The name, however, as well as their being only used in conjunction with the Ionic order and with Ionic details, all point to an Asiatic origin for this very questionable form of art. As employed in the little Portico attached to the Erechtheium, these figures are used with so much taste, and all the ornaments are so elegant, that it is difficult to criticise or find fault; but it is nevertheless certain that it was a mistake which even the art of the Greeks could hardly conceal. To use human figures to support a cornice is unpardonable, unless it is done as a mere secondary adjunct to a building. In the Erechtheium it is a little too prominent for this, though used with as much discretion as was perhaps possible under the circumstances. Another example of the sort is shown in Woodcut No. 146, which, by employing a taller cap, avoids some of the objections to the other; but the figure itself, on the other hand, is less architectural, and so errs on the other side. [Illustration: 146. Caryatide Figure from the Erechtheium.] [Illustration: 147. Telamones at Agrigentum.] Another form of this class of support is that of the Giants or _Telamones_, instances of which are found supporting the roof of the great Temple at Agrigentum, and in the baths of the semi-Greek city of Pompeii. As they do not actually bear the entablature, but only seem to relieve the masonry behind them, their employment is less objectionable than that of the female figures above described; but even they hardly fulfil the conditions of true art, and their place might be better filled by some more strictly architectural feature. FORMS OF TEMPLES. The arrangements of Grecian Doric temples show almost less variety than the forms of the pillars, and no materials exist for tracing their gradual development in an historical point of view. The temples at Corinth, and the oldest at Selinus, are both perfect examples of the hexastyle arrangement to which the Greeks adhered in all ages; and though there can be little doubt that the peripteral form, as well as the order itself, was borrowed from Egypt, it still was so much modified before it appeared in Greece, that it would be interesting, if it could be done, to trace the several steps by which the change was effected. In an architectural point of view this is by no means difficult. The simplest Greek temples were mere cells, or small square apartments suited to contain an image—the front being what is technically called _distyle in antis_, or with two pillars between _antæ_, or square pilaster like piers terminating the side walls. Hence the interior enclosure of Grecian temples is called the cell or cella, however large and splendid it may be. [Illustration: 148. Small temple at Rhamnus.]