In an architectural point of view this is by no means difficult. The simplest Greek temples were mere cells, or small square apartments suited to contain an image—the front being what is technically called distyle in antis, or with two pillars between antæ, or square pilaster like piers terminating the side walls. Hence the interior enclosure of Grecian temples is called the cell or cella, however large and splendid it may be.
148. Small temple at Rhamnus.
The next change was to separate the interior into a cell and porch by a wall with a large doorway in it, as in the small temple at Rhamnus (Woodcut No. [148]), where the opening however can scarcely be called a doorway, as it extends to the roof. A third change was to put a porch of 4 pillars in front of the last arrangement, or, as appears to have been more usual, to bring forward the screen to the positions of the pillars as in the last example, and to place the 4 pillars in front of this. None of these plans admitted of a peristyle, or pillars on the flanks. To obtain this it was necessary to increase the number of pillars of the portico to 6, or, as it is termed, to make it hexastyle, the 2 outer pillars being the first of a range of 13 or 15 columns, extended along each side of the temple. The cell in this arrangement was a complete temple in itself—distyle in antis, most frequently made so at both ends, and the whole enclosed in its envelope of columns, as in Woodcut No. [149]. Sometimes the cell was tetrastyle or with four pillars in front.
149. Plan of Temple of Apollo at Bassæ. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
150. Plan of Parthenon at Athens. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
151. Plan of the great Temple at Selinus. (From Hittorff, ‘Arch. Antique en Sicile.’) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.