Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/44

28 spaced pretty regularly opposite the columns outside, it seems more likely that they were internal buttresses to stay the walls against the raised peristyle. The cella was about 70 feet wide; if it were roofed it must have been subdivided. Wood found a curious Corinthian capital "near the cella," and supposed that it represented internal rows of columns. It is described as elliptic on plan, but it is really made up of a pier and two attached half-rounds. (Fig. 25.) It is only 2.6 high, and is of

quite late Roman work. Such a capital might belong to an external stoa, or possibly to some small erection about the great image, but it can hardly have formed part of the structure of the cella. I am no believer in much which has been written on hypaethral lighting, but the evidence in this case seems to suggest that the cella was open as at Miletus. The lack of internal foundations, and the immense size of the great basis in the midst (20 feet square, which would well have supported a covered shrine as well as the statue), seem to support this view. Wood also found a drain in the foundations of this basis, which he called an altar—"probably for carrying away the water used in washing the surface after sacrifice." There would be plenty of room in the

pronaos, treasury, and other parts for the cedar roof mentioned by Vitruvius. Save for the seeming need of having a treasury at one end or the other of the cella, I had come to think that columns would be disposed in the space between the antae walls as at Miletus, and I find that the Austrian plan has set forth this view. With the inscriptions at the Museum are Fig. 26. several walling stones.

We have seen that the temple court was surrounded by a colonnade; the plan of this is shown by Wood. Of the Doric building which stood beyond it on the south side there is