A DISCOVEKY OF GEEEK IIOIMZONTAL rUliVES lif THE 

 MAISON CARREE AT ^IMES.' 



By Wm. JJenry Goodyeak. 



Forty-four years have passed away since Francis Craumer Penrose, 

 then an architect just beginning' life, pubhshed, with the aid and coopera- 

 tiou of the Dilettanti Society of London, his epoch-making work on the 

 Principles of Athenian Architecture. It was, therefore, in 1851 that 

 the world of science was first advised of a series of facts regarding' the 

 construction of the Parthenon and other temples of the Greeks which 

 are still a perpetual source of wonder and of speculation to the special- 

 ist, to whose knowledge even the existence of these facts is still very 

 closely confined. 



The observations and measurements of Penrose were undertaken in 

 1815, and were completed in 181G and 1817. XJ]} to those years the^ 

 Greek temple was supposed to be what to the superficial observer it 

 appears to be. Its horizontal lines were supposed to be level and were 

 consequently supposed to be straight; its vertical lines were supposed 

 to be perpendicular ; its corresponding" and apparently equal dimensions 

 were supposed to be equal, and its corresponding spaces and distances 

 were supposed to be commensurate. To discover an exact mathematical 

 ratio in its main proportions was the constant effort of the archaeologist. 

 The mathematical ratios had not been discovered exactly; but this was 

 thought to be the fault ot the modern and not the fault of the Greek. 



On a sudden the measuring ro<l of Penrose revealed that no two 

 neighboring capitals or abaci of the l*artlienon are of corresponding 

 size, that the diameters of the columns are unecjual, that the inter- 

 columnar spacings are irregular, and that the metope spaces are of 

 irregular width. His i)lumb line showed that none of the apparently 

 vertical lines are really perpendicular. The columns all lean toward 

 the center of the building. The side walls also lean to the center. 

 The i^ilasters or antit at the angles of the building lean forward. The 

 architrave and frieze lean backward and away from the imaginary 

 perpendicular. The cornice and the fillet between the frieze and arclii- 

 trave, as well as the acroteria and anteflxai, have their faces inclined 

 forward of the imaginary i)eri)endicular. Finally, the main horizontal 



'From The Architectural Record, Vol. IV, No. 4 (1895). 



.^3 



