Beacon Lights of History, Volume 03: Ancient Achievements

It was not until the Mohammedan conquest in India that architecture received a new impulse from the Saracenic influence. Then arose the mosques, minarets, and palaces which are a wonder for their magnificence, and in which are seen the influence of Greek art as well as that of India. There is an Oriental splendor in these palaces and mosques which has called out the admiration of critics, although it is different from those types of beauty which we are accustomed to praise. But these later edifices were erected in the Middle Ages, coeval with the cathedrals of Europe, and therefore do not properly come under the head of ancient art, in which the ancient Hindus, whether of Aryan or Turanian descent, did not particularly excel. It was in matters of religion and philosophy that the Hindus felt most interest, even as the ancient Jews thought more of theology than of art and science.

Architecture, however, as the expression of genius and high civilization, was carried to perfection only by the Greeks, who excelled in so many things. It was among the ancient Dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern Greece eighty years after the fall of Troy, that architectural art worthy of the name first appeared. The Pelasgi erected Cyclopean structures fifteen hundred years before Christ, as seen in the massive walls of the Acropolis at Athens, constructed of huge blocks of hewn stone, and in the palaces of the princes of the heroic times. The lintel of the doorway of the Mycenaean treasury is composed of a single stone twenty-seven feet long and sixteen broad. But these edifices, which aimed at splendor and richness merely, were deficient in that simplicity and harmony which have given immortality to the temples of the Dorians. In this style of architecture everything was suitable to its object, and was grand and noble. The great thickness of the columns, the beautiful entablature, the ample proportion of the capital, the great horizontal lines of the architrave and cornice predominating over the vertical lines of the columns, the severity of geometrical forms produced for the most part by straight lines, gave an imposing simplicity to the Doric temple.

How far the Greek architects were indebted to the Egyptian we cannot tell, for though columns are found amid the ruins of the Egyptian temples, they are of different shape from any made by the Greeks. In the structures of Thebes we find both the tumescent and the cylindrical columns, from which amalgamation might have been produced the Doric column. The Greeks seized on beauty wherever they found it, and improved upon it. The Doric column was not probably an entirely new creation, but shaped after models furnished by the most original of all the ancient nations, even the Egyptians. The Doric temples were uniform in plan. The columns were fluted, and were generally about six diameters in height; they diminished gradually upward from the base, with a slightly con vexed swelling; they were surmounted by capitals regularly proportioned according to their height. The entablature which the column supported was also of a certain number of diameters in height. So regular and perfect was the plan of the temple, that "if the dimensions of a single column and the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two individuals acquainted with the style, with directions to compose a temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement, and general proportions." The Doric order possessed a peculiar harmony, but taste and skill were nevertheless necessary in order to determine the number of diameters a column should have, and also the height of the entablature.

The Doric was the favorite order of European Greece for one thousand years, and also of her colonies in Sicily and Magna Graecia. It was used exclusively until after the Macedonian conquest, and was chiefly applied to temples. The massive temples of Paestum, the colossal magnificence of the Sicilian ruins, and the more elegant proportions of the Athenian structures, like the Parthenon and Temple of Theseus, show the perfection of the Doric architecture. Although the general style of all the Doric temples is so uniform, hardly two temples were alike. The earlier Doric was more massive; the later was more elegant, and its edifices were rich in sculptured decorations. Nothing could surpass the beauty of a Doric temple in the time of Pericles. The stylobate, or general base upon which the columnar story stood, from two thirds to a whole diameter of a column in height, was built in three equal courses, which gradually receded upward and formed steps, as it were, of a grand platform. The column, simply set upon the stylobate, without base or pedestal, was from four to six diameters in height, with twenty flutes, having a capital of half a diameter. On this rested the entablature, two column-diameters in height, which was divided into architrave (lower mouldings), frieze (broad middle space), and cornice (upper mouldings). The great beauty of the temple was the portico in front,–a forest of columns supporting the triangular pediment, about a diameter and a half to the apex, making an angle at the base of about fourteen degrees. From the pediment projects the cornice, while in the apex and at the base of the flat three-cornered gable are sculptured ornaments, generally the figures of men or animals. The whole outline of columns supporting the entablature is graceful, while the variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and capitals produces a grand effect.

