A. Propylæa. B. Temple of Niké Apteros. C. Parthenon. D. Erechtheium. E. Foundations of old Temple of Athena, sixth century B.C. ] CHAPTER II. HELLENIC GREECE. HISTORY OF THE ORDERS. The culminating period of the Pelasgic civilisation of Greece was at the time of the war with Troy—the last great military event of that age, and the one which seems to have closed the long and intimate connection of the Greek Pelasgians with their cognate races in Asia. Sixty years later the irruption of the Thessalians, and twenty years after that event the return of the Heracleidæ, closed, in a political sense, that chapter in history, and gave rise to what may be styled the Hellenic civilisation, which proved the great and true glory of Greece. Four centuries, however, elapsed, which may appropriately be called the dark ages of Greece, before the new seed bore fruit, at least in so far as art is concerned. These ages produced, it is true, the laws of Lycurgus, a characteristic effort of a truly Aryan race, conferring as they did on the people who made them that power of self-government, and capacity for republican institutions, which gave them such stability at home and so much power abroad, but which were as inimical to the softer glories of the fine arts in Sparta as they have proved elsewhere. When, after this long night, architectural art reappeared, it was at Corinth, under the Cypselidæ, a race of strongly-marked Asiatic tendencies; but it had in the meantime undergone so great a transformation as to well-nigh bewilder us. On its reappearance it was no longer characterised by the elegant and ornate art of Mycenæ and the cognate forms of Asiatic growth, but had assumed the rude, bold proportions of Egyptian art, and with almost more than Egyptian massiveness. DORIC TEMPLES IN GREECE. The age of the Doric temple at Corinth is not, it is true, satisfactorily determined; but the balance of evidence would lead us to believe that it belongs to the age of Cypselus, or about 650 B.C. The pillars are less than four diameters in height, and the architrave—the only part of the superstructure that now remains—is proportionately heavy. It is, indeed, one of the most massive specimens of architecture existing, more so than even the rock-cut prototype at Beni Hasan. As a work of art, it fails from excess of strength, a fault common to most of the efforts of a rude people, ignorant of the true resources of art, and striving, by the expression of physical power alone, to attain its objects. Next in age to this is the little temple at Ægina.[131] Its date, too, is unknown, though, judging from the character of its sculpture, it probably belongs to the middle of the sixth century before Christ. [Illustration: 134. Temple at Ægina restored. No scale.]