Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/276

 244 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. • Part I. Epicurius at Bassae (47 ft. by 125), the Temple of Minerva at Sunium, the greater temple at Rhamnus, the Propylasa at Athens, and indeed all that is srreatest and most beautiful in the architecture of Greece. The temple of Ceres at Eleusis also was founded and designed at this period, but its execution belongs to a later date. Doric Temples in Sicily. Owing j^robably to some local peculiarity, which we have not now the means of explaining, the Dorian colonies of Sicily and Magna Graecia seem to have possessed, in the days of their prosperity, a greater number of temples, and certainly retain the traces of many more, than were or are to be found in any of the great cities of the mother country. The one city of Selinus alone j^ossesses six, in two groups, — three in the citadel and three in the city. Of these the oldest is the central one of the first-named group. Its sculptures, first dis- covered by Messrs. Angel and Harris, indicate an age only slightly sub- sequent to the foundation of the colony, b. c. 636, and therefore probably nearly contemporary with the example above mentioned at Corinth. The most modern is the great octastyle temple, which seems to have been left unfinished at the time of the destruction of the city by the Carthaginians, b. c. 410. It measured 375 ft. by 166, and was conse- quently very niuch larger than any temple of its class in Greece. The remaining four range between these dates, and therefore form a tolerably perfect chronometric series at that time when the arts of Greece itself fail us. The inferiority, however, of provincial art, as compared with that of Greece itself, prevents us from applying such a test with too much confidence to the real history of the art, though it is undoubtedly valuable as a secondary illustration. At Agrigentum there are three Doric temples, two small hexastyles, whose age may be about 500 to 480 b. c, and one great exceptional exaiuj)le, differing in its arrangements from all the Grecian temples of the age. Its dimensions are 360 feet long by 173 broad, and conse- quently very nearly the same as those of the great Temple of Selinus just alluded to. Its date is perfectly known, as it was commenced by Tlieioii I'., c. 480, and left unfinished seventy-five years afterwards, when the city was destroyed by the Carthaginians, __________ _^ At Syracuse there still exist the ruins of a very beautiful temple ol n this age; and at Egesta are remains of another in a much more perfect' > state. . Pa?stum, in Magna Graecia, boasts of the most magnificent group of temples after that at Agrigentum. One is a very beautiful hexastyle, belonging ))robably to the middle of the fifth century b. c, built in a bold ami very pure style of Doric architecture, and still retains the greater part of its internal columnar arrangement.