Fig. 50a.—Plan of a small Greek Temple.
We find in Greece three distinct manners, distinguished largely by the mode in which the column is dealt with. These it would be quite consistent to call “styles,” were it not that another name has been so thoroughly appropriated to them, that they would hardly now be recognised were they to be spoken of as anything else than “orders.” The Greek orders are named the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. Each of them presents a different series of proportions, mouldings, features, and ornaments, though the main forms of the buildings are the same in all. The column and its entablature (the technical name for the frieze, architrave, and cornice, forming the usual superstructure) being the most prominent features in every such building, have come to be regarded as the index or characteristic from an inspection of which the order and the degree of its development can be recognised, just as a botanist recognises plants by their flowers. By reproducing the column and entablature, almost all the characteristics of either of the orders can be copied; and hence a technical and somewhat unfortunate use of the word “order” to signify these features only has crept in, and has overshadowed and to a large extent displaced its wider meaning. It is difficult in a book on architecture to avoid employing the word “order” when we have to speak of a column and its entablature, because it has so often been made use of in this sense. The student must, however, always bear in mind that this is a restricted and artificial sense of the word, and that the column belonging to any order is always accompanied by the use throughout the building of the appropriate proportions, ornaments, and mouldings belonging to that order.
The origin of Greek architecture is a very interesting subject for inquiry, but, owing to the disappearance of almost all very early examples of the styles, it is necessarily obscure. Such information, however, as we possess, taken together with the internal evidence afforded by the features of the matured style, points to the influence of Egypt, to that of Assyria and Persia, and to an early manner of timber construction—the forms proper to which were retained in spite of the abandonment of timber for marble—as all contributing to the formation of Greek architecture.
In Asia Minor a series of monuments, many of them rock-cut, has been discovered, which throw a curious light upon the early growth of architecture. We refer to tombs found in Lycia, and attributed to about the seventh century B.C. In these we obviously have the first work in stone of a nation of ship builders. A Lycian tomb—such as the one now to be seen, accurately restored, in the British Museum—represents a structure of beams of wood framed together, surmounted by a roof which closely resembles a boat turned upside down. The planks, the beams to which they were secured, and even a ridge similar to the keel of a vessel, all reappear here, showing that the material in use for building was so universally timber, that when the tomb was to be “graven in the rock for ever” the forms of a timber structure were those that presented themselves to the imagination of the sculptor. In other instances the resemblance to shipwrights’ work disappears, and that of a carpenter is followed by that of the mason. Thus we find imitations of timber beams framed together and of overhanging low-pitched roofs, in some cases carried on unsquared rafters lying side by side, in several of these tombs.
What happened on the Asiatic shore of the Egean must have occurred on the Greek shores, and though none of the very earliest specimens of reproduction in stone of timber structures has come down to us, there are abundant traces, as we shall presently see, of timber originals in buildings of the Doric order. Timber originals were not, however, the only sources from which the early inhabitants of Greece drew their inspiration.
Constructions of extreme antiquity, and free from any appearance of imitating structures of timber, mark the sites of the oldest cities of Greece, Mycenæ and Orchomenos for example, the most ancient being Pelasgic city walls of unwrought stone (Fig. [51]). The so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenæ, a circular underground chamber 48 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and with a pointed vault, is a well-known specimen of more regular yet archaic building. Its vault is constructed of stones corbelling over one another, and is not a true arch (Figs. [52], [52a]). The treatment of an ornamental column found here, and of the remains of sculptured ornaments over a neighbouring gateway called the Gate of the Lions, is of very Asiatic character, and seems to show that whatever influences had been brought to bear on their design were Oriental.
Fig. 51.—Ancient Greek Wall of Unwrought Stone from Samothrace.