How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (reading the story of the .TXT) 📖

PLAN OF THEATRE OF DRAMYSSUS

One Hundred Feet to One Inch

four sides of the cella or domos, house of the god, in which case it is called a peristyle.

The emphasis of the order as a constructive and decorative feature has been traced back by some students to the Dorian people’s primitive custom of worshipping in groves. The religious ceremonies, which included a procession of the worshippers, would be conducted amid the trees surrounding the altar or shrine, and in time a roofing of cross pieces thatched with boughs may have been attached to the trees. Accordingly, those who adopt this view suggest that when the use of a grove was succeeded by a constructed temple, the original feature was the peristyle. And possibly there is a commemoration of this in the peristyle of the Parthenon, where a procession of worshippers of the goddess is represented in the sculptured frieze that embellishes the outside of the walls of the cella—thus embodying in the most highly developed form of Hellenic temple its origin in primitive religion.

The character of the form seems to have originated in wood construction, certain features of which—to be referred to later—were retained after stone or marble was employed and were translated into details of decoration. The gradual transition to materials of construction, less at the mercy of fire, is hinted at by Pausanias, a Greek geographer and writer on art of the second century B.C., in his description of the Heraion or Temple of Hera (Juno) at Olympia, the oldest known example of a Doric Temple, attributed to 1000 B.C.

The cella wall, he says, was constructed of sun-dried bricks on a lower course of stonework, but the entablature was still of wood, covered with terra-cotta. One wooden column was still standing in the opisthodomos, but elsewhere as the wooden columns decayed they had been replaced by stone ones; the design of their capitals showing that the work of restoration lasted from the sixth century to Roman times. The roof was covered with tiles. The cella was divided into a central nave and side-aisles by two rows of columns for the support of the roof, and the aisles were intersected by small screen walls; thus forming alcoves, corresponding to the side-chapels of a Gothic cathedral. In one of these alcoves German explorers in 1878 discovered the Hermes of Praxiteles, which is probably the only marble statue in existence that was actually wrought by the hands of one of the great sculptors.

Early Doric Examples.—The Dorian migration pushed down through Macedonia and Thessaly into the peninsula of Greece and spread through the islands of the Ægean as far as Crete, afterward planting colonies at Pæstum and other sites in Southern Italy and at Syracuse, Selinus, and Agrigentum in Sicily. Throughout all this wide area they carried their particular style of Order—the Doric. In developing it, they brought into play what has been judged their distinguishing trait of character—sense of proportion.

The earliest known examples of Doric temples, built originally of stone, are at Corinth and that of Phœbus Apollo on the island of Ortygia, at the entrance to the harbour of Syracuse. In these, which are attributed to the seventh century B.C., the columns are monoliths with widely projecting capitals, and set so close together that the intercolumniation was less than one diameter of the column. For the early Greeks appear to have been distrustful of the bearing capacity of stone as compared with wood.

Belonging to the sixth century are the colossal Temples of Zeus at Selinus and Agrigentum and the Temple of Poseidon (Neptune) in Pæstum. In the last the columns are composed of sections or “drums,” and there are still in position in the cella the smaller columns, superimposed on the main ones for the support of the roof.

The temples of the fifth century are distinguished by increased refinement in the matter of proportion and details and by superior skill and workmanship. They include the Temple of Athene (Minerva) on the island of Ægina; the so-called Theseum, supposed to have been dedicated to Heracles (Hercules), in Athens; and the Temple of Zeus which forms one of the group of temples at Olympia. It is the most complete temple-group yet discovered, and was the scene of the religious ceremonies in connection with the Pan-Hellenic Games.

With the second half of the fifth century began the supremacy of Athens in the affairs of Hellas under the rule of Pericles, which enabled her as custodian of the Hellenic treasury to undertake the beautifying of the Acropolis. This culminated in the Parthenon, the noblest example of the Doric style and, as Mr. A. D. F. Hamlin writes, “the most faultless in design and execution of all buildings erected by man.”

Following, apparently, the tradition of worshipping in groves, the Dorians placed their temples in a temenos, or enclosure in which were other shrines, altars, and treasuries. Whether this temenos was on a hill-top, as in the case of the Acropolis in Athens and the site of the temple-group in Agrigentum, or in a valley on sloping ground as at Delphi, the irregularities of the ground were taken advantage of in the disposition of the buildings. Thus was created an ensemble in which art and nature united, while in the case of a level site, as at Olympia, Delos, and Pæstum, the temples were grouped in picturesque irregularity.

Temple Plans.—The nucleus of the temple plan was the naos, containing the statue of the deity. Adjoining it were other chambers, connected with the ritual of worship; and this aggregate of naos and chambers, enclosed within walls, is known as the Cella.

It was approached from the front, which faced the east, by a covered, columned vestibule, open at the sides, called the pronaos. This was often repeated at the rear under the name of epinaos, or, as the Romans called it, posticum.

The pronaos was entered through a portico. When the latter was composed of columns, set between the prolonged sides of the cella, the type of plan was called in antis.

When the side-walls were not prolonged, but terminated in pilasters, known as antiæ, and the supporting members of the front façade were solely columns, the type was called prostylar or prostyle.

If, under the same conditions the portico was repeated at the rear, the type was called amphi-prostylar or amphi-prostyle.

If the whole were surrounded by a colonnade or peristyle the type was peripteral; while if a second row of columns were added on each side, as in the great Temple of the Olympian Zeus, erected in Athens during the Roman occupation, the type was dipteral. The external aisle, formed by the colonnade on each side was known as the pteroma.

Where there was no peristyle, but columns, known as false or engaged, were built into the wall of the cella, the type was pseudo-peripteral.

There are also to be mentioned the octagonal plan, as seen in the Tower of the Winds in Athens; the circular peripteral plan of the Tholos at Epidauros and the examples of irregular planning presented by the Erechtheion and Propylæa.

The type was further distinguished by the number of columns—four, six, eight, or ten—composing the portico, as, respectively, tetrastyle, hexastyle, octostyle, and decastyle.

Thus the Parthenon is octostyle peripteral; Temple of Poseidon, Paestum, hexastyle peripetral; of Jupiter Olympios, Atucus, octostyle dipteral; of Apollo, Bassæ, in antis.

Temple Form.—The cella, or chamber for the god, was built originally of wood; later of sunburnt bricks on a lower course of stonework, the whole being coated with a thin layer of stucco, as is found to have been the practice also in later Doric temples in Sicily and Italy, where the material was soft stone. To protect it from the damp of the ground as well as to dignify it, the cella was raised on a platform, approached by steps.

On the top of the walls was laid a framework of timber sills, crossed by transverse beams, on which stood posts to hold the ridge-piece, from which the rafters sloped to the sills, so that the roof which was of wood, covered with sunburnt brick and later by tiles, formed eaves to protect the cella from the roof-rain.

The next step to add dignity to the entrance would be to prolong the gable end in front and support it by posts, so as to form a porch or portico. At first the weight of this might be chiefly carried by an extension of the side walls. Then a superior effect of lightness