The capital consisted, in part, of an echinos, similar to that of the Doric style, the leaves, which, at least in one instance, had been painted upon it, being here carved, and an astragal taking the place of the necking rings. This echinos is almost entirely covered by a spiral roll, which gives to the style its most striking characteristic. With the discovery of the helix upon the capitals of Assyrian reliefs, all the labored explanations of the significance and derivation of this member have fallen to the ground. It is impossible to believe, with Vitruvius, that the Ionic column was considered as the representative of the fair sex: that the locks of hair were indicated by the spiral line of the capital, the folds of the wide garments and draperies by the flutes and fillets, and the sandals by the base. Nor are the theories more satisfactory which seek for such natural motives as spiral shells or twisted ram’s horns, assumed to have been primitive ornaments of the sanctuaries. And it is still worse to regard the peculiar form of the capital as decided by the conception of an elastic cushion, which, displaced by the weight of the entablature, curls again at either side of the echinos. The Ionic helix was a form of capital imported from the East, where it had been used by barbaric designers as a mere ornament upon upright legs of furniture (Fig. 81), or upon Persian columns (Fig. 80)—a form developed by the Greeks into an architectural member of the first importance. The Assyrians, by doubling the volutes, had formed with this motive a capital not particularly well adapted to the functions of a transitional member between vertical support and horizontal burden. The Hellenic architect perceived that a more decided projection was necessary, and therefore placed an echinos beneath the volute, leaving the roll as the medium between the circular shaft and oblong entablature, which, in the Doric style, had been formed by the abacus. The horizontal lines of the abacus, thus supplanted, were represented upon the Ionic column only by a narrow moulding, curved to the profile of a cyma and sculptured with a leaved ornament. In the Greek capital the spirals became an elegantly curved roll, of greater length than breadth, with tightly curled ends, which were bound together, upon either side of the echinos, by a band. The capital thus shows its true profile, the helices upon front and back, and upon the subordinate sides rolls of their thickness. (Fig. 161.) This difference between face and side resulted in one great difficulty upon the corners, which, like the irregularity of the division of the Doric frieze of triglyphs and metopes in the same place, proves that the Ionic style also did not originate upon the peripteral plan, but was adapted to it from a temple in antis. It was natural that the more ornamental side of the column should face the entrance front, and thus the capitals upon the longer sides of the building were forced to show their rolls, the partie honteuse, unless the corner capital assumed an unnatural deformation to present the helices upon two adjoining, instead of two opposite, faces. (Figs. 162 and 163.) The corner capital thus became a miserable hybrid, which, because of the impossibility of its execution in a natural manner, from the intersection of the outer volutes when these proceeded in a straight line parallel to the epistyle, lost not only all constructive significance and harmony with those next to it, but also its individual beauty. There was no other expedient than to bend the faces of the corner volutes outward in the line of the diagonal—a malformation visible at every standpoint. A further difficulty was presented by the corners of the spirals over the echinos, which required to be masked by floral decorations. Upon the narrow abacus moulding rested the entablature, remarkable for the Oriental character of the details, and notably for reminiscences of primitive wooden construction, which are almost as evident in the Ionic as in the Doric style. The epistyle, formed in the latter by a single plane block, was here triply stepped to agree with the multiplied beams required by the nature of Oriental timber—generally provided by the various species of palms. According to the description of Vitruvius, the motive was also employed for the wooden epistyle beams of Etruscan temples. Each face projected slightly beyond the one beneath it, as previously customary in Asia, and shown by the ruins of the palace of Darius (Fig. 84) and the rock-cut façade of that monarch’s tomb (Fig. 83). The epistyle is terminated by a Lesbian cyma and an astragal, the latter being, in some instances, repeated upon every light step from beam to beam beneath. The frieze, known in this style as the zophoros, the bearer of figures, is an original Hellenic creation, the Oriental entablature consisting of only two members as representative of only two constructive features: the epistyle that connected the columns, and the ceiling and roof, which, in the rainless countries of the East, appear as one and the same member. In Greece the inclined roof was separated fundamentally from the horizontal ceiling, and the entablature consequently expressed a triple character. The naïve and truthful manner of this expression, peculiar to the Doric style, was not followed by the Ionic. The second member of the entablature, the frieze, should represent the ceiling, but the symbols of that constructive feature, the dentils, were crowded up among the details of the cornice, while the zophoros itself, perhaps as a result of the relief sculpture employed upon the Doric metopes, became a continuous decoration of carving. The dentils, as significant of the ends of the small ceiling-beams, were in their proper place, touching the epistyle, upon the monuments of Persia (Fig. 83), and also upon the tombs of Lycia (Figs. 110 and 111), so closely allied to the Mesopotamian tradition; they were there of far greater size than in the Greek Ionic, where their position and diminutive dimensions reduced them to a mere ornament. The members of the cornice stand in no such relation to the interior construction of beams and rafters as did the mutules and trunnels of the Doric temples. The curved gutter, however, is ornamented with lion’s-heads and anthemions, which seem in both styles to have been derived from western Asia. The stone beams of the pteroma ceiling rest directly upon the epistyle, and are consequently as far below their exterior representatives, the cornice dentils, as, in the Doric, they were above the triglyphs. Between them are the rich cofferings, not with small lacunæ, calculated to produce an effect mainly by color, but in broad surfaces, frequently stepped, with carved cyma-mouldings in the angles. (Fig. 164.) The plan of the cella differed but slightly from that of Doric temples. The doors are usually provided with parotides, the doubly-spiral brackets which have remained a popular ornament beneath the coronations of door and window openings until the present day.
The historical development of the Ionic temple is not illustrated by as many examples as was that of the Doric style, and, indeed, there was no such marked and regular advance as that observable in the temples of Selinous, Olympia, and Athens. A great number of Ionic monuments stand in a district not as yet thoroughly examined: the southern coasts of Asia Minor. Towards the border of Lycia traces of an archaic or proto-Ionic style have been observed, more closely allied to Eastern motives than were the developed temples of Greece. The capitals of Lycian tombs (Fig. 110) have no echinos, by the addition of which so great an advance was subsequently made; the formation of the rolls upon the sides was also primitive, they being at times perfectly straight, at times disproportionately curved. The difficult transition from the end of the shaft to the volutes was evaded, and masked by anthemions or other ornaments. The only example of such an imperfect formation in European Greece existed in the interior of the Temple of Apollo at Bassæ (Fig. 159); the date of its erection, however, shows this example not to have been archaic, but rather archaistic,—that is to say, intentionally and affectedly imitated from primitive peculiarities of form. (Fig. 165.) The columns, engaged to transverse walls, have bases of excessive projection, the thin and feeble tore being out of proportion to the high member beneath it. The lower end of the shaft itself forms a second projection, which greatly exceeds the usual congé and fillet of the bottom drum. The shallow flutings are continued up to the very top of the shaft, there being concluded by an almost straight line. The capital itself is most strikingly archaistic, presenting the helices upon each of its three exposed faces; it is an applied decoration which has given up all semblance of constructive unity or function, leaving the prismatic kernel, without an abacus moulding, to project above the curves and support the imposed entablature. The narrow space remaining between the two large spirals of each side is almost entirely filled by a decoration of anthemions, and the introduction of an echinos is thus rendered unnecessary. The sculptured zophoros of the interior entablature, now one of the chief treasures of the British Museum, betrays in its figures the greatest freedom from convention, in marked contrast to the affectedly antique character of the architectural forms.
