these early structures. The horizontal ceiling might be sufficient for
the changeless blue sky of Egypt, but could not suffice in Greece,
where, in certain seasons, heavy rains were frequent, and even
hail-storms not unknown. Still no land upon the Mediterranean was
familiar with the great steepness of roof made necessary by the enduring
snow and ice of the North. In colder climates the pitch of the covering
was not only greatly increased, but all horizontal projections were
avoided, and the upper surfaces of smaller members and mouldings
inclined. The rafters required ceiling beams beneath them; because of
the necessary support and jointing, they could not be placed directly
upon the stone walls, and it was further desirable to support the summit
of the triangle by a king-post. The ceiling thus provided stood in such
relation to the roof that a beam tied together each pair of rafters, and
was, consequently, so laid across the oblong enclosure that the ends
reposed upon the side walls. Upon these horizontal timbers planks were
placed which concealed the inclined roof. By this an independent
ceiling was created; and, as the boarding was laid upon the beams and
not fastened to their lower side, this gave rise to the formation of
lacunæ or long coffers. The ends both of the horizontal ceiling beams
and of the roof rafters were visible upon the exterior: the latter,
forming the eaves, projected beyond the wall, to further the shedding of
water and to protect the sides of the building. As the upper surface of
the roof had been so closed as to be water-tight, it is natural that
this sheathing should have been carried around upon all sides of the
projecting rafter ends. It was otherwise with the spaces between the
beams, which, being protected by the eaves, were not covered and masked
by boards. The artistic instinct of the Greek would not permit him thus
to conceal constructive forms when this was not rendered necessary by
practical considerations. They received, on the contrary, an especial
emphasis, that they might express their peculiar function with full
force. Moreover, the closing of the aperture between the ends of the
beams would have required the provision of other openings for light, as
there were no windows in the walls of masonry.
This manner of roof and ceiling construction was generally employed in
European Greece, being customary for palaces and dwellings as well as
for the primitive temples. Open interstices between the horizontal beams
existed in the hall of the royal dwelling at Ithaca. There can be no
further doubt as to the development and original function of the metopes
of the Doric entablature when it is considered that the Greeks, as late
as the time of Euripides (_Iphig. in Taur._ 113), were familiar with the
idea that it was possible to enter a primitive structure through these
openings between the ends of the beams. The masking of the metopes would
thus have been not only purposeless, but even detrimental; it was
reasonable, however, to sheathe the ends of the beams themselves by
small boards, which should at once protect and ornament them. The hewn
extremities of such great timbers were rough and ugly; without covering,
they would have been exposed to rapid decay. The simple decoration of
three narrow strips of wood affixed to the ends of the beams was so
customary in primitive carpentry that it became a typical motive in the
later architecture of Greece. The chamfering of sharp edges of boards
has been practised by the wood-workers of all nations. When two corners
thus treated are placed together, there results a prismatic groove,
which distinctly marks the edges of the separate pieces. Thus originated
the primitive form of the triglyph, as the most natural and practical
decoration of the rough-hewn ends of the ceiling beams by sheathing. The
upper edges of the three strips were hidden against a plate beneath the
rafters; the lower were covered by a continuous board, which united the
various members of the frieze, and concealed any inexact jointing
between the beams and the top of the wall. By placing the chamfered
boards upright, an æsthetic advantage was obtained: a vertical line was
repeated just before the conclusion of the entablature by the cornice,
being thus emphasized in the midst of horizontal members. Other
ornamental details were added, based, likewise, upon motives of the
original wooden construction. The continuous strip affixed to the lower
edges of the triglyphs was securely and visibly fastened. This was
effected by several thick trunnels, so driven in from below that the
heads were left protruding. Under the end of each beam the strip was
doubled, to give additional strength where the wood was most weakened by
perforation. The ends of the rafters were also sheathed, and brought
into harmony with the frieze. The inclined eaves were covered with
boards, and as these did not stand erect, like those before the ceiling
beams, but hung from the lower sides of the rafters, there was
particular need for an increased and distinctly secure attachment. The
sheathing was consequently pinned by more numerous trunnels; and as
every triglyph had been provided with a second strip, here a second
board was placed under the end of each rafter. The projecting heads of
these nails were called _guttæ_ by the later Romans, but this cannot
convince us that the peculiar form was intended as an ornamental
petrifaction of hanging rain-drops: such a glorification of bad weather
would have been foreign to the Greeks, accustomed to the clearest skies;
and, for so primitive a construction, this explanation appears
far-fetched. The imitation of rain-drops could nowhere have been more
out of place than upon the inclined lower side of the eaves; drops
might, perhaps, hang from the front edge of the cornice, but never upon
its under slope, which rain could not even wet. The construction of an
original work of carpentry thus provided the motives of the Doric
entablature--naïvely expressing the advance from the roughest practical
necessity to high architectural perfection. In the apertures between the
beam-ends, or metopes, and in the open triangle of the gable, were
placed votive offerings, which there found a secure and sheltered stand,
heightening the exterior importance of the work. In small chapels this
interference with the openings for light could have been of no
disadvantage. The gable was closed by a boarding, which hid from view
the rough inner construction of the roof. This veil, the tympanon, was
placed behind the triangle formed by the outer cross-beam and rafters,
as the ceiling had been laid above the other horizontal timbers. The low
gable thus naturally developed upon the front; and in later times, when
the votive offerings had been exchanged for sculptured figures, formed a
most characteristic and imposing feature.
