Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/234

 218 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. approaches the Doric (Fig. 92). It should be compared with the pillars at Gherdek Kai'asi, in Pterium, which also belong to the category of supports sometimes called proto-Doric. 1 We have laid particular stress on the basket-shaped capital, made up of leaves, which recalls many an Egyptian capital. Are we to view it as a unique survival of a really primitive type imported to Syria and Cappadocia from distant Egypt ? The conjecture is fascinating ; yet the tomb is certainly not among the oldest, and more than one monument of the Roman period could be named in Asia Minor, with capital richer and more complicated, it is true, but not without analogy with the one we are considering. If the particular order is still sub judice, the fact remains that we find introduced here, in a variety of ways, a decorative form of special interest to us, because of the large and brilliant use Greek genius was to make of it. We allude to the Ionic volute, whose beginnings have been made the subject of such hot disputes. The volute device may, perhaps, have been applied to surfaces other than that of columns ; in which case it might be recognized in the inverted curve which appears as acroterion in the vast majority of pediments (Figs. 58, 59). But elsewhere we find it again in its real function, as crowning member to columns and pilasters ; an instance of which occurs in one of the best executed fagades (Fig. 61), where it is lavished, and furnishes at the sides and summit of the pilasters the elements of a somewhat elaborate design. Finally, as columnar capping in a pair of tombs of later date (Fig. 90), where it is chalked in with a careless hand, the narrow tight rolls of Figs. 93 and 96, if somewhat meagre and rigid, constitute all the same a capital not devoid of elegance. We think we have made it clear, then, that the Phrygians largely utilized the volute in their decorative schemes ; a motive we tracked from Mesopotamia to Syria, on to Phoenicia and Cappadocia. Its presence in Phrygia forms one more link between her art and that of the people of Anterior Asia. It may be that we also should turn to Phrygia for the secret of resemblances which it would be hard to explain, had her monuments, like those of Lydia, perished without leaving a trace. When the temples of Miletus and Ephesus were built, the lonians had not yet penetrated into Cappadocia ; they had not beheld, figured on the Pterian rocks, the columns in which we think to recognize the rude outline of 1 Hist, of Art, torn. iv. Fig. 344.