Historic Development
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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, arbitrary; the development of styles is a continuous and gradual process; but divisions like the above are convenient aids in following this development through its various phases.
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 coarse 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 coarse limestone covered with stucco. The columns are low and massive, widely spaced, 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 live 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 Pætum in South Italy, and Agrigentum in Sicily; the somewhat primitive temple at Assos in Asia Minor, with uncouth carvings of centaurs and monsters on its architrave, belongs to this same period. The Temple of Zeus at Agrigentum is another singular and exceptional design, and was the second of the five colossal temples mentioned above. The temple was entirely enclosed by walls with engaged columns showing externally, and the roof was supported internally by two rows of massive columns. Colossal atlantes or applied statues figured in the design, but in what manner is not known. The temple was never completed.
THE TRANSITION
During the transitional period there was a marked improvement in the proportions, detail, and workmanship 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 Aphaea 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 470450 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 Panhellenic 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 coarse 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 surpassed by those of the Periclean age.
THE PERICLEAN AGE
The Persian wars may be taken as the dividing line between the Transition period and the Periclean age. The élan of national enthusiasm that followed the expulsion of the invader, and the glory and wealth which accrued to Athens as the champion of all Hellas, 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 surpassing 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. 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 noble statue of the goddess 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 assemblages 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. 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 noble caryatid porch or balcony on the south side are unsurpassed in delicate beauty combined with vigor of design. 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 sturdier 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. In the Propylaea, 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 façades were Doric hexa styles; adjoining the front porch were two projecting lateral wings employing a smaller Doric order. The central passageway 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 noble monuments which crowned that citadel of the Attic capital. The two orders were also combined in the temple of Apollo Epicurius at Phigalæa (Bassæ). 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 Didymæus at Miletus, the plinths of the bases were made octagonal and panelled with rich scroll-carvings; and the piers which buttressed 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) at Ephesus 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 chorægus Lysicrates in token of his victory in the choral competitions, belongs to this period ( 330 B.C.). It is circular, with a slightly domical imbricated roof, and is decorated with elegant engaged Corinthian columns. 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.
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. (cir. 180 B.C.) in the Ionic order, combined sculpture of extraordinary vigor with imposing architecture in masterly fashion. 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.
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 versâ. The temple of the Olympian Zeus at Athens, a mighty dipteral Corinthian edifice measuring 354 by 124 171 feet, standing on a vast terrace or temenos surrounded by a buttressed 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 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 (cir. 35 B.C.), the Arch of Hadrian ( 117 A.D.), the Odeon of Regilla or of Herodes Atticus ( 143 A.D.), at Athens, the Propylaea at Eleusis, and many temples and tombs, theatres, arches, etc., in the Greek provinces.
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