Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/260

 228 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. Pabt T. an Ionic f ayade for these carpentry forms : this was not done apparently at once, for, though the Ionic form was evidently borrowed from the neighboring Greek cities, it ., / 119. louic Lycian Tomb. (From Texier' s Mineure.") Asie was only adoj^ted by degrees and even then betrayed more strongly the wooden forms from which its entablature was derived than is usually found in other or more purely Grecian examples. As soon as it had fairly gained a footing, the Avooden style was abandoned, and a masonry one substituted in its stead, The whole change took place in this country probably Avithin a century ; but this is not a fair test of the time such a ])rocess usually takes, as here it was evidently done under foreign influence and with the spur given by the example of a stone-building peo])le. We have no knowledge of how long it took in Egypt to effect the transformation. In India, Avhere the form and construction of the older Buddhist temples resemble so singularly these examples in Lycia, the process can be traced through five or six centuries ; and in Persia it took ])erhaps nearly as long to convert the wooden designs of the Assyrians into even the imperfect stone architecture of the Achaemenians. Even in their best and most perfect buildings, however, much remained to be done before the carpentry types were fairly got rid of and the style became entitled to rank among the masonic arts of the world. The remaining ancient buildings of Asia Minor were all built by the Greeks and Romans, eacli in their own style, so that their classi- fication and description belong properly to the chapters treating of the architectural history of those nations, from Avhich they cannot properly be separated, although it is at the same time undoubtedly true that the purely European forms of the art were considerably modified by the influence on them of local Asiatic forms and feelina^s. The Ionic order, for instance, which arose in the Grecian colonies on the coast, is only the native style of this country Doricised, if the expression may be used. Ill other words, the local method of building had become so modified and altered by the Greeks in adapting it to the Doric, which had become the ty]»ical style with them, as to cause the loss of almost all its original