The effect was heightened by the partly protective, partly decorative,
painting of all the wooden surfaces. Red and blue appear originally to
have been the chief colors; the former, in a dark shade, being used for
the sheathing of the tympanon, the latter for the triglyphs and other
members. Upon the bands were figured ornaments, most of which had
developed from Asiatic prototypes; they consisted of the meander,
anthemions, and the woven ribbons, etc., observable upon Assyrian
sculptures and upon the archaic bronzes and vases of Greece and Central
Italy. The extended polychromatic treatment of the marble temple is
doubtless a reminiscence of this painted wood. Without such traditions,
it would have developed differently: upon a structure of stone it would
have been less restricted to the frieze and cornice.
The entablature had thus far advanced without connection with that most
noble work of architecture--the Doric column. The shaft and entablature
of the style were not created in connection or simultaneously; the forms
of triglyph and mutule are not a growth from the columnar root, but
rather prove the Doric frieze and cornice to have been the primitive
Hellenic expression of roof and ceiling, which preceded the column, even
as the plainest constructive necessities precede ornament. The peculiar
wooden character of the entablature could exercise no important
influence upon the shaft. If the existence, in heroic times, of the
peripteros, the temple with outstanding columns, be denied--and of such
structures there is not a vestige--it cannot be supposed that columns
existed at all. Interior supports of wood are, indeed, mentioned by
Homer, and engaged shafts formed part of the façade of the Tholos of
Atreus, and were represented upon the relief over the Gate of the Lions
in Mykenæ; but between these and the Doric column there is a distance
only to be explained by the assumption that Asiatic influence was
paramount, if not exclusive, in the architecture of the heroic ages of
Greece. Though it is possible that rudiments of the Doric echinos may be
recognized in the upper tore and scotia of the engaged columns of
Mykenæ, it is yet evident that the turned-work of these members resulted
from a wooden prototype, and that the overladen decoration of the shaft,
in its style, is due to familiarity with a sheeting of beaten
metal--_i.e._, to Phœnician artistic traditions. That the forms of
the entablature were not created for the peripteros appears from the
circumstance that the metopes lose their value as windows by the change
of plan, and leave the cella without openings for light and air when
surrounded by columns. With the appearance of the peripteral temple, the
Doric entablature, which upon the oblong chapel had been the natural
expression upon the exterior of roof and ceiling construction, became a
functionless ornament, needing, as will be seen, many changes to bring
it into harmony with the outstanding colonnade.
The development of the Doric column is not perfectly clear; it is more
than probable that it was not wholly autochthonic and primitive Greek,
like the entablature of the style. Its principal part, the shaft, was
certainly imported. No prominent architectural feature can be deemed
newly invented that has been in common usage in a neighboring and
accessible country for centuries. The Doric shaft, with its
characteristic diminution and channellings, was known in Egypt more than
a thousand years before its introduction into Greece, as proved by the
monuments of Beni-Hassan. Commercial intercourse had existed between the
two countries for centuries, and it cannot be assumed that the Greeks
had not seen Egyptian works of architecture; they could not have arrived
at precisely the same results by independent invention. It would rather
be difficult to conceive how the receptive Greeks could have refused all
instruction from the neighboring people, so far in advance of them for
centuries after the Trojan war. Eight-sided drums have been found at
Bolymnos, and an octangular shaft at Trœzen; but these isolated
instances offer no proof that the development of the channelled shaft
from the square pier was effected in Greece in the same manner as had
been done fifteen centuries or more previously in Egypt.
