were built by the Cyclopes. These Cyclopean walls were composed of large, irregular polygonal blocks carefully fitted together and dressed to a fairly smooth face (Fig. 23). Both kinds were used contemporaneously, though in the course of time the regular coursed masonry finally superseded the polygonal.

see caption and text
FIG. 24.—THOLOS OF ATREUS. PLAN AND SECTION.

THOLOS OF ATREUS. All these structures present, however, only the rudiments of architectural art. The so-called Tholos (or Treasury) of Atreus, at Mycenæ, on the other hand, shows the germs of truly artistic design (Fig. 24). It is in reality a tomb, and is one of a large class of prehistoric tombs found in almost every part of the globe, consisting of a circular stone-walled and stone-roofed chamber buried under a tumulus of earth. This one is a beehive-shaped construction of horizontal courses of masonry, with a stone-walled passage, the dromos, leading to the entrance door. Though internally of domical form, its construction with horizontal beds in the masonry proves that the idea of the true dome with the beds of each course pitched at an angle always normal to the curve of the vault, was not yet grasped. A small sepulchral chamber opens from the great one, by a door with the customary relieving triangle over it.

see caption and text
FIG. 25.—THOLOS OF ATREUS. DOORWAY.

Traces of a metal lining have been found on the inner surface of the dome and on the jambs of the entrance door. This entrance is the most artistic and elaborate part of the edifice (Fig. 25). The main opening is enclosed in a three-banded frame, and was once flanked by columns which, as shown by fragments still existing and by marks on either side the door, tapered downward as in the sculptured column over the Lion Gate. Shafts, bases, and capitals were covered with zig-zag bands or chevrons of fine spirals. This well-studied decoration, the banded jambs, and the curiously inverted columns (of which several other examples exist in or near Mycenæ), all point to a fairly developed art, derived partly from Egyptian and partly from Asiatic sources. That Egyptian influences had affected this early art is further proved by a fragment of carved and painted ornament on a ceiling in Orchomenos, imitating with remarkable closeness certain ceiling decorations in Egyptian tombs.

HISTORIC MONUMENTS; THE ORDERS. It was the Dorians and Ionians who developed the architecture of classic Greece. This fact is perpetuated in the traditional names, Doric and Ionic, given to the two systems of columnar design which formed the most striking feature of that architecture. While in Egypt the column was used almost exclusively as an internal support and decoration, in Greece it was chiefly employed to produce an imposing exterior effect. It was the most important element in the temple architecture of the Greeks, and an almost indispensable adornment of their gateways, public squares, and temple enclosures. To the column the two races named above gave each a special and radically distinct development, and it was not until the Periclean age that the two forms came to be used in conjunction, even by the mixed Doric-Ionic people of Attica. Each of the two types had its own special shaft, capital, entablature, mouldings, and ornaments, although considerable variation was allowed in the proportions and minor details. The general type, however, remained substantially unchanged from first to last. The earliest examples known to us of either order show it complete in all its parts, its later development being restricted to the refining and perfecting of its proportions and details. The probable origin of these orders will be separately considered later on.

see caption and text
FIG. 26.—GREEK DORIC ORDER.

A, Crepidoma, or stylobate; b, Column; c, Architrave; d, Tænia; e, Frieze; f, Horizontal cornice; g, Raking cornice; h, Tympanum of pediment; k, Metope.

THE DORIC. The column of the Doric order (Figs. 26, 27) consists of a tapering shaft rising directly from the stylobate or platform and surmounted by a capital of great simplicity and beauty. The shaft is fluted with sixteen to twenty shallow channellings of segmental or elliptical section, meeting in sharp edges or arrises. The capital is made up of a circular cushion or echinus adorned with fine grooves called annulæ, and a plain square abacus or cap Upon this rests a plain architrave or epistyle, with a narrow fillet, the tænia, running along its upper edge. The frieze above it is divided into square panels, called the metopes, separated by vertical triglyphs having each two vertical grooves and chamfered edges. There is a triglyph over each column and one over each intercolumniation, or two in rare instances where the columns are widely spaced. The cornice consists of a broadly projecting corona resting on a bed-mould of one or two simple mouldings. Its under surface, called the soffit, is adorned with mutules, square, flat projections having each eighteen guttæ depending from its under side. Two or three small mouldings run along the upper edge of the corona, which has in addition, over each slope of the gable, a gutter-moulding or cymatium. The cornices along the horizontal edges of the roof have instead of the cymatium a row of antefixæ, ornaments of terra-cotta or marble placed opposite the foot of each tile-ridge of the roofing. The enclosed triangular field of the gable, called the tympanum, was in the larger monuments adorned with sculptured groups resting on the shelf formed by the horizontal cornice below. Carved ornaments called acroteria commonly embellished the three angles of the gable or pediment.

