Fig. 81.—Capital of Antæ from Miletus.
CHAPTER VII.
GREEK ARCHITECTURE.
Analysis.
THE Plan or floor-disposition of a Greek building was always simple however great its extent, was well judged for effect, and capable of being understood at once. The grandest results were obtained by simple means, and all confusion, uncertainty, or complication were scrupulously avoided. Refined precision, order, symmetry, and exactness mark the plan as well as every part of the work.
The plan of a Greek temple may be said to present many of the same elements as that of an Egyptian temple, but, so to speak, turned inside out. Columns are relied on by the Greek artist, as they were by the Egyptian artist, as a means of giving effect; but they are placed by him outside the building instead of within its courts and halls. The Greek, starting with a comparatively small nucleus formed by the cell and the treasury, encircles them by a magnificent girdle of pillars, and so makes a grand structure, the first hint or suggestion being in all probability to be found in certain small Egyptian buildings to which reference has already been made. The disposition of these columns and of the great range of steps, or stylobate, is the most marked feature in Greek temple plans. Columns also existed, it is true, in the interior of the building, but these were of smaller size, and seem to have been introduced to aid in carrying the roof and the clerestory, if there was one. They have in several instances disappeared, and there is certainly no ground for supposing that in any Greek interior the grand but oppressive effect of a hypostyle hall was attempted to be reproduced. That was abandoned, together with the complication, seclusion, and gloom of the long series of chambers, cells, &c., placed one behind another, just as the contrasts and surprises of the series of courts and halls following in succession were abandoned for the one simple but grand mass built to be seen from without rather than from within. In the greater number of Greek buildings a degree of precision is exhibited, to which the Egyptians did not attain. All right angles are absolutely true; the setting-out (or spacing) of the different columns, piers, openings, &c., is perfectly exact; and, in the Parthenon, the patient investigations of Mr. Penrose and other skilled observers have disclosed a degree of accuracy as well as refinement which resembles the precision with which astronomical instruments are adjusted in Europe at the present day, rather than the rough-and-ready measurements of a modern mason or bricklayer.
What the plans of Greek palaces might have exhibited, did any remains exist, is merely matter for inference and conjecture, and it is not proposed in this volume to pass far beyond ascertained and observed facts. There can be, however, little doubt that the palaces of the West Asiatic style must have at least contributed suggestions as to internal disposition of the later and more magnificent Greek mansions. The ordinary dwelling-houses of citizens, as described by ancient writers, resembled those now visible in the disinterred cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which will be referred to under Roman Architecture.[16] The chief characteristic of the plan of these is that they retain the disposition which in the temples was discarded; that is to say, all the doors and windows looked into an inner court, and the house was as far as possible secluded within an encircling wall. The contrast between the openness of the public life led by the men in Greek cities, and the seclusion of the women and the families when at home, is remarkably illustrated by this difference between the public and private buildings.