Historic Monuments: The Orders

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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.

THE DORIC

The column of the Doric order 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 taænia, 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 projetions having each eighteen guttae dependding 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 antefixae, 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.

ORIGIN OF THE ORDER

It is generally believed that the details of the Doric frieze and cornice were reminiscences of a primitive wood construction, going back perhaps to Mycenaean prototypes. 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. Dörpfeld, a high authority, would seek its origin in the Mycenaean column. Others would derive it from the Egyptian columns of Beni Hassan, which it certainly resembles. But it is not likely that the Greeks, in selecting models for imitation, would 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 they 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. 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 semielliptical 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. 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.

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.

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. The banded architrave is found in Mycenæ as well as in Lycian and Persian work, and is plainly derived from superposed wooden lintels.

Various archaic capitals found in Ionic Asia Minor and Greece display separately the component elements of the Ionic capital. The volutes appear to have originated primarily in branching spirals springing from the shaft, as in many Assyrian and Cypriote finials and stole-heads; their union by a horizontal band, forming a sort of abacus, was a late modification. The volute or scroll itself as an independent decorative motive may have originated in successive variations of Egyptian lotus-patterns. 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.

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. 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, consisting 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. 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.