POLYCHROMY. It has been fully proved, after a century of debate, that all this elaborate system of parts, severe and dignified in their simplicity of form, received a rich decoration of color. While the precise shades and tones employed cannot be predicated with certainty, it is well established that the triglyphs were painted blue and the metopes red, and that all the mouldings were decorated with leaf-ornaments, “eggs-and-darts,” and frets, in red, green, blue, and gold. The walls and columns were also colored, probably with pale tints of yellow or buff, to reduce the glare of the fresh marble or the whiteness of the fine stucco with which the surfaces of masonry of coarser stone were primed. In the clear Greek atmosphere and outlined against the brilliant sky, the Greek temple must have presented an aspect of rich, sparkling gayety.

see caption and text
FIG. 27.—DORIC ORDER OF THE PARTHENON.

ORIGIN OF THE ORDER. It is generally believed that the details of the Doric frieze and cornice were reminiscences of a primitive wood construction. The triglyph suggests the chamfered ends of cross-beams made up of three planks each; the mutules, the sheathing of the eaves; and the guttæ, the heads of the spikes or trenails by which the sheathing was secured. It is known that in early astylar temples the metopes were left open like the spaces between the ends of ceiling-rafters. In the earlier peripteral temples, as at Selinus, the triglyph-frieze is retained around the cella-wall under the ceiling of the colonnade, where it has no functional significance, as a survival from times antedating the adoption of the colonnade, when the tradition of a wooden roof-construction showing externally had not yet been forgotten.

A similar wooden origin for the Doric column has been advocated by some, who point to the assertion of Pausanias that in the Doric Heraion at Olympia the original wooden columns had with one exception been replaced by stone columns as fast as they decayed. (See p. 62.) This, however, only proves that wooden columns were sometimes used in early buildings, not that the Doric column was derived from them. Others would derive it from the Egyptian columns of Beni Hassan (p. 12), which it certainly resembles. But they do not explain how the Greeks could have been familiar with the Beni Hassan column long before the opening of Egypt to them under Psammetichus; nor why, granting them some knowledge of Egyptian architecture, they should have passed over the splendors of Karnak and Luxor to copy these inconspicuous tombs perched high up on the cliffs of the Nile. It would seem that the Greeks invented this form independently, developing it in buildings which have perished; unless, indeed, they brought the idea with them from their primitive Aryan home in Asia.

THE IONIC ORDER was characterized by greater slenderness of proportion and elegance of detail than the Doric, and depended more on carving than on color for the decoration of its members (Fig. 28). It was adopted in the fifth century B.C. by the people of Attica, and used both for civic and religious buildings, sometimes alone and sometimes in conjunction with the Doric. The column was from eight to ten diameters in height, against four and one-third to seven for the Doric. It stood on a base which was usually composed of two tori (see p. 25 for definition) separated by a scotia (a concave moulding of semicircular or semi-elliptical profile), and was sometimes provided also with a square flat base-block, the plinth. There was much variety in the proportions and details of these mouldings, which were often enriched by flutings or carved guilloches. The tall shaft bore twenty-four deep narrow flutings separated by narrow fillets. The capital was the most peculiar feature of the order. It consisted of a bead or astragal and echinus, over which was a horizontal band ending on either side in a scroll or volute, the sides of which presented the aspect shown in Fig. 29. A thin moulded abacus was interposed between this member and the architrave.

see caption and text
FIG. 28.—GREEK IONIC ORDER. (MILETUS.)

