structures, in which the architectural ability of the Greeks, by that
time thoroughly schooled, sought also to develop itself in enormous
size. The hexastyle front was increased to the octastyle, thus
permitting wider dimensions of the cella, which still, however, did not
attain the greatest possible extent, the architect being unwilling to
reduce the breadth of the pteroma. The columns became even shorter and
thicker; they were less diminished and had a more delicately adjusted
entasis; the intercolumniations were increased. The separation of the
capital from the shaft by an apophyge was abandoned; the entasis was
made steeper and of a more vigorous outline. The disproportionately high
and weak triglyphs are especially characteristic of this stage of
development; with the exception of these, the entablature still
remained low and heavy. Marble came more and more into use as a
building-stone; the execution of details in stucco was rarer. The new
material did not limit the use of color, which, in place of the former
tones, became brighter--red, blue, and yellow prevailing. The most
imposing, because the best-preserved, of these colossal works is the
magnificent Temple of Pœstum, with its two stories of inner columns
partly intact. (_Fig._ 153.) The triglyphs have not as yet disappeared
from the walls of the cella, but otherwise the construction shows no
primitive traits, being fully fitted for its execution in stone.
Resembling this in many points is the Temple of Acragas, or Agrigentum,
termed that of Heracles. (_Fig._ 149.) The great Temple of Zeus of the
same city was of the most gigantic dimensions ever attempted in the
sacred architecture of the Greeks. It was also, unfortunately, even
greater than was really practicable for a trabeated construction in such
a building-material, and consequently became a monstrosity. The temple
was heptastyle, that is, had seven columns upon the front, which
rendered impossible the normal entrance in the middle. It differed still
more decidedly from other Greek temples in that the cella was not
surrounded by an open pteroma, the outstanding columns being supplanted
by a wall decorated with engaged shafts. It would be difficult to decide
whether this peculiar pseudo-peripteros owed its conformation to the
building-stone at disposal, only to be quarried in blocks too short for
the lintels of the pteroma, or whether other considerations led to this
abnormal negation of the fundamental principles of columnar
architecture, which here has no relation to the better-founded practices
of Roman builders in the application of engaged shafts. The
transformation of the pteroma made an entire change in the general
disposition of plan; but too little of the building now remains above
ground to render its arrangement certain. If door-openings be assumed at
both sides of the middle column, as in the illustration, this would have
been possible only upon the west, the middle column of the east--the
customary entrance-front--being proved by the remains to have been
engaged. It is not probable that windows existed in the wall between the
columns; the supposition is more natural that some of the side metopes
were unclosed, and provided the pteroma with sufficient daylight. This
would have been no innovation, but rather, in this case, where it was
impossible to execute the open peripteros, a return to the original
method of illumination through the interstices between the beams upon
the top of the cella wall. The before-mentioned Temple of Athene upon
the island of Ortygia is another Sicilian example belonging to this
archaic period of gigantic dimensions.
The two colossal monuments of Athens, built during the second half of
the sixth century, are more important, although the older Parthenon upon
the acropolis, if, indeed, ever completed, could not have stood longer
than half a century, and the Doric temple of Olympian Zeus was
discontinued before its construction had far advanced. A comparison of a
fragment of the earlier building with the entablature of the present
Parthenon shows how disproportionately high were the triglyphs and how
heavy and broad the tænia and regulas of the archaic period. (_Fig._
155.)
[Illustration: Fig. 155.--Entablatures of the Older and Present
Parthenon.]
[Illustration: Fig. 156.--Plan of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.]
The exercise of the designer’s individual ability in these works, and
the hieratic retention of every constructive and æsthetic gain thus
obtained, prepared for the fullest perfection of the Doric style. The
advance was effected by a slight attenuation of the too massive columns,
a further reduction of the height of the entablature, and an increase in
the projection of the smaller decorative members. The temples built
during, or shortly after, the time of the Persian wars show the gradual
introduction of these changes. Among the Sicilian remains of this period
are the uncompleted Temple of Segesta, the so-called Temple of Concordia
at Acragas, and the six peripteral temples upon the acropolis and
eastern plateau of Selinous not previously mentioned. Among those of
Greece proper, the Temple of Athene upon Ægina and the Temple of Zeus at
Olympia (_Fig._ 156) are most prominent. The frieze of triglyphs was
omitted from the cella walls of the Temple of Ægina, but the regulas and
trunnels were retained with curious effect: it is as though the designer
were only slowly and with difficulty led to give up, one by one, the
traditions of a primitive wooden construction. The date of the building
of the Olympian temple is uncertain, but the name of its architect,
Libon, of Elis, has been handed down, with one exception the earliest
connected with Greek architecture. The recent excavations have entirely
exposed the overthrown ruins. They show that the forms of the edifice
are more primitive than would have been expected from the age in which
Pheidias completed the celebrated chryselephantine statue of the temple
deity. It is possible that the advance of the building was slow, or that
there were long interruptions of the work before its final completion.
