Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/277

 Bk. in. Ch. II. IONIC TEMPLES. 245 The other two are more modern, and far less pure both in plan arid in detail, one having nine columns at each end, the central pillars of which are meant to correspond with an internal range of pillars, supporting the ridge of the roof. The other, though of a regular form, is so modified by local peculiarities, so corrupt, in fact, as hardly to deserve being ranked wuth the beautiful order w^hich it most resembles. Ionic Temples. We have even fewer materials for the history of the Ionic order in Greece than we have for that of the Doric. The recent discoveries in Assyria have proved beyond a doubt that the Ionic was even more essentially an introduction from Asia than tlie Doric was from Egypt : the only question is, when it was brouglit into Greece. My own im- pression is, that it existed there in one form or another from the earliest ages, but owing to its slenderer proportions, and the greater quantity of wood used in its construction, the examples may have }>erished, so that nothing is now known to exist which can lay claim to even so great an antiquity as the Persian War. The oldest example, probably, was the temple on the Ilissus, now- destroyed, dating from about 484 b. c. ; next to this is the little gem of a temple dedicated to Nike Apteros, or the Wingless Victory, built about fifteen years later, in front of the Propylaea at Athens. The last and most perfect of all the examples of this order is the Erechtheium, on the Acropolis ; its date is apparently about 420 b.c, the great epoch of Athenian art. Nowhere did the exquisite taste and skill of the Athenians show themselves to greater advantage than here ; for though every detail of the order may be traced back to Nineveh or Persepolis, all are so purified, so imbued with ])urely Grecian taste and feeling, that they have become essential parts of a far more beautiful order 'than ever existed in the land in which they had their origin. The largest, and perhaps the finest, of Grecian Ionic temples was that built about a century afterwards at Tegea, in Arcadia — a regular peripteral temple of considerable dimensions, but the existence of ■which is now known only from the description of Pausanias.i As in the case, how^ever, of the Doric order, it is not in Greece itself that we find either the greatest number of Ionic temples or those most remarkable for size, but in the colonies in Asia Minor, and more especially in Ionia, whence the order most properly takes its name. That an Ionic order existed in Asia Minor before the Persian War is quite certain, but all examples i)erished in that memorable struggle; and when it subsequently reappeared, the order had lost ' Pausanias, viii. 45.