A Text-Book of the History of Architecture Part 5

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 ma.s.siveness 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 G.o.ds, demiG.o.ds, 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 n.o.blest 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, aegina, 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 a.s.syrian 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 surpa.s.sing 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 6 inches in diameter, and 2 feet 10 inches high, cut from single blocks of Pentelic marble. The architraves of the Propylaea 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 coa.r.s.e 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 t.i.tans 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]

[Footnote 10: These refinements, first noticed by Allason in 1814, and later confirmed by c.o.c.kerell and Haller as to the columns, were published to the world in 1838 by Hoffer, verified by Penrose in 1846, and further developed by the investigations of Ziller and later observers.]

CHAPTER VII.

GREEK ARCHITECTURE--_Continued_.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Same as for Chapter VI. Also, Bacon and Clarke, _Investigations at a.s.sos_. Espouy, _Fragments d'architecture antique_. Harrison and Verrall, _Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens_. Hitorff et Zanth, _Recueil des Monuments de Segeste et Selinonte_. Magne, _Le Parthenon_. Koldewey and Puchstein, _Die griechischen Tempel in Unteritalien und Sicilien_.

Waldstein, _The Argive Heraeum_.

+HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT.+ The history of Greek architecture, subsequent to the Heroic or Primitive Age, may be divided into periods as follows:

The ARCHAIC; from 650 to 500 B.C.

The TRANSITIONAL; from 500 to 460 B.C., or to the revival of prosperity after the Persian wars.

The PERICLEAN; from 460 to 400 B.C.

The FLORID or ALEXANDRIAN; from 400 to 300 B.C.

The DECADENT; 300 to 100 B.C.

The ROMAN; 100 B.C. to 200 A.D.

These dates are, of course, somewhat arbitrary; it is impossible to set exact bounds to style-periods, which must inevitably overlap at certain points, but the dates, as given above, will a.s.sist in distinguis.h.i.+ng the successive phases of the history.

+ARCHAIC PERIOD.+ The archaic period is characterized by the exclusive use of the Doric order, which appears in the earliest monuments complete in all its parts, but heavy in its proportions and coa.r.s.e in its execution. The oldest known temples of this period are the +Apollo Temple+ at Corinth (650 B.C.?), and the +Northern Temple+ on the acropolis at +Selinus+ in Sicily (cir. 610-590 B.C.). They are both of a coa.r.s.e limestone covered with stucco. The columns are low and ma.s.sive (4? to 4? diameters in height), widely s.p.a.ced, and carry a very high entablature. The triglyphs still appear around the cella wall under the pteroma ceiling, an illogical detail destined to disappear in later buildings. Other temples at Selinus date from the middle or latter part of the sixth century; they have higher columns and finer profiles than those just mentioned. The great +Temple of Zeus+ at +Selinus+ was the earliest of five colossal Greek temples of very nearly identical dimensions; it measured 360 feet by 167 feet in plan, but was never completed. During the second half of the sixth century important Doric temples were built at Paestum in South Italy, and Agrigentum in Sicily; the somewhat primitive temple at a.s.sos in Asia Minor, with uncouth carvings of centaurs and monsters on its architrave, belongs to this same period. The +Temple of Zeus+ at +Agrigentum+ (Fig. 33) is another singular and exceptional design, and was the second of the five colossal temples mentioned above. The pteroma was entirely enclosed by walls with engaged columns showing externally, and was of extraordinary width. The walls of the narrow cella were interrupted by heavy piers supporting atlantes, or applied statues under the ceiling. There seem to have been windows between these figures, but it is not clear whence they borrowed their light, unless it was admitted by the omission of the metopes between the external triglyphs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 33.--TEMPLE OF ZEUS. AGRIGENTUM.]

+THE TRANSITION.+ During the transitional period there was a marked improvement in the proportions, detail, and workmans.h.i.+p of the temples.