An especially important result of the investigations is the evidence
that an enclosed ædicula for the statue of Zeus, hitherto advocated by
restorers because of the supposed opening in the roof and ceiling for
light, did not exist, the interior having been divided into three aisles
like the great Temple of Pæstum. The proportions of the peripteros were
of great vigor and beauty. It was built of poros, with the exception of
the metope reliefs upon the fronts of the cella, and the carved gutter
and roof tiles, which were of marble. This so-called poros, a stone
almost exclusively employed for the earlier buildings of the Greeks, is
a rough shell conglomerate, usually brought to a surface by a heavy
priming of stucco. The floor of the pteroma of the great temple at
Olympia was of a pebble cement, the small inner staircases of wood.
While the architecture of the Peloponnesos still retained traces of the
archaic style, the highest perfection of Doric forms was attained in
Attica, reaching its fulfilment at a time, after the Persian wars, when
the political supremacy of Athens was far greater than that ever enjoyed
by any state of the world so restricted in territory. The deserved
sovereignty of Athens over Greece, its naval power, imposing even to the
Orientals of Western Asia and Egypt, and, finally, the necessity and
opportunity of rebuilding the Attic capital after its destruction by the
Persians, before the decisive battle of Salamis, caused a monumental
rebirth of the noble city, which not only became the classic model in
those ages throughout the extent of Greece and its colonies upon distant
shores, but the highest ideal of architecture to the present day and for
the entire future of the human race. Attica was fitted to cultivate
equally the artistic peculiarities of the two branches of the Hellenic
stock, its Ionic population being intermingled, in a marked degree, with
Doric elements. It had attained the highest development of civilization,
and was the home of the most famed artists. By the taxes levied upon the
eastern mainland and the islands of the Archipelago, Athens had almost
unlimited means at its disposal. To this nature added the incomparable
marble building-material, quarried almost before the gates of the city,
which indeed possessed all the conditions requisite for the first
monumental capital of Greece and of the civilized world. Familiarity
with the Ionic style did not permit that heaviness and clumsiness of
architectural members observable upon the contemporaneous temples of the
Peloponnesos. The columns of the Temple of Ægina had been allowed a
height as great as 5.3 times their lower diameter. In the Doric
buildings of Athens this was still further increased, the so-called
Temple of Theseus having the proportion of 5.62 to 1, the Parthenon as
5.47 to 1. The diminution and entasis of the shaft were reduced to just
relations; the delicate curve of the latter, as demanded by the optical
deception it was to correct, was greatest below the half height of the
column. The channellings no longer remained segmental arcs, but received
an independently designed, elliptical profile. The echinos became
steeper, rising in an almost straight line to the firm and sharp turn
beneath the abacus. The triglyphs, returning slightly to former
proportions, became broader than those of the preceding period; smaller
members were diminished in height, but were made more projecting. The
colors of the entablature became still more intense; blue and red
predominated; green was also employed, and gilding appeared upon the
trunnels and in the beautifully composed surface patterns. Ionic
elements, almost entirely disused during the latter ages, reappeared in
very general employment, especially in the deep cofferings of the
pteroma ceiling and upon the capitals of the pilasters.
The typical monuments of this Attic Doric style are the so-called
Theseion, and the Parthenon and Propylæa of the Athenian acropolis. The
first of these buildings (_Fig._ 139) was certainly not sacred to
Theseus; its dedication is not surely known. It preceded the highest
perfection, still betraying some slight archaic influences. The
triglyphs are too high, the smaller members, notably the regulas and
trunnels, too heavy. Ionic elements are freely introduced. Besides the
coffering of the pteroma ceiling and the before-mentioned pilaster
capitals, there was an Ionic zophoros, or continuous frieze of figures,
bordered above and below by leaved cyma-mouldings and astragals, in
place of the Doric entablature usually employed, at least in part, upon
the walls of the cella. The ornamental painting was extended to the
capitals of the pteroma columns (_Fig._ 150), which bore a series of
leaves, and to the walls, the interior of the naos having been prepared
for the reception of pigments. The perfect preservation of the building
is owing to its early transformation into a Christian church.
[Illustration: Fig. 157.--Plan of the Parthenon.]
