FIG. 26.—GREEK DORIC ORDER.
A, Crepidoma, or stylobate; b, Column; c, Architrave; d, Tænia; e, Frieze; f, Horizontal cornice; g, Raking cornice; h, Tympanum of pediment; k, Metope.
THE DORIC. The column of the Doric order (Figs. 26, 27) 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 tænia, 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 projections having each eighteen guttæ depending 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 antefixæ, 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.
FIG. 27.—DORIC ORDER OF THE PARTHENON.
ORIGIN OF THE ORDER. It is generally believed that the details of the Doric frieze and cornice were reminiscences of a primitive wood construction. 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.