The Parthenon, the most beautiful specimen of the Doric, has never been equalled, and it still stands august in its ruins, the glory of the old Acropolis and the pride of Athens. It was built of white Pentelic marble, and rested on a basement of limestone. It was two hundred and twenty-seven feet in length, one hundred and one in breadth, and sixty-five in height, surrounded with forty-eight fluted columns, six feet and two inches at the base and thirty-four feet in height, while within the peristyle, at either end, was an interior range of columns standing before the end of the cella. The frieze and the pediment were elaborately ornamented with reliefs and statues, and the cella, within and without, was adorned with the choicest sculptures of Phidias, The remains of the exquisite sculptures of the pediment and the frieze were in the early part of this century brought from Greece by Lord Elgin, purchased by the English government, and placed in the British Museum, where, preserved from further dilapidation, they stand as indisputable evidence of the perfection of Greek art. The grandest adornment of the temple was the colossal statue of Minerva in the eastern apartment of the cella, forty feet in height, composed of gold and ivory; the inner walls of the chamber were decorated with paintings, and the whole temple was a repository of countless treasure. But the Parthenon, so regular to the eye with its vertical, oblique, and horizontal lines, was curved in every line, with the exception of the gable,–with its entablature, architrave, frieze, and cornice, together with the basement, all arched upwards; and even the columns had a slight convexity of vertical line, amounting to 1/550 of the entire height of shaft, though so slightly as not to be perceptible. These curved lines gave to the structure a peculiar grace which cannot be imitated, as well as an effect of solidity.

Nearly coeval with the Doric was the Ionic order, invented by the Asiatic Greeks, still more graceful, though not so imposing. The Acropolis is a perfect example of this order. The column is nine diameters in height, with a base, while the capital is more ornamented than the Doric. The shaft is fluted with twenty-four flutes and alternate fillets (flat longitudinal ridges), and the fillet is about a quarter the width of the flute. The pediment is flatter than that of the Doric order, and more elaborate. The great distinction of the Ionic column is a base, and a capital formed with volutes (spiral scrolls), the shaft also being more slender. Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients in architecture, says that "the Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the naked simplicity and dignity of man, and in the other the delicacy and ornaments of woman; the base of the Ionic was the imitation of sandals, and the volutes of ringlets." The discoveries of many of the Ionic ornamentations among the remains of Assyrian architecture indicate the Oriental source of the Ionic ideas, just as the Doric style seems to have originated in Egypt. The artistic Greeks, however, always simplified and refined upon their masters.

The Corinthian order exhibits a still greater refinement and elegance than the other two, and was introduced toward the end of the Peloponnesian War. Its peculiarity consists in columns with foliated capitals modelled after the acanthus leaf, and still greater height, about ten diameters, surmounted with a more ornamented entablature. Of this order the most famous temple in Greece was that of Minerva at Tegea, built by Scopas of Paros, but destroyed by fire four hundred years before Christ.

Nothing more distinguished Greek architecture than the variety, the grace, and the beauty of the mouldings, generally in eccentric curves. The general outline of the moulding is a gracefully flowing cyma, or wave, concave at one end and convex at the other, like an Italic f, the concavity and convexity being exactly in the same curve, according to the line of beauty which Hogarth describes.

The most beautiful application of Greek architecture was in the temples, which were very numerous and of extraordinary grandeur, long before the Persian War. Their entrance was always from the west or the east. They were built either in an oblong or round form, and were mostly adorned with columns. Those of an oblong form had columns either in the front alone, or in the eastern and western fronts, or on all the four sides. They generally had porticos attached to them, and were without windows, receiving their light from the door or from above. The friezes were adorned with various sculptures, as were sometimes the pediments, and no expense was spared upon them. The most important part of the temple was the cell (cella, or temple proper, a square chamber), in which the statue of the deity was kept, generally surrounded with a balustrade. In front of the cella was the vestibule, and in the rear or back a chamber in which the treasures of the temple were kept. Names were applied to the temples as well as to the porticos, according to the number of columns in the portico at either end of the temple,–such as the tetrastyle (four columns in front), or hexastyle (when there were six). There were never more than ten columns across the front. The Parthenon had eight, but six was the usual number. It was the rule to have twice as many columns along the sides as in front. Some of the temples had double rows of columns on all sides, like that of Diana at Ephesus and of Quirinus at Rome. The distance between the columns varied from one diameter and a half to four diameters. About five eighths of a Doric temple were occupied by the cella, and three eighths by the portico.

