Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/273

 ^-^b^tUAy-hi^J^^ m^:^MW^m^^^mMjlWr ' ' ""'-'' '"'^'"f/^ 130. Plan of the Acropolis at Athens. (From Wordsworth's "Greece.") 1. Parthenon. 2. Erechtheiura. 3. Prupyltea. 4. Temple of Nike Apteros. 5. Statue of Minerva. CHAPTER II. HELLENIC GREECE. HISTORY OF THE ORDERS. THE culminating period of the Pelasgic civilization of Greece was at the time of the war with Troy — the last great military event of that age, and the one which seems to have closed the long and intimate connection of the Greek Pelasgians with tlieir cognate races in Asia. Sixty years later the irruption of the Thessalians, and twenty years after that event the return of the HeracleidcC, closed, in a political sense, that cha])ter in history, and gave rise to what may be styled the Hellenic civilization, which proved the great and true glory of Greece. Four centuries, however, elapsed, which may appropriately be called the dark ages of Greece; before the new seed bore fruit, at least in so far as art is concerned. These ages produced, it is true, the laws of Lycurgus, a characteristic effort of a truly Aryan race, conferring as they did on the people who made them that power of self-government, and capacity for republican institutions, which gave them such stability at home and so much power abroad, but which were as inimical to the softer glories of the fine arts in Sparta as they have proved elsewhei'e. When, after this long night, architectural art reappeared, it was at Corinth, under the Cypselida?, a race of strongly-marked Asiatic ten- dencies ; but it had in the meantime undergone so great a transforma- tion as to wellnigh bewilder us. On its reappearance it was no longer characterized by the elegant and ornate art of Mycenje and the cognate VOL. I. — 16