CHAPTER III.

THE ORIGINATORS OF THE THREE ORDERS.

Who were the originators of the three great and primary orders of Grecian architecture is still a question which the discussion of the legendary and mythical architects, which has been briefly entered into, has not answered. It may be assumed inferentially that as the earliest of the Greek temples which have been referred to as the works of the progeny of the gods were in the Doric style, the pagan deities of Greece may claim some share of credit for having introduced that noble design to the world. The Ionic and Corinthian styles, however, are still to be accounted for, and as there is good ground to assume that they made their advent into architectural art at much later dates no celestial origin can be claimed for them.

Vitruvius, in relating his account of the origin of all three orders, alludes more directly to the birth of the Doric, and tells a story so picturesque and entertaining of the other two that although recognizing how well it may be known to the professional architect, it is difficult to resist the temptation to give it here entire:

“Dorus, the son of Hellen, and the nymph Orseis, reigned over the whole of Achaia and Peloponnesus, and built at Argos, an ancient city, on a spot sacred to Juno, a temple which happened to be of this order. After this many temples similar to it sprung up in the other parts of Achaia, though the proportions which should be preserved in it were not as yet settled.

“But afterward when the Athenians, by the advice of the Delphic Oracle in a general assembly of the different states of Greece, sent over into Asia thirteen colonies at once, and appointed a governor or leader to each, reserving the chief command for Ion, the son of Xuthus and Creusa, whom the Delphic Apollo had acknowledged as son, that person led them over into Asia, and occupied the borders of Caria, and there built the great cities of Ephesus, Miletus, Myus (which was long since destroyed by inundation, and its sacred rites and suffrages transferred by the Ionians to the inhabitants of Miletus), Priene, Samos, Teos, Colophon, Chios, Erythræ, Phocæa, Clazomenæ, Lebedos and Melite. The last, as a punishment for the arrogance of its citizens, was detached from the other states in a war levied pursuant to the directions of a general council; and in its place, as a mark of favor toward King Attalus and Arsinoë, the city of Smyrna was admitted into the number of Ionian states, which received the appellation of Ionian from their leader Ion, after the Carians and Lelegæ had been driven out.

“In this country, allotting different spots for sacred purposes, they began to erect temples, the first of which was dedicated to Apollo Panionios, and resembled that which they had seen in Achaia, and they gave it the name of Doric, because they had first seen that species in the cities of Doria. As they wished to erect this temple with columns, and had not a knowledge of the proper proportions of them, nor knew the way in which they ought to be constructed, so as at the same time to be both fit to carry the superincumbent weight and to produce a beautiful effect, they measured a man’s foot, and, finding its length the sixth part of his height, they gave the column a similar proportion—that is, they made its height, including the capital, six times the thickness of the shaft, measured at the base. Thus the Doric order obtained its proportion, its strength, and its beauty from the human figure.

“Under similar notions they afterward built the temple of Diana, but in that, seeking a new proportion, they used the female figure as the standard; and for the purpose of producing a more lofty effect they first made it eight times its thickness in height. Under it they placed a base, after the manner of a shoe to the foot; they also added volutes to its capital, like graceful, curling hair, on each side, and the front they ornamented with cymatia and festoons in the place of hair. On the shafts they sunk channels, which bear a resemblance to the folds of a matronal garment. Thus two orders were invented, one of a masculine character, without ornament, the other bearing a character which resembled the delicacy, ornament and proportion of a female.

“The successors of these people, improving in taste, and preferring a more slender proportion, assigned seven diameters to the height of the Doric column and eight and a half to the Ionic. That species, of which the Ionians were the inventors, has received the appellation of Ionic.

[Illustration: THE ORIGIN OF THE CORINTHIAN CAPITAL.]

“The third species, which is called Corinthian, resembles in its character the graceful and elegant appearance of a virgin, in whom, from her tender age, the limbs are of a more delicate form, and whose ornaments should be unobtrusive. The invention of the capital of this order is said to be founded on the following occurrence: A Corinthian virgin, of a marriageable age, fell a victim to a violent disorder. After her interment her nurse, collecting in a basket those articles to which she had shown a partiality when alive, carried them to her tomb, and placed a tile on the basket for the longer preservation of its contents. The basket was accidentally placed on the root of an acanthus plant, which, pressed by the weight, shot forth, toward spring, its stems and large foliage, and in the course of its growth reached the angles of the tile, and thus formed volutes at the extremities. Callimachus, who for his great ingenuity and taste was called by the Athenians Catetechnos, happening at this time to pass by the tomb, observed the basket and the delicacy of the foliage which surrounded it. Pleased with the form and novelty of the combination, he constructed from the hint thus afforded columns of this species in the country about Corinth.”

