Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/274

 242 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. Takt I. forms of Asiatic growth, but had assumed the rude, bold proportions of Egyptian art, and with ahiiost more than Egyptian massiveness. Doric Temples in Greece. The ao-e of tlio Doric temple at Corintli is not, it is true, satis- factorily determined ; but the balance of evidence would lead us to believe that it belongs to the age of Cypselus, or about 650 b. c. The ])illars are less than four diameters in height, and the architrave — the only part of the superstructure that now remains — is proportionately heavy. It is, indeed, one of the most massive specimens of architec- ture existino-, more so than even its rock-cut prototype at Beni Hassan,^ from which it is most indubitably copied. As a work of art, it fails from excess of strength, a fault common to most of the efforts of a rude people, ignorant of the true resources of art, and striving, by the expression of physical power alone, to attain its objects. Next in age to this is the little temple at ^gina.2 Its date, too, is unknown, though, judging from the character of its sculpture, it probably belongs to the middle of the sixth century before Christ. We know that Athens ad a great temple on the Acropolis, con- temporary with these, and the frusta of its columns still remain, which, after its destruction by the Persians, were l)uilt into the walls of the citadel. It is more than probable that all the principal cities of Greece had temj^k's commensurate with theii- dignity before the Per- sian War. Many of these Avere destroyed during that struggle ; but it also happened then, as in France and England in the 12th and 13th centuries, that the old temples were thouglit unworthy of the national greatness, and of that feeling of exaltation arising from the successful > If the examples at Beni Hassan and 131. Capital in Teiniilo at Karnac. (From K. KiiikeiH'r.) elsewhere are not considered sufficient to settle the question, it will be difficult to refuse the evidence of this one (Wood- cut No. K51) taken from the southern temple at Karnac, built hi the age of Thothniosis III. and Anienophis III. — say 1600 years before Christ, or 1000 years before the earliest Grecian example known. In this instance the abacus is separated from the shaft; there is a bold echinus and a beaded necking; in fact all the members of the Grecian order, only wanting the elegance which the Greeks added to it. In the nu'iiioir by Mr. Falkener (" Mu- seum of Classical Antiquities," vol. i. p. 87). from which the woodcut is bor- rowed. 27 i)roto-Doric columns are enu- merated as still existing in eight dif- ferent buildings, ranging from the Third Cataract to Lower Egypt. - The dimensions are 94 feet by 45^ covering consefiuently only 4230 feet.