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vast number of the examples of Egyptian capitals, one of which, among many, is seen in fig. 94.

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141. The progress of the art in Greece, whose inhabitants, in the opinion of the Egyptian priests in the time of Solon, were so ignorant of all science that they neither understood the mythology of other nations nor their own (Plato, in Timeo), cannot be satisfactorily followed between the period assigned to the siege of Troy and the time of Solon and Pisistratus, or about 590 B. c. But it is, however, certain that within four centuries after Homer's time, notwithstanding their originally coarse manners, the Grecians attained the highest excellence in the arts. Goguet is of opinion the nurture of the art was principally in Asia Minor, in which country, he thinks, we must seek for the origin of the Doric and Ionic orders, whilst in Greece Proper the advancement was slow. The Corinthian order was, however, the last invented, and it seems generally agreed that its invention belongs to the mother country; but this we shall not stop to discuss here. The Temple of Jupiter, at Olympia, one of the earliest temples of Greece (Pausanias, Eliac. Pr. c. 10.), was was built about 630 years before the Christian era; and after this period were reared temples at Samos, Priene, Ephesus, and Magnesia, and other places up to that age when, under the administration of Pericles, the architecture of Greece attained perfection, and the highest beauty whereof it is supposed to be susceptible, in the Parthenon (fig. 95.)

Fig. 94.

EGYPTIAN CAPITAL.

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at Athens.

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The date of the erection of the temple of Diana, at Ephesus, was really as remote as that of the temple we have just mentioned. If Livy had sufficiently our confidence, and we concede that other writers corroborate his statement (lib. i. c. 45.), its date is as ancient as the time when Servius Tullius was king of Rome. Great, however, as were the works which the Grecians executed, the mechanical powers were, if one may judge from Thucydides (lib. iv.), not compendiously applied for raising weights.

142. The origin of the Doric order is a question not easily disposed of. Many provinces of Greece bore the name of Doria; but a name is often the least satisfactory mode of accounting for the birth of the thing which bears it. We have already attempted to account for the parts of this order by a reference to its supposed connection with the hut. The writer, in the Encyclopedie Méthodique, truly says that if the Doric had an inventor, that inventor was a people whose wants were, for a long period, similar, and with whom a style of building prevailed suitable to their habits and climate, though but slowly modified and carried to perfection. At the beginning of this section, we have, however, sufficiently spoken on this matter. But there are some peculiarities to be noticed with respect to the Doric order, which we think will be better given here than in the third book, where we propose to treat of the orders more fully; and these consist in the great differences which are found in its proportions and parts in different examples. For this purpose, several buildings have been arranged in the following table, wherein the first column exhibits the name of the building; the second the height of the column, of the example as a nume

rator, and its lower diameter as a denominator, both in English feet; the third is the quotient of the second, showing the height of the column, expressed in terms of its lower diameter; the fourth column shows the height of the entablature in terms of the diameter of the column; the fifth column gives the distance between the columns in the same terms; and the sixth shows the height of the capitals also in the same terms : —

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143. Casting our eye down the third column of the above table, we find the height of the column in terms of its lower diameter varying from 4-065 to 6.535. Lord Aberdeen (Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Greek Architecture, 1822) seems to prefer the proportion of the capital to the column, as a test for determining its comparative antiquity; but we are not, though it is entitled to great respect, of his opinion, preferring, as we do, a judgment from the height as compared with the diameter to any other criterion; although it must be admitted that it is not an infallible one. The last columns shows what an inconstant test the height of the capital exhibits. There is another combination, to which reference ought to be made, the height of the entablature, which forms the third column of the table, in which it appears that the most massive is about one third the height of the whole order, and the lightest is about one fourth, and that these proportions coincide with the thickest and the thinnest columns.

144. The entasis or swelling, which the Greeks gave to their columns, and first verified by the observations of Mr. Allason, was a refinement introduced probably at a late period, though the mere diminution of them was adopted in the earliest times. The practice is said to have its type in the law which Nature observes in the formation of the trunks of trees. This diminution varies, in a number of examples, from one fifth to one third of the lower diameter; a mean of sixteen examples gives one fourth. The mere diminution is not, however, the matter for consideration; but the curved outline of the shaft, which is attributed to some refined perception of the Greeks,

relative to the apparent diminution of objects as their distance from the eye was increased, which Vitruvius imagines it was the object of the entasis to correct. It cannot be denied that in a merely conical shaft there is an appearance of concavity, for which it is difficult to account. The following explanation of this phenomenon, if it may be so called, is given by our esteemed and learned friend, Mr. Narrien, in the Encyc. Metropol. art. Architecture. "When," he observes, "we direct the axis of the eye to the middle of a tall column, the organ accommodates itself to the distance of that part of the object, in order to obtain distinctness of vision, and then the oblique pencils of light from the upper and lower parts of the column do not so accurately converge on the retina: hence arises a certain degree of obscurity, which always produces a perception of greater magnitude than would be produced by the same object if seen more distinctly. The same explanation may serve to account for the well-known fact, that the top of an undiminished pilaster appears so much broader than the body of its shaft; to which, in this case, may be added some prejudice, caused by our more frequently contemplating other objects, as trees, which taper towards their upper extremities." Connected in some measure with the same optical deception is the rule which Vitruvius lays down (book iii. chap. 2.) for making the columns, at the angles of buildings, thicker than those in the middle by one fiftieth part of a diameter, a law which we find followed out to a much greater extent in the temples of the Parthenon and of Theseus, at Athens, where the columns at the angles exceed in diameter the intermediate ones by one forty-fourth and one twenty-eighth respectively. Where, however, the columns were viewed against a dark ground, some artists think that a contrary deception of the eye seems to take place.

