Callimachus, according to Vitruvius, invented this capital, and is supposed to have lived about 396 B.C., forty years before Alexander the Great was born. Besides the beauty of this order of the choragic monument of Lysikrates, it is the only undoubted and complete Greek specimen that we have in Europe. The main importance of the invention, besides its intrinsic beauty, is its being adopted by the Romans as their favourite order and used throughout their dominions. I give you here the story Vitruvius tells of its invention. Besides the prettiness of the story, it serves as an incitement to the reflection, that if those whose hand and eye are trained will only observe what they see, they may get notions for inventions.
“A marriageable maid, a citizen of Corinth, was taken ill and died. After her burial, her nurse gathered the things in which the maid most delighted when she was alive, put them into a basket, and carried them to the grave and put them on the top, and so that they might last the longer in the open air, covered them with a tile. By chance this basket was put on an acanthus root. The acanthus root meanwhile, pressed by the weight, put forth its leaves and shoots about spring time; these shoots growing against the sides of the basket, were forced to bend their tops by the weight of the corners of the tile and to make themselves into volutes. Then Callimachus, who from the elegance and subtlety of his sculpture was called Catatechnos by the Athenians, passing by that grave, noticed the basket and the tender growth of leaves round it, and charmed by the style and novelty of its form, made his columns among the Corinthians after that pattern.” (Vit. lib. 4, cap. i. pp. 9, 10.)
Fig. 180.—Entablature, capital and base of the Lysikrates monument. Greek Corinthian.
A Corinthian capital was found by Professor Cockerell in the Temple at Bassæ, supposed by him to have been used there. Another was found at Athens by Inwood, and there is a graceful capital of one of the engaged Corinthian columns at the Temple of Apollo Didymæus, at Branchidæ, near Miletus, of unknown date.
I do not look on work as Greek that was done after the second century B.C., when Greece became a Roman province.
The Corinthian capital of the monument of Lysikrates is more than one and a half times as high as the lower diameter of the column, while the Doric capital of the Parthenon is only about half a diameter to the necking, and the Ionic capital of the Erechtheum about eight-tenths.
The abacus of the capital is deep and moulded, is hollowed out horizontally on the four sides in plan, and has the sharp angles of the abacus cut off. The floral cap consists of a bottom range of sixteen plain water leaves, about half the height of the eight acanthus leaves of the upper row; these have a blossom between each pair of leaves.