Doric.
Adopting the usual classification, the first of the Roman orders is the Doric, which, like everything else in this style, takes a place about half-way between the Tuscan wooden posts and the nobly simple order of the Greeks. It no doubt was a great improvement on the former, but for monumental purposes infinitely inferior to the latter. It was, however, more manageable; and for forums or courtyards, or as a three-quarter column between arcades, it was better adapted than the severer Greek style, which, when so employed, not only loses almost all its beauty, but becomes more unmeaning than the Roman. This fact was apparently recognised; for there is not, so far as is known, a single Doric temple throughout the Roman world. It would in consequence be most unfair to institute a comparison between a mere utilitarian prop used only in civil buildings and an order which the most refined artists in the world spent all their ingenuity in rendering the most perfect, because it was devoted to the highest religious purposes.
179. Doric Order.
The addition of an independent base made the order much more generally useful, and its adoption brought it much more into harmony with the other two existing orders, which would appear to have been the principal object of its introduction. The keynote of Roman architecture was the Corinthian order; and as, from the necessities of their tall, many-storeyed buildings, the Romans were forced to use the three orders together, often one over the other, it was indispensable that the three should be reduced to something like harmony. This was accordingly done, but at the expense of the Doric order, which, except when thus used in combination, must be confessed to have very little claim to our admiration.