How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (free reads .txt) 📕

and dignity would be given to the portico by omitting the support of the sides and substituting posts; while, for further embellishment, a similar portico might be extended from the rear of the cella.

Then, in the search for dignity and also to give more protection from weather to the walls of the cella, the eaves of the roof would be further prolonged outward and made to rest on sills that were supported by a series of posts. In this way the cella was completely surrounded by a colonnade or peristyle.

As the use of stone or marble was adopted, the platform became the stylobate, which was approached by three steps, carried along the entire length of all the sides. The cella was built of marble or stucco-covered stone, and marble or stone took the place of the sills and beams of the roof, but the latter continued to be constructed of wood, supported by small columns resting on the capitals of larger ones. The outside sheathing of the roof was of terra-cotta or marble tiles. Unlike the roof of an Egyptian temple which was raised in the centre to admit clerestory windows, that of a Hellenic temple had an uninterrupted slope. Whence then was the light derived for the interior?

Lighting.—Since all roofs, being of wood, have perished, the explanations that have been attempted are purely conjectural. A remark by Vitruvius, the Roman architect and author of ten books on architecture, regarding the Temple of Zeus at Athens that it was hypæthral (open to the sky) has led to a suggestion that part of the roof may have been open, as in the case of the Pantheon in Rome. But, at the time he wrote, the cella was exposed because Sulla had carried off to Rome some of the supporting columns. Another Roman writer, Strabo, describes the decastyle Temple of Apollo near Miletus as hypæthral, but gives as the reason the enormous size of the cella, in which precious groves of laurel bushes grew. So, it is purely a surmise that the portion of the roof may have been omitted and that the temples were hypæthral.

Another theory, founded upon the discovery in a temple at Bassæ of three marble tiles, or thin slabs, pierced with holes about 18 inches by 10, is that some five of these, let into each side of the roof, would have lighted the interior amply without admitting much rain. Again, the use of marble tiles has afforded a suggestion that, Parian marble being very translucent, the light might have penetrated through. James Fergusson, on the other hand, conjectured that a trench was let into each side of the roof; but this would have needed drains to carry off the water and no sign of a system of drainage has been found in any temple. Other authorities, however, maintain that it was only through the open doorway that light was admitted, which owing to the clear atmosphere of Greece and the reflection from the marble pavement, would be sufficient.

The Orders.—In Hellenic architecture there are two fully developed Orders—or combinations of Columns and Entablature—the Doric and the Ionic. To these are usually added a third, the Corinthian, which, however, though invented by the Hellenic artists, did not receive its full development as an independent order until employed by the Romans. The principal members of the classic column are the capital, shaft, and, except in the Doric order where the shaft was set directly on the stylobate, the base.

Doric Column.—It is possible that the Dorians took the character of their column originally from the example of Minoan architecture. For in a fresco at Cnossos appear the façades of three temples with columns, and the representation of the latter corresponds with the facts discovered in the actual remains of the palace. The columns are of wood, and have no base, since the shaft is let into a socket in the masonry. It is crowned by a torus, or circular cushion with a half-round edge, on which rests a square block, the abacus. The shaft differs in one respect, it narrows downward; whereas all Hellenic columns taper upward. The reason assigned for the Cretan practice is that the tree-trunk was inverted so that it might retain the sap.

All these features are reproduced in stone in the columns of the doorway of the Tomb of Atreus at Mycenæ, which has been already mentioned. The shafts of these columns are decorated with chevrons, whereas the Greeks in their best examples never decorated the shaft, nor, in fact, any other part of the structure that carried the chief strains.

Upon this crude type the Dorian architects continually improved until they had evolved an order of the most subtle refinement. In the earlier examples the diminution upward of the shaft is more pronounced than in the Parthenon, where the diameter at the bottom is 6 feet 3 inches and at the top 4 feet 9 inches, which gives a diminution of slightly over one quarter of the lower diameter. The shaft, except in one or two temples that were not completed, was always fluted. The flutes usually numbered twenty, and were elliptic in section, meeting in a sharp edge or arris, thus differing from the flat-edged fillet that separated the flutings of the Ionic and Corinthian. In order to correct the optical illusion, suggested in a diminishing shaft, that the contours are concave, they were made slightly convex, the swell of this entasis, as the convex is called, being greatest at about one-third of the distance from the bottom.

As the shaft nears the capital, it is encircled by a narrow groove or annula. At the top of the shaft is a series of annulæ, some of which are cut in the shaft and others in the lower member of the capital, the echinus, so that the shaft appears to project in a necking, into which the capital is set. The echinus is a circular cushion with an eccentric curve; a curve, that is to say, that is not part of a circle. (Compare by contrast the semi-circular curve of the torus.) Upon the echinus sets firmly the abacus, a square block with a side measurement the same as the diameter of the echinus.

