The Developing of Art 



of some of them were fifty-seven feet thick and like a great 

 modern hotel there were quarters for many hundreds of 

 persons. They were constructed to embrace the purposes of 

 a state capitol, a hotel and a penitentiary combined in a 

 single building. Their supporting columns were made of 

 wood instead of stone but it was from these great palaces 

 that the ancient Greeks borrowed many of their ideas that 

 have made Grecian architecture so popular throughout the 

 world. 



Ancient Greece, as we now call it, was niauc up of a 

 number of independent tribes or states in much the same 

 manner as are the North American Indians. As the various 

 tribes of Indians constitute a race, so the Hellenese forming 

 the various Greek tribes or states constituted a people of 

 the same blood. Many, many generations before the dawn 

 cf written history they probably sprang from the same race 

 ancestry as did the Persians, but their environments changed 

 their ways of doing and thinking, and as a consequence, they 

 have had a greater influence on the advancement of civiliza- 

 tion. Our records of their activities date back to about i lOO 

 B. C. but at that time they had the heritage of the preceding 

 generations of men to draw upon. They were quick to seize 

 the imperfect alphabet of the Phoenicians and to improve 

 upon it and they were also quick to seize the ideas that had 

 been developed in architecture during the preceding cen- 

 turies by the Cretans and others and to improve upon it 

 also. They had a marked fascination for columns in their 

 structures and of these they developed three distinct classes, 

 viz., Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, after which designs all 

 their buildings are named. 



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