The Ionic style in Attica developed in a peculiar manner, being there superior, both as regards breadth of form and beauty of detail, to the works of Asia Minor. The Doric had been perfected in Athens, and the most noble Ionic monument, the Erechtheion, stood beside the Parthenon; the Athenian acropolis presented the noblest examples in both methods of building, standing unrivalled at the head of the Hellenic world in architectural, as in political and intellectual respects. Characteristic of the Attic Ionic are the so-called Attic base and the entablature without dentils. The former consists of a second tore beneath the concave plinth of the usual base; by this addition its symmetry was increased, and a rhythmical profile of great beauty was gained: two convex and two concave members of harmonious proportion alternating from the upper slip to the commencement of the fluting. The Attic architect evidently did not accept the significance of the dentils as representatives of the ceiling-joists, and preferred to cut a decided drip upon the lower surface of the corona, which had so marked a slant in the more familiar Doric cornice. In the place of the dentils, a transition was provided by a cyma and astragal, which mouldings received in Athens their typical perfection. The few Ionic ruins of European Greece do not illustrate the historical development of the Attic Ionic style. The interior columns of the Temple of Apollo at Bassæ (Figs. 159 and 165) cannot be considered in this connection; their archaistic details by no means express the influence of Athens, notwithstanding that the work is attributed to the architect Ictinos. The peculiarities of Attic Ionic architecture are well exemplified by the small amphiprostyle temple upon the Ilissos, near Athens, which, though now entirely destroyed, was in existence up to the end of the last century, and was measured and drawn by Stuart and Revett. (Fig. 172.) The lower tore of the base is here small and weak, as if a hesitating attempt to improve the usual outline. The shaft was short, perhaps from the influence of the Doric examples; the epistyle, from the same consideration, was without the characteristic steps. Similar to this is another tetrastyle amphiprostylos, the Temple of Wingless Victory before the Propylæa of the acropolis, which, as if to compensate for the loss of the temple upon the Ilissos, was rebuilt in 1835, with overthrown fragments rescued from a Turkish bastion, and has become one of the chief ornaments of the ascent. (Fig. 158.) The entire crepidoma is so small—8 m. long and 5.5 broad—that the cella, after the deduction of the front and rear porticos, is even broader than it is deep. The architectural details are of exceeding delicacy and perfection (Fig. 170); the sculptures of the zophoros and of the balustrade will be considered in the following section. The inner columns of the Athenian Propylæa show the lower tore fully developed, and the base-mouldings isolated by a plinth of slightly concave profile, elsewhere adopted only at Eleusis, in imitation of this building. The highest perfection of the Ionic style was, as before said, attained in the second national sanctuary of the Athenians—the world-renowned Temple of Athene Polias upon the acropolis, the Erechtheion. The construction of the edifice seems to have been undertaken immediately after the burning of the ancient building by the Persians, in 480 B.C., but, in consequence of the miseries of the Peloponnesian war, its completion was delayed until eighty years after that date. It was a combination of several shrines which, necessarily constructed upon different levels, rendered a perfect symmetry of plan impossible. Other double temples, like those of Leto and Asclepios, and of Aphrodite and Ares at Mantinea, or of Apollo Carneios and of Hypnos at Sikyon, were not, upon the exterior, distinguishable from the common type, as, with an equal division of the cella, entrances could be allowed upon either front. In the Erechtheion this simple arrangement was not practicable, because of the complicated nature of the combined sanctuaries and the irregularity of the ground; yet this did not prove a disadvantage: to the architectural perfection of the monument was thus added a charm of picturesque composition usually foreign to the temple buildings of Greek antiquity. The plan given (Fig. 173) is according to Boetticher’s restoration, but the mooted question of the interior division of the building is still far from being decided. Upon the principal eastern front was a hexastyle portico, a, through which entrance was given to the naos of Athene Polias, b, occupying nearly one half of the cella. Access to the other division was obtained through the tetrastyle hall, c, upon the northwestern corner, opening directly into the narrow sanctuary of Pandrosos, d, from which four portals led to as many chambers: the first, g, to the Chapel of Boutes; the second, h, by means of a short staircase, to the Crypt of Poseidon, e; from the third, i, was a descent to a corridor leading to a space under the Naos of Athene Polias; while the last, opposite the hall, led to the Porch of the Caryatides, f. This complicated disposition was, as has been said, dependent upon the peculiar natural position of the ancient national shrines: the tomb of Cecrops and the memorials of the contest between Poseidon and Athene for the possession of Athens,—the impression of the trident with which Poseidon