Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/288

 256 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. Part I. In the Ionic temples at Athens the same exquisite masonry was used as in the Doric ; the same mathematical precision and care is bestowed on the entasis of the columns, the drawing of the volutes, and the execution of even the minutest details ; and much of its beauty and effect are no doubt owing to this circumstance, which we miss so painfully in nearly all modern examples. Corinthian Order. As before mentioned, the Corinthian order was only introduced into Greece on the decline of art, and never rose during the purely Grecian age to the dignity of a temple order. It most probably, how- ever, was used in the more ornate specimens of domestic architecture, and in smaller works of art, long before any of those examples of it were executed which we now find in Greece. The most typical specimen we now know is that of the Choragic Monument of Lysi- crates (Woodcut No. 140), which, notwithstanding all its elegance of detail and exe- cution, can hardly be pro- nounced to be perfect, the Egyptian and Asiatic fea- tures being only very indif- ferently united to one another. The foliaged part is rich and full, but is not carried up into the upper or Ionic por- tion, which is, in comparison, lean and poor; and though separately the two parts are 140. Order of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. irrei)roachable, it waS left to the Romans so to blend the two together as to make a perfectly satisfactory whole out of them. In this example, as now existing, the junction of the column with uz