No nation is in its works wholly free from the domination of climate and geographical position; least of all a people so keenly alive to the influence of the outer world as the Greeks. They lived in a land where the soil was dry and rocky, far less hospitable to vegetation than that of western Europe, while on all sides the horizon of the land was bounded by hard and jagged lines of mountain. The sky was extremely clear and bright, sunshine for a great part of the year almost perpetual, and storms, which are more than passing gales, rare. It was in accordance with these natural features that temples and other buildings should be simple in form and bounded by clear lines. Such forms as the cube, the oblong, the cylinder, the triangle, the pyramid abound in their constructions. Just as in Switzerland the gables of the chalets match the pine-clad slopes and lofty summits of the mountains, so in Greece, amid barer hills of less elevation, the Greek temple looks thoroughly in place. But its construction is related not only to the surface of the land, but also to the character of the race. M. Émile Boutmy, in his interesting Philosophie de l’architecture en Grèce, has shown how the temple is a triumph of the senses and the intellect, not primarily emotional, but showing in every part definite purpose and design. It also exhibits in a remarkable degree the love of balance, of symmetry, of a mathematical proportion of parts and correctness of curvature which belong to the Greek artist.
The purposes of a Greek temple may be readily judged from its plan. Primarily it was the abode of the deity, whose statue dwelt in it as men dwell in their own houses. Hence the cella or naos is the central feature of the building. Here was placed the image to which worship was brought, while the treasures belonging to the god were disposed partly in the cella itself, partly in a kind of treasury which often existed, as in the Parthenon, behind the cella. There was in large temples a porch of approach, the pronaos, and another behind, the opisthodomos. Temples were not meant for, nor accommodated to, regular services or a throng of worshippers. Processions and festivals took place in the open air, in the streets and fields, and men entered the abodes of the gods at most in groups and families, commonly alone. Thus when a place had been found for the statue, which stood for the presence of the god, for the small altar of incense, for the implements of cult and the gifts of votaries, little space remained free, and great spaces or subsidiary chapels such as are usual in Christian cathedrals did not exist (see [Temple]).
Here our concern is not with the purposes or arrangements of a temple, but with its appearance and construction, regarded as a work of art, and as an embodiment of Greek ideas. A few simple and striking principles may be formulated, which are characteristic of all Greek buildings:—
(i.) Each member of the building has one function, and only one, and this function controls even the decoration of that member. The pillar of a temple is made to support the architrave and is for that purpose only. The flutings of the pillar, being perpendicular, emphasize this fact. The line of support which runs up through the pillar is continued in the triglyph, which also shows perpendicular grooves. On the other hand, the wall of a temple is primarily meant to divide or space off; thus it may well at the top be decorated by a horizontal band of relief, which belongs to it as a border belongs to a curtain. The base of a column, if moulded, is moulded in such a way as to suggest support of a great weight; the capital of a column is so carved as to form a transition between the column and the cornice which it supports.
(ii.) Greek architects took the utmost pains with the proportions, the symmetry as they called it, of the parts of their buildings. This was a thing in which the keen and methodical eyes of the Greeks delighted, to a degree which a modern finds it hard to understand. Simple and natural relations, 1:2, 1:3, 2:3 and the like, prevailed between various members of a construction. All curves were planned with great care, to please the eye with their flow; and the alternations and correspondences of features is visible at a glance. For example, the temple must have two pediments and two porches, and on its sides and fronts triglyph and metope must alternate with unvarying regularity.
(iii.) Rigidity in the simple lines of a temple is avoided by the device that scarcely any outline is actually straight. All are carefully planned and adapted to the eye of the spectator. In the Parthenon the line of the floor is curved, the profiles of the columns are curved, the corner columns slope inward from their bases, the columns are not even equidistant. This elaborate adaptation, called entasis, was expounded by F. C. Penrose in his work on Athenian architecture, and has since been observed in several of the great temples of Greece.
(iv.) Elaborate decoration is reserved for those parts of the temple which have, or at least appear to have, no strain laid upon them. It is true that in the archaic age experiments were made in carving reliefs on the lower drums of columns (as at Ephesus) and on the line of the architrave (as at Assus). But such examples were not followed. Nearly always the spaces reserved for mythological reliefs or groups are the tops of walls, the spaces between the triglyphs, and particularly the pediments surmounting the two fronts, which might be left hollow without danger to the stability of the edifice. Detached figures in the round are in fact found only in the pediments, or standing upon the tops of the pediments. And metopes are sculptured in higher relief than friezes.
“When we examine in detail even the simplest architectural decoration, we discover a combination of care, sense of proportion, and reason. The flutings of an Ionic column are not in section mere arcs of a circle, but made up of a combination of curves which produce a beautiful optical effect; the lines of decoration, as may be best seen in the case of the Erechtheum, are cut with a marvellous delicacy. Instead of trying to invent new schemes, the mason contents himself with improving the regular patterns until they approach perfection, and he takes everything into consideration. Mouldings on the outside of a temple, in the full light of the sun, are differently planned from those in the diffused light of the interior. Mouldings executed in soft stone are less fine than those in marble. The mason thinks before he works, and while he works, and thinks in entire correspondence with his surroundings.”[1]
Greek architecture, however, is treated elsewhere (see [Architecture]); we will therefore proceed to speak briefly of the principles exemplified in sculpture. Existing works of Greek sculpture fall easily into two classes. The first class comprises what may be called works of substantive art, statues or groups made for their own sake and to be judged by themselves. Such are cult-statues of gods and goddesses from temple and shrine, honorary portraits of rulers or of athletes, dedicated groups and the like. The second class comprises decorative sculptures, such as were made, usually in relief, for the decoration of temples and tombs and other buildings, and were intended to be subordinate to architectural effect.
Speaking broadly, it may be said that the works of substantive sculpture in our museums are in the great majority of cases copies of doubtful exactness and very various merit. The Hermes of Praxiteles is almost the only marble statue which can be assigned positively to one of the great sculptors; we have to work back towards the productions of the peers of Praxiteles through works of poor execution, often so much restored in modern times as to be scarcely recognizable. Decorative works, on the other hand, are very commonly originals, and their date can often be accurately fixed, as they belong to known buildings. They are thus infinitely more trustworthy and more easy to deal with than the copies of statues of which the museums of Europe, and more especially those of Italy, are full. They are also more commonly unrestored. But yet there are certain disadvantages attaching to them. Decorative works, even when carried out under the supervision of a great sculptor, were but seldom executed by him. Usually they were the productions of his pupils or masons. Thus they are not on the same level of art as substantive sculpture. And they vary in merit to an extraordinary extent, according to the capacity of the man who happened to have them in hand, and who was probably but little controlled. Every one knows how noble are the pedimental sculptures of the Parthenon. But we know no reason why they should be so vastly superior to the frieze from Phigalia; nor why the heads from the temple at Tegea should be so fine, while those from the contemporary temple at Epidaurus should be comparatively insignificant. From the records of payments made to the sculptors who worked on the Erechtheum at Athens it appears that they were ordinary masons, some of them not even citizens, and paid at the rate of 60 drachms (about 60 francs) for each figure, whether of man or horse, which they produced. Such piece-work would not, in our days, produce a very satisfactory result.