The general architectural arrangement of a Greek temple was invariably the same. The cella, the abode of the divinity, was of smaller or larger dimensions. Two rows of columns adorned the interior, supporting an upper gallery. If the central space was left roofless, to supply the temple with light, it was called hypæthral. A temple, surrounded by one row of columns, was designated a Peripteros; if two rows of columns ornamented it, a Dipteros. With a front portico it was Prostyle; provided with a court, both front and back, Amphiprostyle. The pillars projecting on the side walls were antæ; and a temple having this decorative element was styled an Antætemple. The colonnade surrounding the temple at smaller or greater distances, represented a combined power of support. The base marked the independent existence of the separate columns. The shaft was covered with channelled flutings, and rose vertically with a convex extension of its circumference (called entasis). It then strongly contracted, thus expressing in the most perfect manner not merely passive sustaining, but an active and lively support. Above the capitals the mighty beams of the architrave (epistyle) were held together by a broad band, on which rested the frieze, sometimes adorned with triglyphs and metopes, or with reliefs; above it projected the overhanging plinth of the principal cornice. On the narrow sides of the oblong building, bordered by a cornice (the corona, geison) and the roof-gutter, rose the pediment with its groups and statues. On the front edge of the roof, both at the corners and in the middle, there stood smaller sculptures or marble palm-trees; whilst at the sides the rain-water was ejected through lions’ heads; the finishing horizontal lines were eurythmically crowned with palm-shaped tiles (antifixæ). The roof and the rest of the building, in the noblest works, were of marble, the architectural product being thus transformed into an elegant chiselled work of sculpture.
The Greeks had in their mythology:
1. Powerful gods and goddesses, as Zeus, Pallas, Poseidon, and Mars.
2. Charming and lovely divinities, as Aphrodite, Eros, and Persephone.
3. Mixtures of sublime power and beauty, of manly dignity and womanly grace, as Here, Diana, Bacchus, and Apollo. In studying the characteristics of these three groups of divinities we become acquainted with the principal features of the three orders of their architecture.
I. The Doric order is full of power and monumental dignity. Force is its most prominent characteristic.
II. The Ionic order mingles southern imagination with northern severity; this order, with its voluted capital instead of the simple abacus, is of a more complicated character and livelier expression.
III. The Korinthian order exhibits, instead of the tapering Doric, a slender column—ending in a richly-decorated, upward-striving capital. There is something of the Doric style in the Ionic, and something of the Ionic in the Korinthian. The Doric was, however, the basis of Greek architecture.
A. The Doric order had six distinct developments of style.
a. The proto-Doric, compressed and heavy.