Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/189

 Primitive Greece : Mvcenian Art. resting on the cross-beam. It has been supposed that temples were constructed on the same lines, and certain shapes in classic architecture, guttae, triglyphs, and the Doric mutules, have been accounted for as derived from an older architecture, where the supports and the upper part of the building are timber ; but to our mind the shapes in question have as yet not been satisfactorily explained. Let us take a gutta such as it appears in the C. temple of Selinous, one of the oldest types of Doric work (Fig. 304). There can be no doubt that it was copied from a wooden peg. The gutta is cylindrical, carved in round boss, and completely separated from the wall. Had it been carried Fiu. 3C4. — (jutta in C. lemple at Selinous. Section ihroiigh lisiel of architrave. above the listel of the architrave, it would stand out in empty space. Hence the peg represented by this small stone cylinder cannot have served to fix and maintain in place wood pieces, such as the beam of the architrave, and the plank whereon the triglyph is carved, and with which it has no contact. If it be conjectured, as some have conjectured, that the pegs met the plank representing the triglyphs of Vitruvius, it will necessarily follow that the frieze stands on the plain surface of the architrave, and the salient triglyphs on the frieze. But no such arrangement has ever been seen on any Greek temple from the earliest days down to the decadence. In all the periods the frieze is always set back from the architrave, and the triglyph is put on the