The Parthenon far surpassed the Theseion in artistic perfection; it was,
indeed, worthy the superintendence of a Pheidias. Its architect,
Ictinos, conceived his work to stand so high above contemporary
buildings that he celebrated it in an especial monograph, mentioned by
Vitruvius, though, unfortunately, not consulted by him. The dimensions
of the octastyle temple were imposing; the edge of the stylobate
measured about 30 by 68 m.; elevated upon the steep acropolis, it could
be seen from a great distance. Though its site was not limited, the
economy of space was carried to an extreme. The intercolumniations are
narrow, especially those of the front; the pteroma was thus reduced in
breadth to less than one and one half times the lower diameter of the
columns. (_Fig._ 157.) The pronaos and epinaos had no side walls, the
cella being amphiprostyle, enclosed by high grilles. The depth of these
vestibules was less than one quarter of their breadth. The remaining
interior was partitioned into two chambers of unequal size: the naos and
the opisthodomos, the latter of which served as a treasury. The naos was
divided by ranges of columns into three chief aisles, and the gallery
over the sides was carried across the nave, next to the rear wall. The
world-renowned chryselephantine statue of Athene, 12 m. high, stood
before the transverse columns, between which and the partition there was
allowed a passage, nearly equal in breadth to the side aisles. The
stairs to the gallery may, from the analogies of the great temples of
Olympia and Pæstum, be assumed to have existed at either side of the
entrance.
[Illustration: Fig. 158.--Plan and View of the Propylæa, Athens.]
The Propylæa of the Athenian acropolis, by which the architect Mnesicles
made his name immortal, were not less perfect than the Parthenon. Work
upon them was begun shortly before the completion of the latter
building, in 438 B.C., and occupied five years. Ionic members had
frequently been employed upon Doric structures, but the Propylæa offer
the first instance of a combination of the styles in almost equal
proportions: the interior of these gates was entirely Ionic, the
exterior entirely Doric. (_Figs._ 120 and 158.) Six Ionic columns bore
the famed marble ceiling of great span, while two Doric porticos formed
the fronts. The stone-cutting of all the monuments upon the Athenian
acropolis was incomparably exact and beautiful, as was the harmony of
their proportions and forms.
[Illustration: Fig. 159.--Plan of the Temple of Apollo at Bassæ.]
The Temple of Phigalia, or Bassæ, in Arcadia, though stated to have been
built by the architect of the Parthenon, shows that the perfection of
the monuments last considered was possible only upon Attic ground. The
sanctuary of Arcadia was dedicated to Apollo Epicourios in gratitude for
the deliverance of the district from the plague of 431 B.C. Its plan
(_Fig._ 159) was excessively long, having fifteen side columns, with a
hexastyle front. The elevation offers a remarkable combination of
archaic traditional forms and of exaggerated novelties. Though the three
incisions of the capital necking are peculiarly primitive, the echinos
has become even steeper than it was upon the Parthenon. Ionic sculptured
ornaments begin to appear upon the entablature. The inward inclination
of the axes of the columns and the curvature of the horizontals have
been neglected in Bassæ, as if the architect had not considered it worth
while to display such refinements to the uncultivated Arcadians. In the
interior of the temple Ionic columns are engaged upon short transverse
walls, which project from the sides. These are so remarkably archaic in
form (_Fig._ 165) that it is difficult to explain how Athenian
architects, who must have been familiar with the interior columns of the
Propylæa and those of the Erechtheion, then in course of construction,
could have prepared the designs. An extremely ancient and undeveloped
Corinthian capital (_Fig._ 176) has been found among the ruins of Bassæ;
it will be referred to below. Many of the anomalies of the temple would
be explained by the assumption that the building occupied the site of a
former chapel, the entrance to which had naturally been upon the east,
and that the lack of available ground prevented the retention of the
original and usual orientation, making the peripteros, as the
enlargement of a former fane, open the inner chamber of the naos upon
one of the long sides.
[Illustration: Fig. 160.--Plan of the Temenos of Eleusis.]
Other Attic remains, some of which date from the end of the fifth
century, also show traces of the deterioration of the art. Chief among
these are the Propylæa of Eleusis and the house of assemblage for those
initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, known as the Telesterion, a
square hypostyle hall, fronted by a portico of twelve columns,
apparently without a gable. (_Fig._ 160.) It is not known how soon after
the Persian wars the temples of Rhamnous and Sunion were rebuilt; they
may have slightly preceded the age of decline. The increasing love of
magnificence and luxury felt among the Greeks was not satisfied with the
simple majesty of the Doric style; the Ionic was more and more
frequently substituted in preference. The latter had been employed for
the Propylæa of the Athenian acropolis, and had appeared independently
in smaller temples, and, finally, in the national shrine of Attica, the
Erechtheion. The Doric became restricted to porticos and peristyles,
and, in double-storied interiors, to the lower order, for which
important constructional functions it was fitted by the great solidity
of the column. But the desire to simplify the execution of Doric
members, and reduce the expense which must have been attendant upon the
delicate refinements of curvatures, introduced dry and hard geometrical
forms, and the æsthetic value of the style was, for the greater part,
lost. An example of this debasement is offered by the portico of Philip
upon Delos, where the echinos projects in an absolutely straight line.
