History of Ancient Art

by Franz von Reber

A pitched and gabled roof seems to have been generally employed for these early structures. The horizontal ceiling might be sufficient for the changeless blue sky of Egypt, but could not suffice in Greece, where, in certain seasons, heavy rains were frequent, and even hail-storms not unknown. Still no land upon the Mediterranean was familiar with the great steepness of roof made necessary by the enduring snow and ice of the North. In colder climates the pitch of the covering was not only greatly increased, but all horizontal projections were avoided, and the upper surfaces of smaller members and mouldings inclined. The rafters required ceiling beams beneath them; because of the necessary support and jointing, they could not be placed directly upon the stone walls, and it was further desirable to support the summit of the triangle by a king-post. The ceiling thus provided stood in such relation to the roof that a beam tied together each pair of rafters, and was, consequently, so laid across the oblong enclosure that the ends reposed upon the side walls. Upon these horizontal timbers planks were placed which concealed the inclined roof. By this an independent ceiling was created; and, as the boarding was laid upon the beams and not fastened to their lower side, this gave rise to the formation of lacunæ or long coffers. The ends both of the horizontal ceiling beams and of the roof rafters were visible upon the exterior: the latter, forming the eaves, projected beyond the wall, to further the shedding of water and to protect the sides of the building. As the upper surface of the roof had been so closed as to be water-tight, it is natural that this sheathing should have been carried around upon all sides of the projecting rafter ends. It was otherwise with the spaces between the beams, which, being protected by the eaves, were not covered and masked by boards. The artistic instinct of the Greek would not permit him thus to conceal constructive forms when this was not rendered necessary by practical considerations. They received, on the contrary, an especial emphasis, that they might express their peculiar function with full force. Moreover, the closing of the aperture between the ends of the beams would have required the provision of other openings for light, as there were no windows in the walls of masonry.

This manner of roof and ceiling construction was generally employed in European Greece, being customary for palaces and dwellings as well as for the primitive temples. Open interstices between the horizontal beams existed in the hall of the royal dwelling at Ithaca. There can be no further doubt as to the development and original function of the metopes of the Doric entablature when it is considered that the Greeks, as late as the time of Euripides (Iphig. in Taur. 113), were familiar with the idea that it was possible to enter a primitive structure through these openings between the ends of the beams. The masking of the metopes would thus have been not only purposeless, but even detrimental; it was reasonable, however, to sheathe the ends of the beams themselves by small boards, which should at once protect and ornament them. The hewn extremities of such great timbers were rough and ugly; without covering, they would have been exposed to rapid decay. The simple decoration of three narrow strips of wood affixed to the ends of the beams was so customary in primitive carpentry that it became a typical motive in the later architecture of Greece. The chamfering of sharp edges of boards has been practised by the wood-workers of all nations. When two corners thus treated are placed together, there results a prismatic groove, which distinctly marks the edges of the separate pieces. Thus originated the primitive form of the triglyph, as the most natural and practical decoration of the rough-hewn ends of the ceiling beams by sheathing. The upper edges of the three strips were hidden against a plate beneath the rafters; the lower were covered by a continuous board, which united the various members of the frieze, and concealed any inexact jointing between the beams and the top of the wall. By placing the chamfered boards upright, an æsthetic advantage was obtained: a vertical line was repeated just before the conclusion of the entablature by the cornice, being thus emphasized in the midst of horizontal members. Other ornamental details were added, based, likewise, upon motives of the original wooden construction. The continuous strip affixed to the lower edges of the triglyphs was securely and visibly fastened. This was effected by several thick trunnels, so driven in from below that the heads were left protruding. Under the end of each beam the strip was doubled, to give additional strength where the wood was most weakened by perforation. The ends of the rafters were also sheathed, and brought into harmony with the frieze. The inclined eaves were covered with boards, and as these did not stand erect, like those before the ceiling beams, but hung from the lower sides of the rafters, there was particular need for an increased and distinctly secure attachment. The sheathing was consequently pinned by more numerous trunnels; and as every triglyph had been provided with a second strip, here a second board was placed under the end of each rafter. The projecting heads of these nails were called guttæ by the later Romans, but this cannot convince us that the peculiar form was intended as an ornamental petrifaction of hanging rain-drops: such a glorification of bad weather would have been foreign to the Greeks, accustomed to the clearest skies; and, for so primitive a construction, this explanation appears far-fetched. The imitation of rain-drops could nowhere have been more out of place than upon the inclined lower side of the eaves; drops might, perhaps, hang from the front edge of the cornice, but never upon its under slope, which rain could not even wet. The construction of an original work of carpentry thus provided the motives of the Doric entablature—naïvely expressing the advance from the roughest practical necessity to high architectural perfection. In the apertures between the beam-ends, or metopes, and in the open triangle of the gable, were placed votive offerings, which there found a secure and sheltered stand, heightening the exterior importance of the work. In small chapels this interference with the openings for light could have been of no disadvantage. The gable was closed by a boarding, which hid from view the rough inner construction of the roof. This veil, the tympanon, was placed behind the triangle formed by the outer cross-beam and rafters, as the ceiling had been laid above the other horizontal timbers. The low gable thus naturally developed upon the front; and in later times, when the votive offerings had been exchanged for sculptured figures, formed a most characteristic and imposing feature.