The cella was made broader, the columns more slender, the entablature lighter. The triglyphs disappeared from the cella wall, and sculpture of a higher order enhanced the architectural effect. The profiles of the mouldings and especially of the capitals became more subtle and refined in their curves, while the development of the Ionic order in important monuments in Asia Minor was preparing the way for the splendors of the Periclean age. Three temples especially deserve notice: the +Athena Temple+ on the island of +aegina+, the +Temple of Zeus+ at +Olympia+, and the so-called +Theseum+--perhaps a temple of Heracles--in Athens. They belong to the period 470-450 B.C.; they are all hexastyle and peripteral, and without triglyphs on the cella wall. Of the three the second in the list is interesting as the scene of those rites which preceded and accompanied the Panh.e.l.lenic Olympian games, and as the central feature of the Altis, the most complete temple-group and enclosure among all Greek remains. It was built of a coa.r.s.e conglomerate, finished with fine stucco, and embellished with sculpture by the greatest masters of the time. The adjacent +Heraion+ (temple of Hera) was a highly venerated and ancient shrine, originally built with wooden columns which, according to Pausanias, were replaced one by one, as they decayed, by stone columns. The truth of this statement is attested by the discovery of a singular variety of capitals among its ruins, corresponding to the various periods at which they were added.

The Theseum is the most perfectly preserved of all Greek temples, and in the refinement of its forms is only surpa.s.sed by those of the Periclean age.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 34.--RUINS OF THE PARTHENON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 35.--PLAN OF ERECHTHEUM.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 36.--WEST END OF ERECHTHEUM, RESTORED.]

+THE PERICLEAN AGE.+ The Persian wars may be taken as the dividing line between the Transition period and the Periclean age. The _elan_ of national enthusiasm that followed the expulsion of the invader, and the glory and wealth which accrued to Athens as the champion of all h.e.l.las, resulted in a splendid reconstruction of the Attic monuments as well as a revival of building activity in Asia Minor. By the wise administration of Pericles and by the genius of Ictinus, Phidias, and other artists of surpa.s.sing skill, the Acropolis at Athens was crowned with a group of buildings and statues absolutely unrivalled. Chief among them was the +Parthenon+, the shrine of Athena Parthenos, which the critics of all schools have agreed in considering the most faultless in design and execution of all buildings erected by man (Figs. 31, 34, and Frontispiece). It was an octastyle peripteral temple, with seventeen columns on the side, and measured 220 by 100 feet on the top of the stylobate. It was the work of Ictinus and Callicrates, built to enshrine the n.o.ble statue of the G.o.ddess by Phidias, a standing chryselephantine figure forty feet high. It was the masterpiece of Greek architecture not only by reason of its refinements of detail, but also on account of the beauty of its sculptural adornments. The frieze about the cella wall under the pteroma ceiling, representing in low relief with masterly skill the Panathenaic procession; the sculptured groups in the metopes, and the superb a.s.semblages of Olympic and symbolic figures of colossal size in the pediments, added their majesty to the perfection of the architecture. Here also the horizontal curvatures and other refinements are found in their highest development. Northward from it, upon the Acropolis, stood the +Erechtheum+, an excellent example of the Attic-Ionic style (Figs. 35, 36). Its singular irregularities of plan and level, and the variety of its detail, exhibit in a striking way the Greek indifference to mere formal symmetry when confronted by practical considerations. The motive in this case was the desire to include in one design several existing and venerated shrines to Attic deities and heroes--Athena Polias, Poseidon, Pandrosus, Erechtheus, Boutes, etc.

Begun by unknown architects in 479 B.C., and not completed until 408 B.C., it remains in its ruin still one of the most interesting and attractive of ancient buildings. Its two colonnades of differing design, its beautiful north doorway, and the unique and n.o.ble caryatid porch or balcony on the south side are unsurpa.s.sed in delicate beauty combined with vigor of design.[11] A smaller monument of the Ionic order, the amphiprostyle temple to +Nike Apteros+--the Wingless Victory--stands on a projecting spur of the Acropolis to the southwest. It measures only 27 feet by 18 feet in plan; the cella is nearly square; the columns are st.u.r.dier than those of the Erechtheum, and the execution of the monument is admirable. It was the first completed of the extant buildings of the group of the Acropolis and dates from 466 B.C.