(_Fig._ 151.) In the colonies, upon the other hand, even as late as the
Roman period, the style was archaistically treated, with a provincial
lack of good taste, illustrated by the weak echinos and apophyge of the
capital of the so-called Temple of Demeter at Pæstum. (_Fig._ 152.)
An entirely different manner of building had early appeared by the side
of the Doric style, which cannot be accounted of quite equal birth with
that eldest male offspring of Hellenic civilization, but, to carry out
the simile, should rather be considered as a step-sister. The
development of the peripteral plan, the echinos coronation of the
channelled shafts, and the entablature of triglyphs, metopes, and
mutules, appear autochthonic and purely Greek; while the Ionic style,
though adopting the plan and general disposition of the former, was, in
its most characteristic details, an importation from Asia. It is not
meant by this that the perfected style was not characteristically
Hellenic. The Greeks accepted none of the products of their neighbors
without a change--a transformation of disposition and detail by their
peculiar genius. But the fundamental motives, the elements of the style,
in as far as these are not identified with the Doric, had been taken
from neighboring Eastern lands of primitive civilization: from the
coasts of Asia Minor and Syria.
The Ionic column betrays this relationship in both base and capital. The
former consists fundamentally of a tore elevated upon a drum, usually
hollowed by a scotia. This tore was employed as a footing for the
columns of Nineveh, and is familiar through one example and through
representations upon reliefs. From thence it was transplanted to Persia,
where, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., it appears with the
horizontal channelling found upon the more primitive Ionic monuments.
(_Fig._ 79.) The concave profile of the under plinth is new and
Hellenic. The delicate perception of the Greek designer recognized the
advantage of this scotia over the clumsy heaviness which had resulted
from the tore being placed immediately upon the ground or upon a
rectangular slab, and the lower member was made to harmonize with the
channelled moulding above it by the emphasis of horizontal lines. It is
uncertain whether the slender proportions of the Ionic shaft, so marked
in comparison with the strength of the Doric style, is to be attributed
to Oriental influences. It agreed as well with the light Ionic
entablature and ceiling as did the powerful Doric column with the great
weight imposed upon it; and it may be regarded as one of the principles
of architectural construction that the strength of the support has ever
been originally determined by the weight of the ceiling and
superstructure: the column has been adapted to the entablature, not the
height of epistyle, frieze and cornice to the diameter of the shaft.
With this consideration agreed the desire to attain great elegance and
lightness of proportion, peculiar to the Ionic race. The Ionic column,
thus made of greater proportional height, had diminution and entasis
like the Doric. It differed remarkably in the fluting. A vertical
grooving cannot be traced upon the columns of Assyria; upon those of
Persia it is similar to the Doric channels, with sharp arrises. The
development of the flute itself may perhaps be deemed peculiarly Greek.
As painted ornaments were gradually given up, they were replaced by
architectural carvings; such sculptured decorations were harmoniously
introduced upon the shaft, and the channels were deepened to a
semicircular profile. This rendered a change of the arrises necessary,
for if the ends of the arcs were to have abutted, as upon the Doric
column, the deep flute, with its extremely sharp edge, could only have
been executed upon a plane. Upon a convexly curved surface, like that of
the cylindrical drums, it would have been impossible to cut semicircular
grooves immediately adjoining, as their outlines would have intersected.
The sharp arrises were therefore relinquished, and a broad vertical
band, the surface of the original cylinder, was left in its place, the
play of light and shade which enlivened the body of the shaft being
increased by these flutings, but the evidence of the derivation of the
channelled column from the polygonal pier was entirely sacrificed, the
cylindrical form being characterized as original by the remaining
fillets. The carving of the shaft was rendered more difficult from the
slight projections left at the top and bottom as transitional members to
the base and to the capital. This horizontal fillet was a further gain
to the outline of the column, concave and convex surfaces thus
alternating from floor to ceiling. The flutings were terminated above
and below, before reaching this transverse member, by a semicircle,
which agreed with their sectional outline.
[Illustration: Fig. 161.--Ionic Order from the Peripteros of the
Mausoleum of Halicarnassos.]
[Illustration: Fig. 162.--Plan of the Normal Ionic Capital.]
[Illustration: Fig. 163.--Plan of the Corner Ionic Capital.]