smote the cliff, leaving a spring of salt water, and the olive-tree which, at the command of Athene, sprang from the same rock. Of the interior of the building there are almost no vestiges; but the form of the exterior is, in the main, clear. (Fig. 174.) The capitals upon the columns of the eastern portico (Fig. 175), and upon the pilasters of the western wall, which was pierced by windows, are of almost excessive magnificence. The outlines of the spirals are doubled, the side-rolls are grooved, and ornamented with astragals; there is a band carved with a woven ornament above the egg-and-dart moulding of the echinos, and an entirely new feature has been added to the capital—a broad and rich necking of carved anthemions. The effect of this band was particularly favorable because the decoration upon it could be repeated beneath the capitals of the pilasters, and a greater harmony of the corresponding members thus secured. The columns of the northwestern porch are larger and even richer in detail, especially the bases, the upper tore being ornamented with a woven motive in place of the customary horizontal grooving. The entablature, from which the dentils are missing, is of the utmost elegance of proportion, the carving of its cyma-mouldings being the most delicate work of architectural carving known. The reliefs upon the zophoros were not cut from its substance, but were merely attached to its plane surface; few fragments have, consequently, been preserved. One of the most beautiful features of the building is the Porch of the Caryatides in the southwestern corner (F). In place of columns, the figures of virgins support the horizontal marble ceiling, which is of no great weight. The model for these was doubtless taken from the basket-bearing maidens of the Panathenaic procession, the Canephoræ. The origin of the term caryatides is not known. Both geographical and historical proofs are wanting to make probable the account given by Vitruvius,—that the motive for these figures was derived from the women of the Peloponnesian town Carya, who were condemned to slavery for treachery during the Persian war. From the baskets of the Canephoræ has been developed a capital member, like an echinos, decorated with the egg-and-dart moulding and an astragal, and provided with an abacus. The frieze is lacking from the entablature, in recognition of the fact that roof and ceiling are here one and the same member. The dentils appear in the cornice, it being possible for them to take their true position upon the epistyle. The faultless beauty of the decorative carving is particularly evident upon the casings of the portals.
Monuments of the Ionic style, not numerous in Attica, are rare in the Peloponnesos, and exceptional farther west, where the Doric element of the population predominated. When Ionic ruins are found in the latter districts, they generally betray the influence of the Attic school, which is perceptible even in the Ionic order of Rome. It is not strange that, after the acquaintance of the Romans with Hellenic lands, this method of building should, in their universal eclecticism, have been frequently adopted. It will be seen in the following section how Italy, the heir of the decaying civilization of the East, reduced the forms of Ionic architecture to a facile and commonplace scheme.
During the age of Pericles a foreign growth, the Corinthian capital, had been engrafted upon the Ionic style, which changed the character of the whole, the more decidedly because introduced upon the most prominent feature. This “Corinthian” innovation affected the capital alone, and cannot be considered as an order, still less as a style, when compared to the Doric and Ionic. It was a mere variety of the latter, which, in all other respects than the capital, remained unaltered. The new form is mentioned as an innovation of Callimachos, a sculptor celebrated for the magnificent golden lamp and funnel made by him for the Erechtheion. The name of that artificer may have given authority to the first introduction of the Corinthian capital into Greek lands; but the detailed account of Vitruvius in regard to its origin can hardly be deemed more than a fable. He relates that a loving nurse had placed a basket of toys, covered with a tile, upon the grave of a Corinthian girl, and that in the spring-time an acanthos-plant, upon which it stood, sent forth shoots covering the basket and curling beneath the tile, thus providing a model directly imitated by Callimachos. The calyx capitals of Egypt had long been known to the Greeks. In transferring this floral motive across the Mediterranean, the decorative foliage of papyrus and lotus had been given up, those unknown plants not being adapted to Hellenic conventionalization. National art ever seeks the subjects for floral ornament from the growths of its native soil. It was on this account that oak-leaves, thistles, grape-leaves, and ivy were employed in Gothic architecture; and, in a similar manner, the Greek could make no more fortunate choice than the Hellenic thistle, the acanthos, the forms of which even surpass in beauty the serrated outline of the grape-leaf. The Corinthian capital suited well the prevalent tendency to attenuate the shaft, and, at the same time, it furthered an harmonious agreement between the capitals of columns and of pilasters. Its forms presented a better solution of the problem of the capital, and were more perfect in an abstract, if not in an