The comments of Sir Henry Wotton in his “Elements of Architecture,” written in England during the latter part of the sixteenth century, upon this legendary account of the source of the three orders given by Vitruvius, are sufficiently attractive and quaint in language and spelling to warrant their being quoted also:

“The Dorique order is the gravest that hath been received into civil use, preserving in comparison of those that follow a more _masculine aspect_ and little trimmer than the Tuscan that went before, save a sober garnishment now and then of _lions’ heads_ in the _cornice_ and of _triglyph_ and _metopes_ always in the _frize_.... To discern him will be a piece rather of good _heraldry_ than of _architecture_, for he is knowne by his place when he is in company and by the peculiar ornament of his _frize_, before mentioned, when he is alone.... The _Ionique order_ doth represent a kind of feminine slenderness; yet, saith Vitruvius, not like a housewife, but in a decent dressing hath much of the _matrone_.... Best known by his trimmings for the bodie of this _columne_ is perpetually _chaneled_, like a thick-pleighted gowne. The _capitall_, dressed on each side, not much unlike women’s wires, in a spiral wreathing, which they call the _Ionian voluta_.... The _Corinthian_ is a columne lasciviously decked like a courtezan, and therefore in much participating (as all inventions do) of the place where they were first born, Corinth having beene, without controversie, one of the wantonest towns in the world.”

As for the Composite order, which, as has been already stated, is but a mixture of the Ionic and Corinthian, it would seem that Sir Henry has very little patience. He says with a contempt which he makes little effort to conceal: “The last is the _compounded order_, his _name_ being a briefe of his _nature_: for his pillar is nothing in effect but a _medlie_, or an _amasse_ of all the preceding _ornaments_, making a new kinde of stealth, and though the most richly tricked, yet the poorest in this, that he is a borrower of his beautie.”

There are those who in relentless search for truth at the expense of sentiment and poetry would spoil the pretty story which Vitruvius tells of the invention of the Corinthian capital by claiming for Egypt the distinction of being the mother-country of the order, and ascribing to that form of the Egyptian capital that bells out toward the abacus, and which is surrounded by open lotus leaves, as the archetype of the last of the three Grecian orders. There is, however, more probability to the story of Callimachus than there is similarity between the Egyptian and Corinthian capitals, in our opinion.

If we accept Callimachus as the originator of the Corinthian, although there does not appear any name of an architect to receive the individual credit for the invention of the Doric order, we may as well accept the deduction which Vitruvius draws in respect to Hermogenes, an Ionian architect, who is said to have flourished about 600 B.C., and credit him at the same time with being the first to introduce the feminine proportions and attributes into his art, and with having perfected, if he did not originate, the queenly Ionic order.

“When Hermogenes was employed to erect the temple of Bacchus at Teos,” says Vitruvius, “the marble was prepared for one in the Doric style; but the architect changed his mind, from the idea that other proportions, afterward called Ionic, were more suitable for the purpose, almost inducing the inference that Hermogenes was the inventor of those delicate proportions; he appears unquestionably to have displayed great skill and ingenuity in all his designs, and to have entertained the opinion that sacred buildings should not be constructed with Doric proportions, as they obliged the adoption of false and incongruous arrangements.”

Another fact which Vitruvius does not touch upon might tend to point to Hermogenes as the originator of the Ionic order. He was a native of Alabanda in Caria, and if it is true, as some authorities believe, the volute was an ornament in early use in Asia Minor, he was doubtless familiar with it; and, appreciating its graceful possibilities, introduced it into the matronly Ionic.

Hermogenes is conceded to have been one of the most celebrated architects of antiquity. In addition to the temple of Bacchus which he designed for Teos, one of the eastern Ionian cities, and the birthplace of Anacreon, as well as other noted ancient characters, he erected in the city of Magnesia, in Lydia, a temple to Diana in the Doric order. About each of these temples he wrote a book, both of which were still in existence in the time of Augustus. In one he described the temple to Diana as a pseudodipteral, or false dipteral temple, a form which he invented. It is called false or imperfect because of the economy of the inside row of columns on each of the long sides of the cell, the outside row being allowed to remain. The effect from a distance was the same as a double row, while considerable expense was saved. The temple to Bacchus he described as a monopterus, or a round temple, having neither walls nor cell, but merely a roof sustained by columns.

Hermogenes’s great ambition appears to have been a desire to foster and encourage the use of the Ionic order in preference to the Doric for temple construction. In this opinion he was later sustained by Tarchesius, another writer on architecture, who may be dated as sometime later than 470 B.C., and by Pytheus, whom we shall meet again as one of the architects of the tomb of Mausolus.

