742 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. II., No. 44. 



be admitted to have proved his case. The plan 

 and interior arrangement of the temple of Bas- 

 sae — wiiich is in so many ways exceptional 

 among buildings of its class- — certainly point 

 to some system of lighting Ij}' vertical windows 

 above the interior ranges of pilasters. The 

 curious )iosition of these buttresses, which are 

 awkwardl3- spaced so as to stand in the axes of 

 the intercolumniations of the side colonnade, 

 and especially the discovery of perforated tiles 

 on the site, make it more than probable that 

 this remarkably archaistic temple displays an 

 intentional reversion to the manner of hghting 

 the primitive, non-peripteral cella through open 

 metopes. It is to be observed that the statue 

 of the deity was not placed in the space thus 

 lighted, which seems to have been considered 

 as a sort of inner vestibule before the Holy 

 of holies, — a hall decorated, like the exterior of 

 the Parthenon, with a carved zophoros, intend- 

 ed to be seen by the general public. Mr. Fer- 

 gusson is probably- at fault in supposing the 

 image at Bassae to have been a mere simula- 

 crum, which had become sacred among the rude 

 inhabitants of the mountain from some acci- 

 dental cause. He gives no reason for such a 

 belief, and of no temple of antiquitj' is the 

 storj- of the dedication so well known. The 

 deliverance of the Arcadians by Apollo Epi- 

 kourios, from a prevalent pestilence toward 

 the end of the fifth century, does not admit the 

 assumption of a rude symbol, or even of a 

 xoanon, within his fane. 



The explanation of the roof-opening of the 

 little cella upon Mount Ocha is good, as is 

 also the concise treatment of the corrupt text 

 of Vitruvius. The importance of both these 

 points has certainlj' been greatlj' overrated by 

 previous writers upon the subject. Mr. Fer- 

 gusson advocates the change of octastylos to 

 decastylos, and et to est, in the confused de- 

 scription of the Roman builder ; and this ap- 

 pears plausible in view of the acknowledged 

 corruption of the manuscripts, and the fact 

 that the temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens, 

 thus alone referred to, was the onlj* building 

 in Europe possessing all the peculiarities de- 

 scribed. Having been without a roof at the 

 time Vitruvius wrote, it certainly was sub divo 

 and sine tecto, as he says. Mr. Fergusson's 

 restoration of this temple is ingenious ; but as 

 it is not known that the structure was ever 

 completed at all, and as even its plan is not 

 yet ascertained, the attempt to delineate its 

 roof is hardly of greater value than that dis- 

 sertation ' on the use of the particle Se in the 

 lost plays of Menander,' which a German 

 scholar is wickedly reported to have written. 



And what are we to think of the disquisition 

 on the Chaitya temple of Karl6, dragged in to 

 lend weight to this restoration ? That excava- 

 tion in the native rock is lighted by a great 

 window at the front, as it of course only can 

 be : and yet in this feature Mr. Fergusson sees 

 the direct influence of Greek and Roman archi- 

 tecture, felt after the incursion of Alexander 

 into India, and the establishment of the Bac- 

 trian kingdom ; making the system of illumina- 

 tion emplo^'ed for the cave an imitation of that 

 in the temple of Zeus at Athens by the argu- 

 ment that the appearance of light-openings on 

 one side onl^' must have been foreign to the 

 wooden structures from which the Chaitya 

 caves were in detail more or less imitated. 

 Surely insistence upon precedent could be car- 

 ried no farther. 



The author's restorations of other temples 

 are interesting, but hardly less improbable ; the 

 complicated makeshifts to which he is driven, 

 by his various systems of windows in light- 

 shafts, being too remote from the simple and 

 straightforward methods of ancient building to 

 please our imagination, or satisfy our practical 

 sense of constructive fitness. A detailed con- 

 sideration of all the temples treated of would 

 here lead to undue length. 



The account of the derivation and timbered 

 prototype of the Doric style is inadequate ; 

 and the attempt to rehabilitate Falkener's 

 proto-Doric capital unreasonable, after the 

 well-known proof by Bergau and Erbkam of its 

 wrong combination out of fragments of Egyp- 

 tian bases. Incorrect, also, is the reiterated 

 statement, that no Doric temples were built 

 after the age of Alexander the Great. In cer- 

 tain parts of the Hellenic world other styles 

 were but exceptionally employed, even in the 

 latest epoch ; as we know, for instance, from 

 the ruins of Pergamon, where there is a com- 

 plete Doric peripteros (that of Athena Polias), 

 which certainly was constructed under the dy- 

 nasty of the Attalidae. The comparison of the 

 development of temple-architecture among the 

 Greeks with Catholic church-building during 

 the middle ages and during the reign of (Jueen 

 Anne is misleading. vStyle among the ancients 

 depended rather on geographical, or, to speak 

 more correctlj', on ethnographical, distribution 

 than on passing fashions. 



The description of the Parthenon is as thor- 

 ough as anj- review antedating the recent in- 

 vestigations of Doerpfeld, which may not have 

 been available at the time of writing. A model 

 of the building, constructed by Mr. Fergussou 

 on a generous scale, one-fortieth of real size, 

 must be extremely interesting. Too much can- 