artistic, point of view than any of the preceding varieties. The two functions of the transitional member—the projection, the oblique line between the vertical and the horizontal, and the change from a circular to a rectangular plan—had, in the Doric and Ionic capitals, been effected by two separate bodies; in the Corinthian they were accomplished by one alone. The kernel gave the projection, considerably steeper, according to its height, than the Doric or Ionic echinos. The oblique line, convex in the former style, is here slightly concave, although still sufficiently vigorous in character to bear the light entablature. The surrounding floral decoration effects the transition from the circle to the rectangle; the upper leaves project towards the corners of the thin abacus, under which they curl, giving to the capital, at some little distance below its plinth, a section nearly square. A canonical form of the Corinthian capital did not exist in progressive Hellenic art. This does not appear until the order was reduced to a system by the thought-saving and practical Romans. The completed type, so familiar in the monuments of Italy, and used for centuries since in all parts of the world, does not occur in Greece, the creation of the Corinthian order, as such, being emphatically a work of the Romans. The Corinthian capital was, in Hellenic architecture, merely a fanciful and ever-varied decoration of foliage around a concave calyx. The before-mentioned example from the Temple of Apollo in Bassæ shows how imperfect the arrangement was at first. (Fig. 176.) The single row of leaves at its base does not sufficiently ornament the kernel; the spirals upon the four corners and the anthemions between them leave too much of its surface uncovered. The thin abacus is neither provided with a profile moulding, nor at all carved; upon its edge is painted a Doric meander; its sides are curved in plan, advancing above the corner spirals so that these might project farther from the calyx. A decided advance is shown by the capital of an engaged column employed within the Temple of Apollo Didymaios at Miletos (Fig. 177), which appears to be of more recent date. A double wreath of acanthos-leaves surrounds the calyx, those upon the corners being made sufficiently tall to support the spirals; between them are anthemions. Fragments brought from the ruins of Knidos to the British Museum are of similar form. These remains all resemble, in a more or less marked degree, the ultimate typical development of the Corinthian capital. Others, and among them some of a later period, lack important constituent parts. A second variety, discovered in the Didymaion, had only one wreath of leaves, and no connection with the square abacus by corner spirals. The capitals of the so-called Tower of the Winds in Athens (Fig. 178) resemble them. Behind the acanthos-leaves rises a simple row of lanceolate reeds, which follows the outline of the calyx. The Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, built more than a century previous, in 334 B.C., presents a beautiful instance of a fanciful Corinthian capital. Between the shaft and the calyx there is a preparatory necking of small leaves, similar to those which existed upon the example within the temple at Bassæ. Above the low acanthos wreath rises a rich garland of foliage and flowers, with a central anthemion rising to the top of the abacus. The heavy corner volutes cannot compensate for the excessive contraction of the calyx, which takes away from the unity and force of the main transitional curve.
The Corinthian capital appears to have attained the form under which it is now known in the middle of the second century B.C. The Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens received its peripteros of Corinthian columns under Antiochos Epiphanes, 176-164 B.C.; though its crepidoma, probably intended for an edifice of the Doric style, had been prepared as early as the time of Peisistratos. The architectural direction of the building had been intrusted to a Roman, Cossutius, and it was, in fact, destined to provide material for Rome itself, as, soon after its completion, the columns were carried away by Sulla and employed in the restoration of the temple upon the Roman Capitol, shortly before destroyed by fire. The capitals thus removed appear to have been regarded as models, and to have exercised a great influence upon the development of the Corinthian order, as cultivated, almost exclusively, by the Romans. The calyx decorated with acanthos foliage corresponded to the taste of the imperial epoch for architectural magnificence, and its employment was not embarrassed by the difficulties upon the corners of peripteral temples which have been discussed in the consideration of the Doric frieze and the Ionic capital. The floral decoration soon extended to the entablature, increasing the number and dimensions of its minor members. The most striking result was the transformation of the dentils into the richly carved consoles of doubly spiral profile, which were imitated from the parotides of the Ionic portal coronation, but were placed horizontally instead of vertically. The use of both dentils and consoles is a barbaric duplication, characteristic of the tasteless architectural magnificence of the Roman decline. The so-called Corinthian base is no real characteristic of the order, being only a combination of Ionic and Attic forms, with a double scotia between the two tores.