Although Vitruvius mentions the origin of the Corinthian order in close connection with that of the Doric and Ionic, it must be borne in mind that Callimachus, whom he credits with the Corinthian, was a much later artist than Hermogenes. The use of the Corinthian column by the architect Scopas in the temple of Athene at Tegea in 396 B.C., has led to the inference that Callimachus must have lived prior to that date, and the fact that he gave to that style of architecture the appellation of Corinthian, that he was a native of Corinth. Lübke, in his “Outlines of the History of Art,” however, does not give to Callimachus the full and undisputed credit for originating the Corinthian style, claiming that the order existed before his time, although he does not mention when or where. Lübke would interpret the story of Callimachus and the basket as meaning that it was he who gave to the capital its final perfection. It is somewhat strange also that although Callimachus is conceded to have been the first to develop this order, if he did not absolutely invent it, there is no mention of any building having been designed by him in the Corinthian style.

There seems to be little dispute over the fact that Callimachus was neither as a sculptor nor an architect to be placed in the van of the distinguished artists of early Greece. As a sculptor, in which capacity he is best known by his works, his style was stilted and artificial, rendered so by the artist’s disposition to be finicky and fastidious in his execution. Indeed, he is said to have been unwearied in polishing and perfecting, and to have sacrificed the grand and sublime in the exercise of too great refinement and purity. Callimachus was never satisfied with himself, and possibly on that account others were not satisfied with him, as a certain degree of self-esteem is necessary to invite public approval. The Greeks gave him a name, based upon his peculiarities, which Pliny has translated as “_Calumniator Sui_.” His faculty for invention was evidenced in other respects also, as he is credited with having originated the art of boring marble, and Pausanius describes a golden lamp which he invented, and which he dedicated to Athene, which when filled with oil burned exactly a year without going out.

It may be said broadly of the Grecian people in their employment of the three grand orders of architecture that the first two—namely, the Doric and Ionic—more closely harmonized with the dignity and nobility of their national character. In fact, Greece arrived at the pinnacle of her civilization and brought her philosophy of human existence not only in theory, but in practice, to its highest ideals before the Corinthian order of architecture appeared to claim a share in her artistic reputation. The stately solidity of the Doric and the graceful purity of the Ionic lent the perfection of architectural framework to the mental strength and loftiness of ideal of the Hellenic people. They seemed to accord with the philosophy that was originally preached from under the shadow of their pediments and entablatures. We can almost see the doubting and mystified Theon stepping from the Doric portico where Zeno held forth, to compare that philosopher’s stoical dogmas with the doctrines of Prudence preached in the Ionic-encompassed garden of Epicurus, by a philosopher ever destined to be misconstrued and wrongfully interpreted.

“All learning is useful,” taught Epicurus; “all the sciences are curious; all the arts are beautiful; but more useful, more curious and more beautiful is the perfect knowledge and perfect government of ourselves. Though a man should read the heavens, unravel their laws and their revolutions; though he should dive into the mysteries of matter, and expound the phenomena of the earth and air; though he should be conversant with all the writings and sayings and actions of the dead; though he should hold the pencil of Parrhasius, the chisel of Polycletus or the lyre of Pindar; though he should be one or all of these things, yet not know the secret springs of his own mind, the foundation of his opinions, the motives of his actions; if he hold not the rein over his passions; if he have not cleared the mist of all prejudice from his understanding; if he have not rubbed off all intolerance from his judgments; if he know not to weigh his own actions and the actions of others in the balance of justice, that man hath not knowledge, nor, though he be a man of science, a man of learning or an artist, he is not a sage. He must sit down patient at the feet of Philosophy. With all his learning he hath yet to learn, and perhaps a harder task, he hath to _un_learn.”

The Corinthian order, on the other hand, notwithstanding all its charm, beauty and variety, seemed to lack that steadfastness of character which bound so firmly the other two orders to the hearts of the Grecian people, and was never admitted into their fullest trust and confidence. Indeed, it is generally conceded that the Corinthian model grew in favor as the architectural art of Greece declined; and only when Greece, losing her autonomy, began to lose her ambition and intellectual greatness and independence. It reached its fullest vogue with the later or Greco-Roman architects, who sacrificed much of purity in art for lavish and sightly display. With the Greeks the Corinthian was sparingly employed, and generally called upon for their smaller and less important buildings; on the other hand, with the Romans, enriched by additional features and ornamentation of their own, it became the favorite order, not alone for portico and temple, but for public and private buildings of every nature.

[Illustration: Three columns]