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Rh showy genius of the Ionian race come out in the Order named after them. By about 650 the Ionic style was flourishing side by side with the Doric.

As it was in the construction of Temples (q.v.) that architecture had developed her favourite forms, all other public buildings borrowed their artistic character from the temple. The structure and furniture of private houses (see ), were, during the best days of Greece, kept down to the simplest forms. About 600, in the Greek islands and on the coast of Asia Minor, we come across the first architects known to us by name. It was then that Rhœcus and Theodōrus of Samos, celebrated likewise as inventors of casting in bronze, built the great temple of Hēra in that island, while Chersiphrōn of Cnōsus in Crete, with his son Metāgĕnēs, began the temple of Artĕmis (Diana) at Ephĕsus, one of the seven wonders of the world, which was not finished till 120 years after. In Greece Proper a vast temple to Zeus was begun at Athens in the 6th century (see ), and two more at Delphi and Olympia, one by the Corinthian Spinthărus, the other by the Elean Libōn. Here, and in the Western colonies the Doric style still predominated everywhere. Among the chief remains of this period, in addition to many ruined temples in Sicily (especially at Selīnūs and Agrigentum), should be mentioned the Temple of Poseidōn at Pæstum (Poseidōnia) in South Italy, one of the best preserved and most beautiful relics of antiquity (figs. 4, 5). The patriotic fervour of the Persian Wars created a general expansion of Greek life, in which Architecture and the sister art of Sculpture were not slow to take a part. In these departments, as in the whole onward movement, a central position was taken by Athens, whose leading statesmen, Cīmōn and Perĭclēs, lavished the great resources of the State at once in strengthening and beautifying the city. During this period arose a group of masterpieces that still astonish us in their ruins, some in the forms of a softened Doric, others in the Ionic style, which had now found its way into Attica, and was here fostered into nobler shapes. The Doric order is represented by the Temple of Theseus (fig. 6), the Propylæa built by Mnēsĭclēs, the Parthĕnōn, a joint production of Ictīnus and Callicrătēs; while the Erechthēum is the most brilliant creation of the Ionic order in Attica. Of the influence of Attic Architecture on the rest of Greece we have proof, especially in the Temple of Apollo at Bassæ in South-Western Arcadia, built from the design of the above-mentioned Ictinus.