The Ionic capital was marked by two awkward features which all its richness could not conceal. One was the protrusion of the echinus beyond the face of the band above it, the other was the disparity between the side and front views of the capital, especially noticeable at the corners of a colonnade. To obviate this, various contrivances were tried, none wholly successful. Ordinarily the two adjacent exterior sides of the corner capital were treated alike, the scrolls at their meeting being bent out at an angle of 45°, while the two inner faces simply intersected, cutting each other in halves.

The entablature comprised an architrave of two or three flat bands crowned by fine mouldings; an uninterrupted frieze, frequently sculptured in relief; and a simple cornice of great beauty. In addition to the ordinary bed-mouldings there was in most examples a row of narrow blocks or dentils under the corona, which was itself crowned by a high cymatium of extremely graceful profile, carved with the rich “honeysuckle” (anthemion) ornament. All the mouldings were carved with the “egg-and-dart,” heart-leaf and anthemion ornaments, so designed as to recall by their outline the profile of the moulding itself. The details of this order were treated with much more freedom and variety than those of the Doric. The pediments of Ionic buildings were rarely or never adorned with groups of sculpture. The volutes and echinus of the capital, the fluting of the shaft, the use of a moulded circular base, and in the cornice the high corona and cymatium, these were constant elements in every Ionic order, but all other details varied widely in the different examples.

see caption and text
FIG. 29.—SIDE VIEW OF IONIC CAPITAL.

ORIGIN OF THE IONIC ORDER. The origin of the Ionic order has given rise to almost as much controversy as that of the Doric. Its different elements were apparently derived from various sources. The Lycian tombs may have contributed the denticular cornice and perhaps also the general form of the column and capital. In the Persian architecture of the sixth century B.C., the high moulded base, the narrow flutings of the shaft, the carved bead-moulding and the use of scrolls in the capital are characteristic features, which may have been borrowed by the Ionians during the same century, unless, indeed, they were themselves the work of Ionic or Lycian workmen in Persian employ. The banded architrave and the use of the volute in the decoration of stele-caps (from στηλη = a memorial stone or column standing isolated and upright), furniture, and minor structures are common features in Assyrian, Lycian, and other Asiatic architecture of early date. The volute or scroll itself as an independent decorative motive may have originated in successive variations of Egyptian lotus-patterns.8 But the combination of these diverse elements and their development into the final form of the order was the work of the Ionian Greeks, and it was in the Ionian provinces of Asia Minor that the most splendid examples of its use are to be found (Halicarnassus, Miletus, Priene, Ephesus), while the most graceful and perfect are those of Doric-Ionic Attica.

see caption and text
FIG. 30.—GREEK CORINTHIAN ORDER.
(From the monument of Lysicrates.)

THE CORINTHIAN ORDER. This was a late outgrowth of the Ionic rather than a new order, and up to the time of the Roman conquest was only used for monuments of small size (see Fig. 38). Its entablature in pure Greek examples was identical with the Ionic; the shaft and base were only slightly changed in proportion and detail. The capital, however, was a new departure, based probably on metallic embellishments of altars, pedestals, etc., of Ionic style. It consisted in the best examples of a high bell-shaped core surrounded by one or two rows of acanthus leaves, above which were pairs of branching scrolls meeting at the corners in spiral volutes. These served to support the angles of a moulded abacus with concave sides (Fig. 30). One example, from the Tower of the Winds (the clepsydra of Andronicus Cyrrhestes) at Athens, has only smooth pointed palm-leaves and no scrolls above a single row of acanthus leaves. Indeed, the variety and disparity among the different examples prove that we have here only the first steps toward the evolution of an independent order, which it was reserved for the Romans to fully develop.