The effect was heightened by the partly protective, partly decorative, painting of all the wooden surfaces. Red and blue appear originally to have been the chief colors; the former, in a dark shade, being used for the sheathing of the tympanon, the latter for the triglyphs and other members. Upon the bands were figured ornaments, most of which had developed from Asiatic prototypes; they consisted of the meander, anthemions, and the woven ribbons, etc., observable upon Assyrian sculptures and upon the archaic bronzes and vases of Greece and Central Italy. The extended polychromatic treatment of the marble temple is doubtless a reminiscence of this painted wood. Without such traditions, it would have developed differently: upon a structure of stone it would have been less restricted to the frieze and cornice.

The entablature had thus far advanced without connection with that most noble work of architecture—the Doric column. The shaft and entablature of the style were not created in connection or simultaneously; the forms of triglyph and mutule are not a growth from the columnar root, but rather prove the Doric frieze and cornice to have been the primitive Hellenic expression of roof and ceiling, which preceded the column, even as the plainest constructive necessities precede ornament. The peculiar wooden character of the entablature could exercise no important influence upon the shaft. If the existence, in heroic times, of the peripteros, the temple with outstanding columns, be denied—and of such structures there is not a vestige—it cannot be supposed that columns existed at all. Interior supports of wood are, indeed, mentioned by Homer, and engaged shafts formed part of the façade of the Tholos of Atreus, and were represented upon the relief over the Gate of the Lions in Mykenæ; but between these and the Doric column there is a distance only to be explained by the assumption that Asiatic influence was paramount, if not exclusive, in the architecture of the heroic ages of Greece. Though it is possible that rudiments of the Doric echinos may be recognized in the upper tore and scotia of the engaged columns of Mykenæ, it is yet evident that the turned-work of these members resulted from a wooden prototype, and that the overladen decoration of the shaft, in its style, is due to familiarity with a sheeting of beaten metal—i.e., to Phœnician artistic traditions. That the forms of the entablature were not created for the peripteros appears from the circumstance that the metopes lose their value as windows by the change of plan, and leave the cella without openings for light and air when surrounded by columns. With the appearance of the peripteral temple, the Doric entablature, which upon the oblong chapel had been the natural expression upon the exterior of roof and ceiling construction, became a functionless ornament, needing, as will be seen, many changes to bring it into harmony with the outstanding colonnade.

The development of the Doric column is not perfectly clear; it is more than probable that it was not wholly autochthonic and primitive Greek, like the entablature of the style. Its principal part, the shaft, was certainly imported. No prominent architectural feature can be deemed newly invented that has been in common usage in a neighboring and accessible country for centuries. The Doric shaft, with its characteristic diminution and channellings, was known in Egypt more than a thousand years before its introduction into Greece, as proved by the monuments of Beni-Hassan. Commercial intercourse had existed between the two countries for centuries, and it cannot be assumed that the Greeks had not seen Egyptian works of architecture; they could not have arrived at precisely the same results by independent invention. It would rather be difficult to conceive how the receptive Greeks could have refused all instruction from the neighboring people, so far in advance of them for centuries after the Trojan war. Eight-sided drums have been found at Bolymnos, and an octangular shaft at Trœzen; but these isolated instances offer no proof that the development of the channelled shaft from the square pier was effected in Greece in the same manner as had been done fifteen centuries or more previously in Egypt.

