159. Plan of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, embodying Mr. T. Wood’s discoveries. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
The annexed plan compiled from Mr. Wood’s researches embodies all the information he has been able to obtain. The dimensions of the double peristyle, and the number and position of its 96 columns, are quite certain. So are the positions of the north, south, and west walls of the cella; so that the only points of uncertainty are the positions of the four columns necessary to make up the 100 mentioned by Pliny,[[149]] and the internal arrangement of the cella itself and of the opisthodomus.
With regard to the first there seems very little latitude for choice. Two must have stood between the antæ. The position of the other two must be determined either by bringing forward the wall enclosing the stairs, so as to admit of the intercolumniation east and west being the same as that of the other columns, or of spacing them so as to divide the inner roof of the pronaos into equal squares. I have preferred the latter as that which appears to me the most probable.[[150]]
The west wall of the cella and the position of the statue having been found, the arrangement of the pillars surrounding this apartment does not admit of much latitude. Fragments of these pillars were found, but not in situ, showing that they were in two heights and supported a gallery. I have spaced them intermediately between the external pillars, as in the Temple of Apollo at Bassæ (Woodcut No. [149]), because I do not know of any other mode by which this temple could be lighted, except by an opaion, as suggested for that temple; and if this is so they must have been so spaced. Carrying out this system it leaves an opisthodomus which is an exact square, which is so likely a form for that apartment that it affords considerable confirmation to the correctness of this restoration that it should be so. The four pillars it probably contained are so spaced as to divide it into nine equal squares.
Restored in this manner the temple appears considerably less in dimensions than might have been supposed from Pliny’s text. His measurements apply only to the lower step of the platform, which is found to be 421 ft. by 238. But the temple itself, from angle to angle of the peristyles, is only 342 ft. by 164, instead of 425 ft. by 220 of Pliny.
Assuming this restoration to be correct there can be very little doubt as to the position of the thirty-six columnæ cælatæ, of which several specimens have been recovered by Mr. Wood, and are now in the British Museum. They must have been the sixteen at either end and the four in the pronaos, shown darker in the woodcut.
From the temple standing on a platform so much larger than appears necessary, it is probable that pedestals with statues stood in front of each column, and if this were so, the sculptures, with the columnæ cælatæ and the noble architecture of the temple itself, must have made up a combination of technic, æsthetic, and phonetic art such as hardly existed anywhere else, and which consequently the ancients were quite justified in considering as one of the wonders of the world.
Municipal Architecture.
Very little now remains of all the various classes of municipal and domestic buildings which must once have covered the land of Greece, and from what we know of the exquisite feelings for art that pervaded that people, they were certainly not less beautiful, though more ephemeral, than the sacred buildings whose ruins still remain to us.