GREEK TEMPLES; THE TYPE. With the orders as their chief decorative element the Greeks built up a splendid architecture of religious and secular monuments. Their noblest works were temples, which they designed with the utmost simplicity of general scheme, but carried out with a mastery of proportion and detail which has never been surpassed. Of moderate size in most cases, they were intended primarily to enshrine the simulacrum of the deity, and not, like Christian churches, to accommodate great throngs of worshippers. Nor were they, on the other hand, sanctuaries designed, like those of Egypt, to exclude all but a privileged few from secret rites performed only by the priests and king. The statue of the deity was enshrined in a chamber, the naos (see plan, Fig. 31), often of considerable size, and accessible to the public through a columnar porch the pronaos. A smaller chamber, the opisthodomus, was sometimes added in the rear of the main sanctuary, to serve as a treasury or depository for votive offerings. Together these formed a windowless structure called the cella, beyond which was the rear porch, the posticum or epinaos. This whole structure was in the larger temples surrounded by a colonnade, the peristyle, which formed the most splendid feature of Greek architecture. The external aisle on either side of the cella was called the pteroma. A single gabled roof covered the entire building.

see caption and text
FIG. 31.—TYPES OF GREEK TEMPLE PLANS.

a, In Antis; b, Prostyle; c, Amphiprostyle; d, Peripteral (The Parthenon); N, Naos; O, Opisthodomus; S, Statue.

Larger View of plan d

The Greek colonnade was thus an exterior feature, surrounding the solid cella-wall instead of being enclosed by it as in Egypt. The temple was a public, not a royal monument; and its builders aimed, not as in Egypt at size and overwhelming sombre majesty, but rather at sunny beauty and the highest perfection of proportion, execution, and detail (Fig. 34).

There were of course many variations of the general type just described. Each of these has received a special name, which is given below with explanations and is illustrated in Fig. 31.

In antis; with a porch having two or more columns enclosed between the projecting side-walls of the cella.

Prostylar (or prostyle); with a columnar porch in front and no peristyle.

Amphiprostylar (or -style); with columnar porches at both ends but no peristyle.

Peripteral; surrounded by columns.

Pseudoperipteral; with false or engaged columns built into the walls of the cella, leaving no pteroma.

Dipteral; with double lateral ranges of columns (see Fig. 39).

Pseudodipteral; with a single row of columns on each side, whose distance from the wall is equal to two intercolumniations of the front.

Tetrastyle, hexastyle, octastyle, decastyle, etc.; with four, six, eight, or ten columns in the end rows.

CONSTRUCTION. All the temples known to us are of stone, though it is evident from allusions in the ancient writers that wood was sometimes used in early times. (See p. 62.) The finest temples, especially those of Attica, Olympia, and Asia Minor, were of marble. In Magna Græcia, at Assos, and in other places where marble was wanting, limestone, sandstone, or lava was employed and finished with a thin, fine stucco. The roof was almost invariably of wood and gabled, forming at the ends pediments decorated in most cases with sculpture. The disappearance of these inflammable and perishable roofs has given rise to endless speculations as to the lighting of the cellas, which in all known ruins, except one at Agrigentum, are destitute of windows. It has been conjectured that light was admitted through openings in the roof, and even that the central part of the cella was wholly open to the sky. Such an arrangement is termed hypæthral, from an expression used in a description by Vitruvius;9 but this description corresponds to no known structure, and the weight of opinion now inclines against the use of the hypæthral opening, except possibly in one or two of the largest temples, in which a part of the cella in front of the statue may have been thus left open. But even this partial hypæthros is not substantiated by direct evidence. It hardly seems probable that the magnificent chryselephantine statues of such temples were ever thus left exposed to the extremes of the climate, which are often severe even in Greece. In the model of the Parthenon designed by Ch. Chipiez for the Metropolitan Museum in New York, a small clerestory opening through the roof admits a moderate amount of light to the cella; but this ingenious device rests on no positive evidence (see Frontispiece). It seems on the whole most probable that the cella was lighted entirely by artificial illumination; but the controversy in its present state is and must be wholly speculative.

The wooden roof was covered with tiles of terra-cotta or marble. It was probably ceiled and panelled on the under side, and richly decorated with color and gold. The pteroma had under the exterior roof a ceiling of stone or marble, deeply panelled between transverse architraves.

The naos and opisthodomus being in the larger temples too wide to be spanned by single beams, were furnished with interior columns to afford intermediate support. To avoid the extremes of too great massiveness and excessive slenderness in these columns, they were built in two stages, and advantage was taken of this arrangement, in some cases, at least, to introduce lateral galleries into the naos.

see caption and text
FIG. 32.—CARVED ANTHEMION ORNAMENT. ATHENS.