That which gives to the Greek temples so much simplicity and harmony,–the great elements of beauty in architecture,–is the simple outline in parallelogrammic and pyramidal forms, in which the lines are uninterrupted through their entire length. This simplicity and harmony are more apparent in the Doric than in any of the other orders, but pertain to all the Grecian temples of which we have knowledge. The Ionic and Corinthian, or the voluted and foliated orders, do not possess that severe harmony which pervades the Doric; but the more beautiful compositions are so consummate that they will ever be taken as models of study.

There is now no doubt that the exteriors of the Grecian temples were ornamented in color,–perhaps with historical pictures, etc.,–although as the traces have mostly disappeared it is impossible to know the extent or mode of decoration. It has been thought that the mouldings also may have been gilded or colored, and that the background of the sculptures had some flat color laid on as a relief to the raised figures. We may be sure, however it was done, that the effect was not gaudy or crude, but restrained within the limits of refinement and good taste by the infallible artistic instinct of those masters of the beautiful.

It is not the magnitude of the Greek temples and other works of art which most impresses us. It is not for this that they are important models; it is not for this that they are copied and reproduced in all the modern nations of Europe. They were generally small compared with the temples of Egypt, and with the vast dimensions of Roman amphitheatres; only three or four would compare in size with a Gothic cathedral,–the Parthenon, the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens, and the Temple of Diana at Ephesus; even the Pantheon at Rome is small, compared with the later monuments of the Caesars. The traveller is always disappointed in contemplating the ruins of Greek buildings so far as size is concerned. But it is their matchless proportions, their severe symmetry, the grandeur of effect, the undying beauty, the graceful form which impress us, and make us feel that they are perfect. By the side of the Colosseum they are insignificant in magnitude; they do not cover acres, like the baths of Caracalla. Yet who has copied the Flavian amphitheatre; who erects an edifice after the style of the Thermae? All artists, however, copy the Parthenon. That, and not the colossal monuments of the Caesars, reappears in the capitals of Europe, and stimulates the genius of a Michael Angelo or a Christopher Wren.

The flourishing period of Greek architecture was during the period from Pericles to Alexander,–one hundred and thirteen years. The Macedonian conquest introduced more magnificence and less simplicity. The Roman conquest accelerated the decline in severe taste, when different orders began to be used indiscriminately.

In this state the art passed into the hands of the masters of the world, and they inaugurated a new era in architecture. The art was still essentially Greek, although the Romans derived their first knowledge from the Etruscans. The Cloaca Maxima, or Great Sewer, was built during the reign of the second Tarquin,–the grandest monument of the reign of the kings. It is not probable that temples and other public buildings in Rome were either beautiful or magnificent until the conquest of Greece, after which Grecian architects were employed. The Romans adopted the Corinthian style, which they made even more ornamental; and by the successful combination of the Etruscan arch with the Grecian column they laid the foundation of a new and original style, susceptible of great variety and magnificence. They entered into architecture with the enthusiasm of their teachers, but in their passion for novelty lost sight of the simplicity which is the great fascination of a Doric temple. Says Memes:–

"They [the Romans] deemed that lightness and grace were to be attained not so much by proportion between the vertical and the horizontal as by the comparative slenderness of the former. Hence we see a poverty in Roman architecture in the midst of profuse ornament. The great error was a constant aim to lessen the diameter while they increased the elevation of the columns. Hence the massive simplicity and severe grandeur of the ancient Doric disappear in the Roman, the characteristics of the order being frittered down into a multiplicity of minute details."