[Footnote 11: See Appendix, p. 427.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 37.--PROPYLaeA AT ATHENS. PLAN.]

In the +Propylaea+ (Fig. 37), the monumental gateway to the Acropolis, the Doric and Ionic orders appear to have been combined for the first time (437 to 432 B.C.). It was the master work of Mnesicles. The front and rear facades were Doric hexastyles; adjoining the front porch were two projecting lateral wings employing a smaller Doric order. The central pa.s.sageway led between two rows of Ionic columns to the rear porch, entered by five doorways and crowned, like the front, with a pediment. The whole was executed with the same splendor and perfection as the other buildings of the Acropolis, and was a worthy gateway to the group of n.o.ble monuments which crowned that citadel of the Attic capital. The two orders were also combined in the temple of +Apollo Epicurius+ at +Phigalaea+ (Ba.s.sae). This temple was erected in 430 B.C. by Ictinus, who used the Ionic order internally to decorate a row of projecting piers instead of free-standing columns in the naos, in which there was also a single Corinthian column of rather archaic design, which may have been used as a support for a statue or votive offering.

+ALEXANDRIAN AGE.+ A period of reaction followed the splendid architectural activity of the Periclean age. A succession of disastrous wars--the Sicilian, Peloponnesian, and Corinthian--drained the energies and destroyed the peace of European Greece for seventy-five years, robbing Athens of her supremacy and inflicting wounds from which she never recovered. In the latter part of the fourth century, however, the triumph of the Macedonian empire over all the Mediterranean lands inaugurated a new era of architectural magnificence, especially in Asia Minor. The keynote of the art of this time was splendor, as that of the preceding age was artistic perfection. The Corinthian order came into use, as though the Ionic were not rich enough for the sumptuous taste of the time, and capitals and bases of novel and elaborate design embellished the Ionic temples of Asia Minor. In the temple of +Apollo Didymaeus+ at Miletus, the plinths of the bases were made octagonal and panelled with rich scroll-carvings; and the piers which b.u.t.tressed the interior faces of the cella-walls were given capitals of singular but elegant form, midway between the Ionic and Corinthian types. This temple belongs to the list of colossal edifices already referred to; its dimensions were 366 by 163 feet, making it the largest of them all. The famous +Artemisium+ (temple of Artemis or Diana) measured 342 by 163 feet. Several of the columns of the latter were enriched with sculptured figures encircling the lower drums of the colossal shafts. The most lavish expenditure was bestowed upon small structures, shrines, and sarcophagi. The graceful monument still visible in Athens, erected by the choragus Lysicrates in token of his victory in the choral compet.i.tions, belongs to this period (330 B.C.). It is circular, with a slightly domical imbricated roof, and is decorated with elegant engaged Corinthian columns (Fig. 38). In the Imperial Museum at Constantinople are several sarcophagi of this period found at Sidon, but executed by Greek artists, and of exceptional beauty. They are in the form of temples or shrines; the finest of them, supposed by some to have been made for Alexander's favorite general Perdiccas, and by others for the Persian satrap who figures prominently on its sculptured reliefs, is the most sumptuous work of the kind in existence. The exquisite polychromy of its beautiful reliefs and the perfection of its rich details of cornice, pediment, tiling, and crestings, make it an exceedingly interesting and instructive example of the minor architecture of the period.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 38.--CHORAGIC MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES.

(Restored model, N.Y.)]

