Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/72

56 have been square except for our proofs). We get pediments at the "fronts" (without sacrificing the gutter returning at the angles, as we know it did). We get the pyramid firmly based on the cella walls. ("Hanging in void air" is rhetoric for high. The dome of Sta. Sophia, although it seemed to be suspended by a golden chain from the heavens rested on very substantial piers and arches.) The measure of 440 feet comes at the edge of a reasonable terrace. We get the proportion of two bays longer than wide to suit the foundations. A central pillar on the front is avoided, and there is room enough for a pyramid made up mostly of the wider steps. Yet the sufficiency of the proof for the simple solution following the large type of plan B (Fig. 31) drives me from such a desirable scheme, and I cannot doubt that the main facts as to the exterior have been established from the data made known by the excavations as above set out.

A great point has been made of Pliny's description of the apex of the monument as like a meta, but I have not seen the parallel case of the Tower of the Winds at Athens cited in this relation. This building had a very flat pyramidal roof of marble, and at the centre a finial like a capital, yet Vitruvius describes it as a tower finished with a meta of marble ("metam marmoream perfecit ").

Again, those who would sweep away the cella point to the tomb at Mylasa ; but this is very small, of late Roman work, and the form of the columns suggest, that there was a screen between them forming the whole into a cella. The columns were of the shape shown by Fig. 25 in our Ephesus section, and Pars' original drawings show that there were dowel holes in the vertical strips by which it is probable slabs were attached.

The small type of plan seems to me to be an impossible solution for the following reasons:—

1. The pyramid has to be designed as made up mainly of steep steps. The discoveries showed that it was mainly of wide steps.

2. The monument would have occupied such a small part of the immense foundation.

3. It would not have been the right proportion of plan to suit a rectangle 108 by 127 feet and to give two bays longer on the flanks than on the front.