When the Romans used the Doric at all, they used a base for the column, which was never done at Athens. They also altered the Doric capital, which cannot be improved. Again, most of the Grecian Doric temples were peripteral,–surrounded with pillars on all the sides. But the Romans built with porticos on one front only, which had a greater projection than the Grecian. They generally were projected three columns, while the Greek portico had usually but a single row. Many of the Roman temples are circular, like the Pantheon, which has a portico of eight columns projected to the depth of three. Nor did the Romans construct hypaethral or uncovered temples with internal columns, like the Greeks. The Pantheon is an exception, since the dome has an open eye; and one great ornament of this beautiful structure is in the arrangement of internal columns placed in the front of niches, composed of antae, or pier-formed ends of walls, to carry an entablature round under an attic on which the cupola rests. The Romans also adopted coupled columns, broken and recessed entablatures, and pedestals, which are considered blemishes. They again paid more attention to the interior than to the exterior decoration of their palaces and baths,–as we may infer from the ruins of Hadrian's villa at Tivoli and the excavations of Pompeii.

The pediments (roof-angles) used in Roman architectural works are steeper than those made by the Greeks, varying in inclination from eighteen to twenty-five degrees, instead of fourteen. The mouldings are the same as the Grecian in general form, although they differ from them in contour; they are less delicate and graceful, but were used in great profusion. Roman architecture is overdone with ornament, every moulding carved, and every straight surface sculptured with foliage or historical subjects in relief. The ornaments of the frieze consist of foliage and animals, with a variety of other things. The great exuberance of ornament is considered a defect, although when applied to some structures it is exceedingly beautiful. In the time of the first Caesars Roman architecture had, from the huge size of the buildings, a character of grandeur and magnificence. Columns and arches appeared in all the leading public buildings,–columns generally forming the external and arches the internal construction. Fabric after fabric arose on the ruins of others. The Flavii supplanted the edifices of Nero, which ministered to debauchery, by structures of public utility.

The Romans invented no new principle in architecture, unless it be the arch, which was known, though not practically applied, by the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Greeks. The Romans were a practical and utilitarian people, and needed for their various structures greater economy of material than was compatible with large blocks of stone, especially for such as were carried to great altitudes. The arch supplied this want, and is perhaps the greatest invention ever made in architecture. No instance of its adoption occurs in the construction of Greek edifices before Greece became a part of the Roman empire. Its application dates back to the Cloaca Maxima, and may have been of Etrurian invention. Some maintain that Archimedes of Sicily was the inventor of the arch; but to whomsoever the glory of the invention is due, it is certain that the Romans were the first of European nations to make a practical application of its wonderful qualities. It enabled them to rear vast edifices with the humblest materials, to build bridges, aqueducts, sewers, amphitheatres, and triumphal arches, as well as temples and palaces. The merits of the arch have never been lost sight of by succeeding generations, and it is an essential element in the magnificent Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Its application extends to domes and cupolas, to floors and corridors and roofs, and to various other parts of buildings where economy of material and labor is desired. It was applied extensively to doorways and windows, and is an ornament as well as a utility. The most imposing forms of Roman architecture may be traced to a knowledge of the properties of the arch, and as brick was more extensively used than any other material, the arch was invaluable. The imperial palace on Mount Palatine, the Pantheon (except its portico and internal columns), the temples of Peace, of Venus and Rome, and of Minerva Medica, were of brick. So were the great baths of Titus, Caracalla, and Diocletian, the villa of Hadrian, the city walls, the villa of Mecaenas at Tivoli, and most of the palaces of the nobility,–although, like many of the temples, they were faced with stone. The Colosseum was of travertine, a cheap white limestone, and faced with marble. It was another custom to stucco the surface of brick walls, as favorable to decorations. In consequence of the invention of the arch, the Romans erected a greater variety of fine structures than either the Greeks or Egyptians, whose public edifices were chiefly confined to temples. The arch entered into almost every structure, public or private, and superseded the use of long stone-beams, which were necessary in the Grecian temples, as also of wooden timbers, in the use of which the Romans were not skilled, and which do not really pertain to architecture: an imposing edifice must always be constructed of stone or brick. The arch also enabled the Romans to economize in the use of costly marbles, of which they were very fond, as well as of other stones. Some of the finest columns were made of Egyptian granite, very highly polished.

