A Text-Book of the History of Architecture / Seventh Edition, revised

by A. D. F. Hamlin

FIG. 37.—PROPYLÆA AT ATHENS. PLAN.

In the Propylæa (Fig. 37), 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 hexastyles; 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) 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.

FIG. 38.—CHORAGIC
MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES.
(Restored model, N.Y.) The most lavish expenditure was bestowed upon small structures, shrines, and sarcophagi. The graceful monument still visible in Athens, erected by the choragus 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 (Fig. 38). 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. (circ. 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.