The genius of the Greeks, however, always showed its independence when the artistic perception of the neighboring nations had been at fault or defective. It was impossible for them to rest content with the termination of the so-called Proto-Doric columns of Beni-Hassan. A simple plinth upon the upper end of the shaft was insufficient; it left without mediation the contrast between the forcible upright line of the channels and the long level of the epistyle. Some interposition was necessary between the vertical and the horizontal members, and a moulding of inclined outline was best fitted to fulfil this natural requirement, which almost appears to be an æsthetic law. The abacus plinth was retained as the transition from the circular drums of the shaft to the broader oblong of the lintel. The oblique and projecting member between the two, the echinos, was a link connecting the plans, as well as the directions, of column and entablature. The perfectly straight outline of an inverted cone was rarely employed in Greece for the echinos; a stele of Artemis Brauronia upon the Athenian acropolis, shown by inscriptions to be of great age, is an isolated instance. This rigid line was early exchanged for a curve, which, in its advancing stages of refinement, became one of the most characteristic features of Doric architecture. The moulding seems, at times, to have been ornamented with painted leaves, which, in the Ionic echinos beneath the roll, was changed, in the manner peculiar to that order, from the colored indication to carving. It is not certain whether this floral decoration was generally adopted, or existed only in the isolated instance by which it is known—the so-called Temple of Theseus. Upon the translation of the wooden construction to a stone entablature, which resulted in a narrow intercolumniation, the base was given up, and the upper step of the stylobate was regarded as a common plinth.

It appears that the employment of columns connected with temples commenced, in Greece, in the manner observed upon the rock-cut tomb façades of Egypt and Lycia, and the chapels of Mesopotamia and Phœnicia: two columns were placed within the open front, between the projecting side walls; that is to say, the temple was in antis.

The next step was the removal of these side walls, or parastadæ, columns taking their place in the corners before them, and the prostyle temple was thus obtained. These changes rendered several important alterations necessary. They caused a new wall to be erected before the interior of the cella, the naos, the colonnade of the front thus acquiring the nature of a portico, the pronaos. The jambs of the door in this wall were so inclined as to diminish the span of the lintel, the frame receiving upon its upper corners the stepped ears, or parotides, customary in Western Asia. A new member of the entablature was needed to replace the omitted wall and provide a bearing for the ceiling cross-beams—namely, the epistyle. It is possible that this member, distinctly separated, existed before the change, but it certainly was not necessary. The division of the cella into naos and pronaos finally altered the position of the front ceiling-beams; in the naos they lay, as before, resting upon the side walls, but in the pronaos they were placed lengthwise—from the columns to the newly erected division wall. Besides improving the construction of the portico ceiling, this greatly added to the beauty of the front entablature: epistyle and ceiling-beams would otherwise have lain upon each other, in the same direction, but from this change resulted the frieze of triglyphs and metopes upon the front, as upon the sides. The gain was not effected without a difficulty arising in the frieze above the end of the side wall and the corner column, the outer ceiling-beam of the pronaos thus lying in its length upon the epistyle without the formation of a metope. And here the constructive truth was first sacrificed in favor of the exterior appearance: a cube, standing above the corner column, took the place of the outer beam, and the continuous alternation of triglyphs and metopes was carried out.

Having so far deviated from logical construction, the desire for an harmonious treatment of the exterior led to other and greater changes. The dead-wall of the rear had had no part in the development of the frieze, and appeared intolerably bare. This deficiency could hardly be overcome otherwise than by a repetition of a portico upon the back, creating the epinaos, and carrying the entablature of triglyphs and metopes around the entire building, thus perfecting the amphiprostyle temple.

The more these alterations were made in favor of the exterior appearance, the more was the original structure dismembered. The extreme boundary of possible concessions was attained, and, at the next step, the entablature, translated into stone, separated itself entirely from the construction and became an applied ornament. In one stride the ultimate type of the Hellenic temple was determined, by carrying outstanding columns entirely around the cella,—the building became a peripteros.