+THE DECADENCE.+ After the decline of Alexandrian magnificence Greek art never recovered its ancient glory, but the flame was not suddenly extinguished. While in Greece proper the works of the second and third centuries B.C., are for the most part weak and lifeless, like the +Stoa of Attalus+ (175 B.C.) and the +Tower of the Winds+ (the Clepsydra of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, 100 B.C.) at Athens or the Portico of Philip in Delos, there were still a few worthy works built in Asia Minor. The splendid +Altar+ erected at +Pergamon+ by Eumenes II. (circ. 180 B.C.) in the Ionic order, combined sculpture of extraordinary vigor with imposing architecture in masterly fas.h.i.+on. At +Aizanoi+ an Ionic +Temple to Zeus+, by some attributed to the Roman period, but showing rather the character of good late Greek work, deserves mention for its elegant details, and especially for its frieze-decoration of acanthus leaves and scrolls resembling those of a Corinthian capital.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 39.--TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN ZEUS. ATHENS.]

+ROMAN PERIOD.+ During this period, _i.e._, throughout the second and first centuries B.C., the Roman dominion was spreading over Greek territory, and the structures erected subsequent to the conquest partake of the Roman character and mingle Roman conceptions with Greek details and _vice versa_. The temple of the +Olympian Zeus+ at Athens (Fig. 39), a mighty dipteral Corinthian edifice measuring 354 by 171 feet, standing on a vast terrace or temenos surrounded by a b.u.t.tressed wall, was begun by Antiochus Epiphanes (170 B.C.) on the site of an earlier unfinished Doric temple of the time of Pisistratus, and carried out under the direction of the Roman architect, Cossutius. It was not, however, finally completed until the time of Hadrian, 130 A.D. Meanwhile Sulla had despoiled it of several columns[12] which he carried to Rome (86 B.C.), to use in the rebuilding of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, where they undoubtedly served as models in the development of the Roman Corinthian order. The columns were 57 feet high, with capitals of the most perfect Corinthian type; fifteen are now standing, and one lies prostrate near by. To the Roman period also belong the +Agora Gate+ (circ. 35 B.C.), the +Arch of Hadrian+ (117 A.D.), the +Odeon of Regilla+ or of Herodes Atticus (143 A.D.), at Athens, and many temples and tombs, theatres, arches, etc., in the Greek provinces.

[Footnote 12: L. Bevier, in _Papers of the American Cla.s.sical School at Athens_ (vol. i., pp. 195, 196), contends that these were columns left from the old Doric temple. This is untenable, for Sulla would certainly not have taken the trouble to carry away archaic Doric columns, with such splendid Corinthian columns before him.]

+SECULAR MONUMENTS; PROPYLaeA.+ The stately gateway by which the Acropolis was entered has already been described. It was the n.o.blest and most perfect of a cla.s.s of buildings whose prototype is found in the monumental columnar porches of the palace-group at Persepolis. The Greeks never used the arch in these structures, nor did they attach to them the same importance as did most of the other nations of antiquity.

The Altis of Olympia, the national shrine of h.e.l.lenism, appears to have had no central gateway of imposing size, but a number of insignificant entrances disposed at random. The +Propylaea+ of +Sunium+, +Priene+ and +Eleusis+ are the most conspicuous, after those of the Athenian Acropolis. Of these the Ionic gateway at Priene is the finest, although the later of the two at Eleusis is interesting for its anta-capitals.

(_Anta_ = a flat pilaster decorating the end of a wing-wall and treated with a base and capital usually differing from those of the adjacent columns.) These are of Corinthian type, adorned with winged horses, scrolls, and anthemions of an exuberant richness of design, characteristic of this late period.

+COLONNADES, STOae.+ These were built to connect public monuments (as the Dionysiac theatre and Odeon at Athens); or along the sides of great public squares, as at a.s.sos and Olympia (the so-called +Echo Hall+); or as independent open public halls, as the +Stoa Diple+ at Thoricus. They afforded shelter from sun and rain, places for promenading, meetings with friends, public gatherings, and similar purposes. They were rarely of great size, and most of them are of rather late date, though the archaic structure at Paestum, known as the +Basilica+, was probably in reality an open hall of this kind.