330 The Evolution of Architecture. 



of the shaft. These were different from the Doric flutings 

 and different from the Persian, which, like the Doric, met 

 in sharp arrises. The perfected Ionic left a band of the 

 original cylinder between the flutings. The capital has 

 suggested ram's horns and the curling locks of lovely woman, 

 but it is the inventor of such silliness who here stoops to 

 folly. The volutes were originally the spiral ornaments of 

 Persian chairs. The Ionic order was harmonious through- 

 out, the entablature sympathizing with the column in its 

 delicate beauty. This statement would be truer turned 

 about, for, as in the Doric, it was the weight and character 

 of the entablature that determined the character of the col- 

 umn, a first principle in logical building. In Attica the 

 Ionic order never competed successfully with the Doric, and 

 the Corinthian had a much more limited vogue. This was 

 not in reality so much an order by itself as a variation of 

 the Ionic in the capital. It was of late origin, reaching its 

 normal type about 250 B. c. The earliest examples are more 

 like the lotus-capital of Egypt than like the typical Corin- 

 thian, and this suggests a far more probable history than 

 the very pretty, very silly one for which we are indebted to 

 Vitruvius viz., that it represents a basket of toys on a 

 sprouting acanthus, which a nurse had set upon the grave 

 of a young girl. It was simply " a fanciful and ever-varied 

 decoration of foliage around a concave calyx." It was An- 

 tiochus Epiphanes, the Glorious or the Mad, the same that 

 roused the Maccabees to victorious insurrection in Judea, 

 who built the Corinthian Temple of Olympian Zeus in 

 Athens about 170 B. c. This was on the very eve of the 

 Roman conquest, and strangely enough the architect was a 

 Eoman. The capitals were of the most florid style, and 

 when the columns were carried off to Rome by Sulla they 

 furnished the Romans with a type after their own hearts 

 superb, magnificent, and easily abused. 



If time allowed, it could be shown how Greek architecture 

 was throughout obedient to the principles of evolution in 

 the struggle for existence between rival forms, the preserva- 

 tion of the fittest being steadily assured. The course of de- 

 velopment was extremely short ; a century or less to match 

 each slow millennium of Egyptian art. Homer knows 

 nothing of columnar architecture, and in four centuries the 

 Parthenon crowns at once the Acropolis and the completest 

 cycle of development. The modern archaeologist was not 

 considered in the least by the builders of the age of Pericles. 