The extensive application of the arch doubtless led to the deterioration of the Grecian architecture, since it blended columns with arcades, and thus impaired the harmony which so peculiarly marked the temples of Athens and Corinth; and as taste became vitiated with the decline of the empire, monstrous combinations took place, which were a great fall from the simplicity of the Parthenon and the interior of the Pantheon.

But whatever defects marked the age of Diocletian and Constantine, it can never be questioned that the Romans carried architecture to a perfection rarely attained in our times. They may not have equalled the severe simplicity of their teachers the Greeks, but they surpassed them in the richness of their decorations, and in all buildings designed for utility, especially in private houses and baths and theatres.

The Romans do not seem to have used other than semicircular arches. The Gothic, or Pointed, or Christian architecture, as it has been variously called, was the creation of the Middle Ages, and arose almost simultaneously in Europe after the first Crusade, so that it would seem to be of Eastern origin. But it was a graft on the old Roman arch, in the curve of the ellipse rather than the circle.

Aside from this invention of the arch, to which we are indebted for the most beautiful ecclesiastical structures ever erected, we owe everything in architecture to the Greeks and Romans. We have found out no new principles which were not known to Vitruvius. No one man was the inventor or creator of the wonderful structures which ornamented the cities of the ancient world. We have the names of great architects, who reared various and faultless models, but they all worked upon the same principles, and these can never be subverted; so that in architecture the ancients are our schoolmasters, whose genius we revere the more we are acquainted with their works. What more beautiful than one of those grand temples which the cultivated heathen Greeks erected to the worship of their unknown gods!–the graduated and receding stylobate as a base for the fluted columns, rising at regular distances in all their severe proportion and matchless harmony, with their richly carved capitals supporting an entablature of heavy stones, most elaborately moulded and ornamented with the figures of plants and animals; and rising above this, on the ends of the temple, or over a portico several columns deep, the pediment, covered with chiselled cornices, with still richer ornaments rising from the apices and at the feet, all carved in white marble, and then spread over an area larger than any modern churches, making a forest of columns to bear aloft those ponderous beams of stone, without anything tending to break the continuity of horizontal lines, by which the harmony and simplicity of the whole are regulated! So accurately squared and nicely adjusted were the stones and pillars of which these temples were composed, that there was scarcely need even of cement. Without noise or confusion or sound of hammers did those temples rise, since all their parts were cut and carved in the distant quarries, and with mathematical precision. And within the cella, nearly concealed by surrounding columns, were the statues of the gods, and the altars on which incense was offered, or sacrifices made. In every part, interior and exterior, do we see a matchless proportion and beauty, whether in the shaft or the capital or the frieze or the pilaster or the pediment or the cornices, or even the mouldings,–everywhere grace and harmony, which grow upon the mind the more they are contemplated. The greatest evidence of the matchless creative genius displayed in those architectural wonders is that after two thousand years, and with all the inventions of Roman and modern artists, no improvement has been made; and those edifices which are the admiration of our own times are deemed beautiful as they approximate the ancient models, which will forever remain objects of imitation. No science can make two and two other than four; no art can make a Doric temple different from the Parthenon without departing from the settled principles of beauty and proportion which all ages have indorsed. Such were the Greeks and Romans in an art which is one of the greatest indices of material civilization, and which by them was derived from geometrical forms, or the imitation of Nature.

