Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/235

 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRYGIAN CIVILIZATION. 219 the noble architectural type with which they have had the honour to link their name ; l but their intercourse with the well-to- do peaceful agriculturists, whose kine and corn they purchased, whose cults they adopted, and to whom in return they gave their alphabet, was frequent and intimate. In Phrygia, then, carved on wood and stone, they everywhere saw the graceful involucrum, now serving to lessen the thrust put upon the supports, now as pleasing ornament to pieces of jewellery, artistic furniture, and ivories brought by overland and sea routes. 2 Which, among the widely different and numberless objects challenging their attention, struck their fancy most, made them intellectually richer ? We know not ; save that, so far as we can guess from what has been pre- served in the rock-cut monuments, Phrygian architecture must have furnished more than a useful suggestion to those receptive and curious minds. The Greeks found something more among the Phrygians than the time-honoured volute, which had long been acknow- ledged as among the properties of Oriental art. Phrygian architecture was neither derived from Chaldaea, where stone is unknown, nor from untimbered Cappadocia proved by the tombal facades which are modelled upon edifices inhabited by the living. It has little to say to lignite constructions, and the exclusive use of timber gave a form to the building which is markedly different from that obtained elsewhere from stone and brick. In countries where rain and snow are not rare, the framework of the wooden house ends necessarily in a sharp ridge ; a roof whose double slope describes on either side of the building a gable, of which the angle may be acute or the reverse as climatic requirements or the taste of the builder shall direct. Who does not know the importance given to the pediment in Grecian temples, where slant- ing lines form as happy a corona to cella and porticoes as can well be imagined; yielding, moreover, ample space upon which the ingenuity of the sculptor can be exercised ? Now, the pediment is no more than a sharply defined gable, bounded at the beginning of the angle by a horizontal bar, the salience of the cornice. This form we have met once only in the course of studies in which is reflected all that remains of Oriental art. Reference has already been made to the curious architectonic shape which occurs in a 1 Hist, of Art, torn. iv. pp. 694, 695, Figs. 314, 321. 8 Ibid., torn. ii. Figs. 71, 76-80; torn. iii. Figs. 51-53.