GREEK ARCHITECTURE:GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS, THE DORIC

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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, Phoenician, 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.

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.

FIG. 22.--LION GATE AT MYCENÆ.

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.

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.

FIG. 24.--THOLOS OF ATREUS. PLAN AND SECTION.

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.

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.

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. 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, 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 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.

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.

FIG. 28.--GREEK IONIC ORDER. (MILETUS.)

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.

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.

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.

FIG. 31.--TYPES OF GREEK TEMPLE PLANS.

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

Opisthodomus; S, Statue.

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.

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.

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

7. For enlargement on this topic see Appendix A.

8. As contended by W. H. Goodyear in his Grammar of the Lotus.

9. Lib. III., Cap. I.

10. These refinements, first noticed by Allason in 1814, and later confirmed by

Cockerell 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.

Ebd

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