Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/192

 176 THESEUM, ERECHTHEUM, AND OTHER WORKS. Fig. 174.— Cymatium of Pediment. this mark must be later than the Athenian building. The cymatium of the pediment has a carved palmette ornamentation so much like that of the Erechtheum, and on a moulding of similar profile, that it seems plain one was influenced by the other. (Fig. 174.) That one we may reasonably suppose was the remote Bassae, unless both derived from a common ancestor not yet determined. Notwithstanding the tradition as to Ictinus being the architect, which may have nothing more solid to rest on than like stories as to Sir C. Wren in England, I am inclined to think that this building may be placed very late in the fifth century. A remarkable feature of the construction is the ceiling of the ends of the peristyle, which had a clear bearing of 13 feet. This was entirely of marble, but cut away to the slightest pos- sible substance. (Fig. 175.) It was highly adorned with painted decoration, and the whole temple was finished with painting in the usual way. The external metopes were plain, but sculp- tured metopes were set over the inner row of columns, stopping over the antae with one return triglyph at each end. This is a good deal like the arrangement of the frieze at the posticum of the Theseum. There are broken fragments of these metopes in the Museum,* as well as almost the entire frieze of the interior. (Fig. 176.) Of archi- tectural numbers there are specimens of the Doric and Ionic capitals, of the carved cymatium, and of the ridge and eaves tiles with their ante- fixae. In fact these last fragments present to our study the complete roofing system of a Greek temple. The temple at Rhamnus has been incidentally compared with the Theseum on page 148. The temple was excavated by a British expedition, but we have in the Museum only small pieces of the colossal statue of Nemesis. One of these is a Fig. 175. — The Temple of Bass<E : Lacunaria.
 * On the subjects see Aihen. Mi/t/i., xxi., p. 333.