Fig. 287.—Pilgrim’s Bottle, Ialysos. (P. & C.)
Fig. 288.—Three-Handled Amphora, Ialysos. (P. & C.)
In Fig. 284 we have the entablature of the C. Temple of Selinous (one of the oldest examples of Doric architecture), rendered famous by the archaic sculptures embellishing its metopes. There is not one of all the members we have passed in review but which appears in it. Thus, a pair of stone beams, corresponding with the like number of timbers in the Mycenian wood frame, constitute the architrave; and under listel C surmounting it, peers, flush with the triglyphs, the small plank B.
Fig. 289.—Vase with Geometric Decoration. (P. & C.)
Its lower section is adorned by the ornament known as guttæ, the origin and meaning of which had hitherto been unsatisfactorily explained. The guttæ are cylindrical in shape detached from the walls, and in every respect identical with the wooden pegs which occur in this situation below the timber entablature. These same pegs again appear above the frieze in the semblance of another ornamental form, the “mutules” which, until lately, had seemed every whit as strange and problematical as the guttæ. The stone table N, in the lower surface of which the guttæ are carved, is no other than our old wood-plate, which in the Mycenian carpentry work exhibits these same saliences or pegs, and served to fix the lining of the joists below. If the Selinous mutules are sloped, it is because they are associated with a ridged roof; but as a flat covering has been assumed for Mycenæ, it involved—without prejudice to the system—a horizontal position for the mutules. As regards the frieze, both here and in every Doric building, it invariably consists, like the alabaster frieze, of pillars D alternating with slabs E. The function of the pillars (triglyphs) is to maintain the slabs (metopes) in place.
Fig. 290.—The Marseilles Ewer. (P. & C.)