145. In the investigation of the Doric order, among its more remarkable features are to be noted the longitudinal striæ, called flutes, into which the column is cut; every two whereof unite, in almost every case, in an edge. Their horizontal section varies in different examples. In some, the flutes are formed by segments of circles; in others, the form approaches that of an ellipsis. The number all round is usually twenty; such being the case at Athens; but at Pæstum the exterior order of the great temple has twenty-four, the lower interior order twenty, and the upper interior sixteen only. It has been strangely imagined, by some, that these flutings, which, be it remembered, are applied to the other orders as well as to the Doric, were provided for the reception of the spears of persons visiting the temples. The conjecture is scarcely worth refutation, first, because no situation for the doupoBokn (place for spears) would have led to their more continual displacement from accident; and secondly, because of the sloping or hemispherical form in the other orders, the foot of the spear must have immediately slid off. Their origin may probably be found in the polygonal column, whose sides received a greater play of light by being hollowed out, - a refinement which would not be long unperceived by the Greeks.

146. We shall now notice some of the more important Doric edifices, as connected with the later history of the Doric order, which was that most generally used by the European states of Greece, up to their subjugation by the Romans. The temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, at Egina, is probably one of the most ancient in Greece. The story, however, of Pausanias, that it was built by acus, before the war of Troy, is only useful as showing us its high antiquity. (Fig. 96.) The proportions of its columns and entablature are to be

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found in a preceding page.

The sculpture with which this building was decorated is now at Munich. Though, perhaps, not so old as the building itself, it is of an antiquity coeval with the Persian invasion. The name of the architect of this temple was Libon, of whom no other work is known; its age is, perhaps, from about 600 years before Christ. The Doric temple at Corinth, of which five columns, with their architrave, are still in existence, is a very early specimen of Grecian architecture. The assertion that it was dedicated to

Venus is unsupported by testimony.

147. The Grecian temples in Sicily were erected at periods which it is not easy to fix; and with respect to them, we can only, from circumstances connected with the island, reason on the dates to be assigned to them. The founding of the city of Selinus or Selinuns, on the south-west coast of the island, has usually been attributed to a colony from Megara; but we are of opinion with the Baron Pisani (Memoria sulle Metope Selinuntine) that it existed as a Phoenician city long previous to the settlement there by the Megaræans. The style and forms of the sculpture of the Selinuntine temples seem to bear marks of a remoter age than is usually allowed to them, that is, 500 years B. C. Of the means and the circumstances under which they were raised we are ignorant; but their ruins sufficiently indicate the wealth and power that were employed upon them, as well as a considerably advanced state of the art.

148. The temple of Jupiter Olympius, the largest in the island, and one of the most stupendous monuments of antiquity, was, as we learn from Diodorus (lib. xiii. p. 82.), never completed. The Agrigentines were occupied upon it when the city was taken by Hamilcar, in the 93d Olympiad. Its columns were on such a scale that their flutes were sufficiently large to receive the body of a man. The temples of Peace and of Concord, in the few vestiges that remain of them, attest the ancient magnificence of the city of Agrigentum, and are among the most beautiful as well as the best preserved remains of antiquity. A Corinthian colony established itself at Syracuse, as is said, 750 B. C.; but no details of the history of the city furnish us with the means of ascertaining when the first temples there were erected. Its riches and magnificence were, however, such that it soon became an object of temptation to the Carthaginians. Its temple of Minerva is evidently of very remote antiquity.

149. The great Hypæthral temple at Pæstum was probably constructed during the period that the city was under the power of the Sybarites, who dispossessed its original inhabitants, enjoying, for upwards of two hundred years, the fruits of their usurpation. Marks of Greek art are visible in it, and the antiquity of the Hypæthral temple itself is confirmed by the example. The city fell into the hands of the Lucanians about 350 years B.C.; after which, in about 70 years, it was a municipal town of the Roman empire. The foll wing is perhaps the chronological order of the principal buildings of Sicily and Magna G æcia; viz. Syracuse, Paestum, Selinus, Segesta, and Agrigentum.

150. The dates of the edifices at Athens are, without difficulty, accurately fixed. The Propylæum (figs. 97 and 98.) was commenced by Mnesicles about 437 B.C., and, at a great

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expense, was completed in five years. It is a specimen of the military architecture of the period, and at the same time forms a fine entrance to the Acropolis of Athens. At the rear of its Doric portico the roof of the vestibule was supported within by two rows of Ionic columns, whose bases still remain. By the introduction of these an increased height was obtained for the roof, the abaci of the Ionic capitals being thus brought level with the ex

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terior frieze of the building. The Parthenon (figs. 99. and 100.) erected a few years later under the superintendence of Ictinus, is well known as one of the finest remains of antiquity.

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As well as the building last mentioned, it was reared at the period when Pericles had the management of public affairs, and was without a rival in Athens. Phidias was the superintendent sculptor employed; and many of the productions which decorated this magnificent edifice have doubtless become known to the reader in his visits to the British Museum, where a large portion of them are now deposited. Nearly coeval with the Propylæum and Parthenon, or perhaps a little earlier, is the temple of Theseus (fig. 101.), which was, it is supposed, erected to receive the ashes of the national hero, when removed from Scyros to Athens. The ruins of the architectural monuments of this city attest that the boasted power and opulence of Greece was not an idle tale. Pericles, indeed, was charged by his enemies with having brought disgrace upon the Athenians by removing the public trea

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