The height of the column varied in its proportion to the lower diameter. In the Temple of Poseidon, at Pæstum, the height is four times the diameter; in the later example of the Parthenon nearly five and a half times, while in the Temple of Jupiter Nemæus it is six and a half times.

The intercolumniation, or space between the columns, also varies. In the older temples it was about one diameter of the column, the space between the angle columns being always less; while in the case of the Parthenon the distance varies from one diameter to 1.24; this being an instance of deviation from geometrical regularity to be referred to later.

It remains to mention the antæ. These were flat, right-angled columns, projecting slightly from the wall of the pronaos at the corners, facing the end columns. While they correspond to the latter, they differ in three respects. The shaft did not taper and was set on a small base, while the capital was distinguished by different mouldings. For the mouldings suitable to a free-standing column, supporting actual weight were felt to be unsuited for a member attached to a wall, whose functions were decorative.

Doric Entablature.—The principal members of the entablature are the architrave or supporting member, the frieze or decorative member, and the cornice or protecting member.

The architrave, as its name implies, “the chief beam” of the entablature, rests immediately upon the abacus; its edge corresponding neither with that of the abacus nor with the top edge of the shaft, but so adjusted to both as to ensure a feeling of complete stability. The architrave was usually plain[1] and crowned with a projecting fillet, called the tænia, which beneath the triglyphs, is supplemented by a lower fillet, known as the regula. On the under side of the latter were six studs, which recall perhaps the wooden pegs with which the ends of the beams in primitive construction were fastened.

The frieze is a vertical surface, composed alternately of triglyphs and metopes. The triglyphs, so called because they are divided into three vertical channels, represent the ends of the primitive longitudinal sills of the cella roof; and a recollection of the woodworker’s craft was still preserved in the chamfer or hollow of their outer edges. The function of the triglyphs was to support the cornice. Generally they were set above and between the columns, but at each end of the entablature one adjoins the corner, thereby increasing the effect of stability.

The space between the triglyphs, called the metope, was originally left open, except for a wooden shutter to keep out birds. But in the most elaborate examples of later date the metope was decorated with sculpture in high relief. Those of the Parthenon contained groups, representing fights with Centaurs, Amazons, and Trojans.

Above the frieze was the cornice, which, as a protection from the drip of the roof, projected to a distance, about one-third of the diameter of a column. Its chief members were a vertical band, known as the corona, and an under-part, the soffit. The latter sloped down under the corona at about the same angle as the slope of the roof, and was decorated above each triglyph and metope with a mutule or square block, studded with eighteen guttae, or drops, a device that recalls the method of making fast the ends of the rafters with wooden pegs.

The cornice was carried up the two sloping edges of the roof, but here distinguished by an additional feature, the cymatium or gutter. The triangle or gable thus formed by the three cornices was called the pediment. It was embellished at the top and ends with small pedestals, acroteria, on which stood figures or conventional ornaments.

In a Doric temple the corona, on the sides of the building was without a cymatium, but studded instead with ante-fixae, ornaments of terra-cotta or marble, placed opposite the end of each tile-ridge of the roof. The latter, as we have already noted, was covered with tiles of marble or terra-cotta, and finished at the top with ridge-tiles.

The mere reading of these details is dry enough. They should be read with an eye on the examples illustrated but also with a mind constantly alert to think out the function and appropriateness of each feature. For the principle of Hellenic construction was that every member should perform a special function. The architect’s logic would not permit him, as we say, to send a boy on a man’s errand or waste a man by employing him at boy’s work, still less to confuse the responsibility for the function between two or more members. Accordingly, the student who is reading intelligently will assure himself at each step as to what particular responsibility was laid upon each member and how appropriately it was fitted to its function.

Ionic Order.—From the grandiose simplicity of the Doric order we pass to the slenderer and more graceful and decorated order of the Ionic. It is almost like passing from a masculine to a feminine type: from a reflection of the severe discipline of the old Dorian, as perpetuated by the Spartans, to the more pleasure-loving and elegant life of the wealthy Ionians; from the grave influence of the Olympian Zeus, chief god of the Dorians, to the grace of the youthful Apollo and Artemis, beloved of the Ionians.

For the Ionic order, as the name implies, was developed by the Asiatic Hellenes whose migration from Armenia has been already noted. From them the Greeks of Europe borrowed it. Among the earliest known examples are a Temple of Apollo at Naucratis, in Egypt, and the archaic Temple of Artemis, at Ephesus, both belonging to about 560