The genius of the Greeks, however, always showed its independence when
the artistic perception of the neighboring nations had been at fault or
defective. It was impossible for them to rest content with the
termination of the so-called Proto-Doric columns of Beni-Hassan. A
simple plinth upon the upper end of the shaft was insufficient; it left
without mediation the contrast between the forcible upright line of the
channels and the long level of the epistyle. Some interposition was
necessary between the vertical and the horizontal members, and a
moulding of inclined outline was best fitted to fulfil this natural
requirement, which almost appears to be an æsthetic law. The abacus
plinth was retained as the transition from the circular drums of the
shaft to the broader oblong of the lintel. The oblique and projecting
member between the two, the echinos, was a link connecting the plans, as
well as the directions, of column and entablature. The perfectly
straight outline of an inverted cone was rarely employed in Greece for
the echinos; a stele of Artemis Brauronia upon the Athenian acropolis,
shown by inscriptions to be of great age, is an isolated instance. This
rigid line was early exchanged for a curve, which, in its advancing
stages of refinement, became one of the most characteristic features of
Doric architecture. The moulding seems, at times, to have been
ornamented with painted leaves, which, in the Ionic echinos beneath the
roll, was changed, in the manner peculiar to that order, from the
colored indication to carving. It is not certain whether this floral
decoration was generally adopted, or existed only in the isolated
instance by which it is known--the so-called Temple of Theseus. Upon the
translation of the wooden construction to a stone entablature, which
resulted in a narrow intercolumniation, the base was given up, and the
upper step of the stylobate was regarded as a common plinth.
It appears that the employment of columns connected with temples
commenced, in Greece, in the manner observed upon the rock-cut tomb
façades of Egypt and Lycia, and the chapels of Mesopotamia and
Phœnicia: two columns were placed within the open front, between the
projecting side walls; that is to say, the temple was _in antis_.
The next step was the removal of these side walls, or parastadæ, columns
taking their place in the corners before them, and the _prostyle_ temple
was thus obtained. These changes rendered several important alterations
necessary. They caused a new wall to be erected before the interior of
the cella, the naos, the colonnade of the front thus acquiring the
nature of a portico, the pronaos. The jambs of the door in this wall
were so inclined as to diminish the span of the lintel, the frame
receiving upon its upper corners the stepped ears, or parotides,
customary in Western Asia. A new member of the entablature was needed to
replace the omitted wall and provide a bearing for the ceiling
cross-beams--namely, the epistyle. It is possible that this member,
distinctly separated, existed before the change, but it certainly was
not necessary. The division of the cella into naos and pronaos finally
altered the position of the front ceiling-beams; in the naos they lay,
as before, resting upon the side walls, but in the pronaos they were
placed lengthwise--from the columns to the newly erected division wall.
Besides improving the construction of the portico ceiling, this greatly
added to the beauty of the front entablature: epistyle and ceiling-beams
would otherwise have lain upon each other, in the same direction, but
from this change resulted the frieze of triglyphs and metopes upon the
front, as upon the sides. The gain was not effected without a difficulty
arising in the frieze above the end of the side wall and the corner
column, the outer ceiling-beam of the pronaos thus lying in its length
upon the epistyle without the formation of a metope. And here the
constructive truth was first sacrificed in favor of the exterior
appearance: a cube, standing above the corner column, took the place of
the outer beam, and the continuous alternation of triglyphs and metopes
was carried out.
Having so far deviated from logical construction, the desire for an
harmonious treatment of the exterior led to other and greater changes.
The dead-wall of the rear had had no part in the development of the
frieze, and appeared intolerably bare. This deficiency could hardly be
overcome otherwise than by a repetition of a portico upon the back,
creating the epinaos, and carrying the entablature of triglyphs and
metopes around the entire building, thus perfecting the _amphiprostyle_
temple.
The more these alterations were made in favor of the exterior
appearance, the more was the original structure dismembered. The extreme
boundary of possible concessions was attained, and, at the next step,
the entablature, translated into stone, separated itself entirely from
the construction and became an applied ornament. In one stride the
ultimate type of the Hellenic temple was determined, by carrying
outstanding columns entirely around the cella,--the building became a
_peripteros_.
It is probable that these extensive alterations took place almost
simultaneously, and were adopted at once for the most prominent shrines,
while the preceding varieties--the temple in antis and the prostyle and
amphiprostyle temples--though their entablatures were also executed in
stone, were only employed in subordinate positions. With the heightened
importance of the decorative exterior the monumental significance of the
temple rose above the mere necessities of a chamber for the sacred
image. The structure acquired equal solidity in every part exposed to
view. It was built of a homogeneous material. The timbering of roof and
ceiling was hidden by the stone symbols placed before the ends of the
rafters and beams; the entablature was allowed an independent freedom of
development and proportion. The heaviness of the material made it
necessary to diminish the voids and increase the solids of the supports
as much as was feasible. The stone shafts were allowed a greater
diameter and placed more nearly together than when, as was the case in
Etruria at a much later period, their burden had been of timber. The
stone cornice, which was not as high as the epistyle, could not span the
same clear width, and called for a second support over the
intercolumniations,--a further triglyph. This was the more acceptable,
as the appearance of the frieze was improved by its adoption; the
breadth of triglyph and metope became nearly equal and better
proportioned, their alternating rhythm more pleasing. The metopes,
having upon the peripteros no importance as windows, were closed by
thin slabs, which added to the unity and imposing force of the edifice.
