Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/301

 Ek. III. C'H. II. TEMPLE OF DIANA AT EPIIESUS. 2G9 the only points of uncertainty are the j^ositions of the four cohinins necessary to make up the 100 mentioned by Pliny,i and the internal arrangement of the cella itself and of the o])isthodomus. With regard to the first there seems very little latitude for choice. Two must have stood between the anta3. The position of the other • two must be determined either by bringing foi-ward the wall enclosing the stairs, so as to admit of the intercolumniation east and west being the same as that of the other columns, or of spacing them so as to divide the inner roof of the pronaos into equal squares. I have pre- ferred the latter as that Avliich appears to me the most probable. The Avest wall of the cella and the position of the statue having been found, the arrangement of the pillars surrounding this apartment does not admit of much latitude. P^ragments of these pillars were found, but not in situ, showing that they were in two heights and supported a gallery. I jiave spaced them intermediately between the external pillars, as in the Temple of Apollo at Bassa? (Woodcut No. 146), because I do not know of any other mode by which this temple could be lighted except by an opaion, as suggested for that tem])le ; and if this is so they must have been so spaced. Carrying out this system it leaves an opisthodomus wdiich is an exact squai-e, which is so likely a form for that a])artment that it affords considerable confirmation to the correctness of this restoration that it should be so. The four pillars it probably contained are so spaced as to divide it into nine equal squares. Restored in this manner the temple appears considerably less in dimensions than might have been supposed from Pliny's text. His measurements ap])ly only to the lower step of the platform, which is found to be 421 ft. by 2.38. But the temple itself, from angle to angle of the i)eristyles, is only 342 ft. by 164, instead of 425 ft. by 220 of Pliny. Assuming this restoration to be correct there can be very little doubt as to the position of the thirty-six columnae crelatae, of which several specimens have been recoA^ered by Mr. Wood, and are now in the British Museum, They must have been the sixteen at either end and the four in the pronaos, shown darker in the AA'oodcut. From the temple standing on a jjlatform so much largei- than appears necessary, it is probable that pedestals Avitli statues stood in front of each column, and if this were so, the sculptures, with the columns caelatse and the noble architecture of the temple itself, must liave made up a combination of technic, esthetic, and phonetic art such as hardly existed anywhere else, and Avhich consequently the ancients were quite justified in considering as one of the wonders of the world. 1 " Universe Templo longitude est ccccxxv. pedum, latitude ccxx. Col- Timna3 centum viginti septem a singulis regibus factae, Ix. pedum altitudine : ex iis xxxvi. cielatae, una a Seopa." — H. N. xxxvi. 14.