The genius displayed by the ancients in sculpture is even more remarkable than their skill in architecture. Sculpture was carried to perfection only by the Greeks; but they did not originate the art, since we read of sculptured images from the remotest antiquity. The earliest names of sculptors are furnished by the Old Testament. Assyria and Egypt are full of relics to show how early this art was cultivated. It was not carried to perfection as early, probably, as architecture; but rude images of gods, carved in wood, are as old as the history of idolatry. The history of sculpture is in fact identified with that of idols. The Egyptians were probably the first who made any considerable advances in the execution of statues. Those which remain are rude, simple, uniform, without beauty or grace (except a certain serenity of facial expression which seems to pervade all their portraiture), but colossal and grand. Nearly two thousand years before Christ the walls of Thebes were ornamented with sculptured figures, even as the gates of Babylon were made of sculptured bronze. The dimensions of Egyptian colossal figures surpass those of any other nation. The sitting statues of Memnon at Thebes are fifty feet in height, and the Sphinx is twenty-five,–all of granite. The number of colossal statues was almost incredible. The sculptures found among the ruins of Karnak must have been made nearly four thousand years ago. They exhibit great simplicity of design, but have not much variety of expression. They are generally carved from the hardest stones, and finished so nicely that we infer that the Egyptians were acquainted with the art of hardening metals for their tools to a degree not known in our times. But we see no ideal grandeur among any of the remains of Egyptian sculpture; however symmetrical or colossal, there is no diversity of expression, no trace of emotion, no intellectual force,–everything is calm, impassive, imperturbable. It was not until sculpture came into the hands of the Greeks that any remarkable excellence in grace of form or expression of face was reached. But the progress of development was slow. The earliest carvings were rude wooden images of the gods, and more than a thousand years elapsed before the great masters were produced whose works marked the age of Pericles.

It is not my object to give a history of the development of the plastic art, but to show the great excellence it attained in the hands of immortal sculptors.

The Greeks had an intuitive perception of the beautiful, and to this great national trait we ascribe the wonderful progress which sculpture made. Nature was most carefully studied by the Greek artists, and that which was most beautiful in Nature became the object of their imitation. They even attained to an ideal excellence, since they combined in a single statue what could not be found in a single individual,–as Zeuxis is said to have studied the beautiful forms of seven virgins of Crotona in order to paint his famous picture of Venus. Great as was the beauty of Phryne or Aspasia or Lais, yet no one of them could have served for a perfect model; and it required a great sensibility to beauty in order to select and idealize what was most perfect in the human figure. Beauty was adored in Greece, and every means were used to perfect it, especially beauty of form, which is the characteristic excellence of Grecian statuary. The gymnasia were universally frequented; and the great prizes of the games, bestowed for feats of strength and agility, were regarded as the highest honors which men could receive,–the subject of the poet's ode and the people's admiration. Statues of the victors perpetuated their fame and improved the sculptor's art. From the study of these statues were produced those great creations which all subsequent ages have admired; and from the application of the principles seen in these forms we owe the perpetuation of the ideas of grace and beauty such as no other people besides the Greeks had ever discovered, or indeed scarcely appreciated. The sculpture of the human figure became a noble object of ambition in Greece, and was most munificently rewarded. Great artists arose, whose works adorned the temples of Greece so long as she preserved her independence, and when that was lost, her priceless productions were scattered over Asia and Europe. The Romans especially seized what was most prized, whether or not they could tell what was most perfect. Greece lived in her marble statues more than in her government or laws; and when we remember the estimation in which sculpture was held among the Greeks, the great prices paid for masterpieces, the care and attention with which they were guarded and preserved, and the innumerable works which were produced, filling all the public buildings, especially consecrated places, and even open spaces and the houses of the rich and great, calling from all classes admiration and praise,–we cannot think it likely that so great perfection will ever be reached again in those figures which are designed to represent beauty of form. Even the comparatively few statues which have survived the wars and violence of two thousand years, convince us that the moderns can only imitate; they can produce no creations equal to those by Athenian artists. "No mechanical copying of Greek statues, however skilful the copyist, can ever secure for modern sculpture the same noble and effective character it possessed among the Greeks, for the simple reason that the imitation, close as may be the resemblance, is but the result of the eye and hand, while the original is the expression of a true and deeply felt sentiment. Art was not sustained by the patronage of a few who affect to have what is called taste; in Greece the artist, having a common feeling for the beautiful with his countrymen, produced his works for the public, which were erected in places of honor and dedicated in temples of the gods."