316 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



larly, the abacus is kept not only because the architrave is really better 

 provided for with it, and the shaft itself better defended against the 

 hostility of the elements, but also because with it the support seems 

 more ample, the protection more complete, and because by it the beauty, 

 individuality, and dignity of the shaft are decidedly enhanced.. The 

 mechanical reason for the expansion of the upper part of the shaft into 

 an echinus or capital is not so easy to discover. It seems necessary to 

 consider the motive almost entirely aesthetic. To be sure, the strength 

 of the abacus is greater if its projection beyond the limits of the top of 

 the shaft be slight, and, where convenience requires a slender column, 

 this strength is most easily obtained by widening the upper end of the 

 shaft until it approaches the dimensions of the abacus. But just what 

 natural form is employed for this purpose is very, doubtful. On the 

 other hand, this addition is entirely explicable from the side of aes- 

 thetics. The increased beauty of the shaft, the extended facilities for 

 varied decoration, and the closer union of shaft and abacus, are obvious. 

 Finally, a simple expedient to prevent the chance splitting or separa- 

 tion of the primitive prop or reed-bundle is, of course, a thong, cord, 

 or ring bound around its top. Hence arises the astragal.* 



It is an important fact, worthy of mention at this point, that in 

 Egyptian architecture the abacus is properly not a part of the column, 

 but a projection from the architrave. In this particular the architec- 

 ture of Egypt is contrasted with that of Greece. f In the former the 

 column is terminated by its capital, in the latter by its abacus. The 

 Egyptians, therefore, seem to have regarded the column as a more in- 

 dependent member than the Greeks, and so to have crowned it with 

 its most prominent and beautiful part. Hence, an Egyptian column 

 might be tolerated without any incumbent weight, while its Greek 

 homologue without an entablature would be as meaningless as an un- 

 resolved chord of the seventh.^ 



As the difference between column and pier is perhaps not generally 

 admitted or understood,§ and as the modified forms of the two 



* For a trace of the primitive form of the astragal in Greek architecture, see 

 Paus. v. 20 ; and also, upon the same, Wilkins, Athens, p. 18, note. 



t Schnaase, Gesch. d. bihlenden Kiinste, i. 336. 



J Another indication that the Egyptians had no such delicate sense of the 

 supporting function of the column as the Greeks is to be found in the frequency 

 With which they nullified the idea of vertically by the use of horizontal zones 

 of color on the shaft and capital. See Schnaase, op. cit., i. 330. 



§ For instances of the same use of terms as that found in this essay, however, 

 see Gwilt, Diet, of Architecture, p. 735, and Miiller, Anc. Art and its Remains, 

 tr. by Leitch, pp. 308, 309. 