It is surprising how faithfully the traditional forms were still
retained, even to the smallest details, while they yet received a truly
artistic conventionalization and those proportions which make the Doric
temple the grandest and most perfect monument of architectural history.
It is probable that the completed peripteros existed as early as the
seventh century B.C. The first steps of advance were rapidly made, and
may, perhaps, be referred to the ages immediately preceding. It would
indeed be interesting to know when, where, and by whom the incomparable
design was perfected which gave to the world its proudest edifice; but
it must suffice to understand the intentions of which the Doric temple
was the final result.
[Illustration: Fig. 136.--Corner Elevation of the Middle Temple of the
Acropolis of Selinous. Restoration.]
Semper has suggested that a canopy-like roof, supported by columns, was
placed above and around the small temple cella to increase its extent,
and, at the same time, to express its power and sacredness by that
oldest symbol of terrestrial and celestial authority. This attractive
assumption does not interfere with the theory of the previous
development of the temple in antis and the prostylos, or with the
historical considerations based upon the appearance of an imperfect
peripteros centuries before in Egypt. The cella and outstanding columns
rose from a stepped foundation, the crepidoma, the kernel of which, the
stereobate, was formed of massive walls, or, when possible, of the
native rock. The blocks were too high for human steps, and are not to be
conceived as stairs. Such an ascent entirely surrounding the temple
would have been purposeless, and contrary to the isolating character of
the crepidoma. They formed a base, such as is displayed in an
exaggerated manner by the Mesopotamian sanctuaries, where, however, the
chapels elevated upon the gigantic terraces were small in proportion to
the substructure. In buildings of greater dimensions, the few and
massive steps serving as the base of the Greek temple were increased,
not in number, but in size. They were thus always proportional and
fitted to their function as a foundation. Accessible stairs from all
sides would have given a pyramidal effect to the lower part of the
composition; while, at the foot of the upright supports, the horizontal
line should rather be emphatically pronounced. Smaller intermediate
blocks were provided for the ascent to the temple, thus made possible
only upon the front. The upper step, the stylobate, was, as has been
said, the common plinth, the columns being without base-moulding, and,
consequently, without individual functions or isolated independence. The
comparatively narrow intercolumniations were the better passages from
this absence of projections at the foot of the columns. The powerful
shafts were doubly modified by the diminution and by the entasis. The
first refinement found its model in the natural contraction of all
ascending bodies; a greater strength is needed below because of the
increasing weight. To this must be added an optical motive: every
diminution modifies the perspective effect, increasing the apparent
height or distance of bodies thus bordered by lines slightly converging,
though apparently parallel. The entasis was entirely decided by such
optical considerations. It overcame a deception, resulting from the
diminution, which makes a straight-lined cone of very steep sides appear
of slightly concave outline. The shafts usually had twenty, in a few
instances sixteen, channels, of nearly elliptical profile, separated by
sharp arrises. As may be seen in unfinished temples, these grooves were
not executed until the last stone of the building was in place, that the
chipping of the delicate edges by the imposition of the drums or blocks
next to them, and by other accidents during the process of building,
might be avoided. It was only upon the capital that the channels were
cut in advance, as a guide. To avoid the chipping of this stone, it was
necessary to prevent its sharp lower edges from resting directly upon
the top of the drum beneath it. To this end a diminutive step, a
scamillus of smaller diameter, was turned upon the bottom of the capital
block, or the same effect was attained by slightly slanting off and
increasing the right angle of its lower edge. It was contrary to the
artistic feeling of the Greek architect for constructive truth to mask
even this slight necessity by priming and painting. It was, rather, made
more distinct by increased size and a characteristic profile, in some
instances even by a repetition of the incision. The upper end of the
shaft was thus distinctly separated, notwithstanding the continuous
channellings, and was related to the capital as the mediating neck of
the column, the hypotrachelion. The echinos began its projection with
several annulets, which still more definitely marked the junction of the
capital with the shaft. It would be difficult to decide whether these
mouldings were reminiscences of the binding-ribbons upon the necking of
Egyptian floral columns. They were not placed beneath the echinos, but
upon it, and consequently follow the curved profile, enlarging
concentrically with its projection. The Doric capital, among all
capitals that we know, attains the highest æsthetic perfection by its
fulfilment of the requirements of a transitional member: by the
proportion of its projection, and especially by its expressive and
characteristic curve, which rises from a firm and almost straight line
to the decided turn beneath the abacus. The outline is more elastic
than a simple oblique angle, more vigorous and capable of resistance
than the concave curve. The echinos provides the requisite projection;
the abacus upon it forms the second transition from the circular plan of
the shaft to the rectangle of the entablature. In the Doric style this
upper half is about the same height as the echinos beneath it, while in
the capitals of other orders the curved members of circular plan have
been developed at the expense of this plinth, which is dwarfed to a thin
plate.