SCULPTURE AND CARVING. All the architectural membering was treated with the greatest refinement of design and execution, and the aid of sculpture, both in relief and in the round, was invoked to give splendor and significance to the monument. The statue of the deity was the focus of internal interest, while externally, groups of statues representing the Olympian deities or the mythical exploits of gods, demigods, and heroes, adorned the gables. Relief carvings in the friezes and metopes commemorated the favorite national myths. In these sculptures we have the finest known adaptations of pure sculpture—i.e., sculpture treated as such and complete in itself—to an architectural framework. The noblest examples of this decorative sculpture are those of the Parthenon, consisting of figures in the full round from the pediments, groups in high relief from the metopes, and the beautiful frieze of the Panathenaic procession from the cella-wall under the pteroma ceiling. The greater part of these splendid works are now in the British Museum, whither they were removed by Lord Elgin in 1801. From Olympia, Ægina, and Phigaleia, other master-works of the same kind have been transferred to the museums of Europe. In the Doric style there was little carving other than the sculpture, the ornament being mainly polychromatic. Greek Ionic and Corinthian monuments, however, as well as minor works such as steles, altars, etc., were richly adorned with carved mouldings and friezes, festoons, acroteria, and other embellishments executed with the chisel. The anthemion ornament, a form related to the Egyptian lotus and Assyrian palmette, most frequently figures in these. It was made into designs of wonderful vigor and beauty (Fig. 32).

DETAIL AND EXECUTION. In the handling and cutting of stone the Greeks displayed a surpassing skill and delicacy. While ordinarily they were content to use stones of moderate size, they never hesitated at any dimension necessary for proper effect or solid construction. The lower drums of the Parthenon peristyle are 6 feet 6½ inches in diameter, and 2 feet 10 inches high, cut from single blocks of Pentelic marble. The architraves of the Propylæa at Athens are each made up of two lintels placed side by side, the longest 17 feet 7 inches long, 3 feet 10 inches high, and 2 feet 4 inches thick. In the colossal temples of Asia Minor, where the taste for the vast and grandiose was more pronounced, blocks of much greater size were used. These enormous stones were cut and fitted with the most scrupulous exactness. The walls of all important structures were built in regular courses throughout, every stone carefully bedded with extremely close joints. The masonry was usually laid up without cement and clamped with metal; there is no filling in with rubble and concrete between mere facings of cut stone, as in most modern work. When the only available stone was of coarse texture it was finished with a coating of fine stucco, in which sharp edges and minute detail could be worked.

The details were, in the best period, executed with the most extraordinary refinement and care. The profiles of capitals and mouldings, the carved ornament, the arrises of the flutings, were cut with marvellous precision and delicacy. It has been rightly said that the Greeks “built like Titans and finished like jewellers.” But this perfect finish was never petty nor wasted on unworthy or vulgar design. The just relation of scale between the building and all its parts was admirably maintained; the ornament was distributed with rare judgment, and the vigor of its design saved it from all appearance of triviality.

The sensitive taste of the Greeks led them into other refinements than those of mere mechanical perfection. In the Parthenon especially, but also in lesser degree in other temples, the seemingly straight lines of the building were all slightly curved, and the vertical faces inclined. This was done to correct the monotony and stiffness of absolutely straight lines and right angles, and certain optical illusions which their acute observation had detected. The long horizontal lines of the stylobate and cornice were made convex upward; a similar convexity in the horizontal corona of the pediment counteracted the seeming concavity otherwise resulting from its meeting with the multiplied inclined lines of the raking cornice. The columns were almost imperceptibly inclined toward the cella, and the corner intercolumniations made a trifle narrower than the rest; while the vertical lines of the arrises of the flutings were made convex outward with a curve of the utmost beauty and delicacy. By these and other like refinements there was imparted to the monument an elasticity and vigor of aspect, an elusive and surprising beauty impossible to describe and not to be explained by the mere composition and general proportions, yet manifest to every cultivated eye.10