+THE CORINTHIAN ORDER.+ This was a late outgrowth of the Ionic rather than a new order, and up to the time of the Roman conquest was only used for monuments of small size (see Fig. 38). Its entablature in pure Greek examples was identical with the Ionic; the shaft and base were only slightly changed in proportion and detail. The capital, however, was a new departure, based probably on metallic embellishments of altars, pedestals, etc., of Ionic style. It consisted in the best examples of a high bell-shaped core surrounded by one or two rows of acanthus leaves, above which were pairs of branching scrolls meeting at the corners in spiral volutes. These served to support the angles of a moulded abacus with concave sides (Fig. 30). One example, from the Tower of the Winds (the clepsydra of Andronicus Cyrrhestes) at Athens, has only smooth pointed palm-leaves and no scrolls above a single row of acanthus leaves. Indeed, the variety and disparity among the different examples prove that we have here only the first steps toward the evolution of an independent order, which it was reserved for the Romans to fully develop. +GREEK TEMPLES; THE TYPE.+ With the orders as their chief decorative element the Greeks built up a splendid architecture of religious and secular monuments. Their noblest works were temples, which they designed with the utmost simplicity of general scheme, but carried out with a mastery of proportion and detail which has never been surpassed. Of moderate size in most cases, they were intended primarily to enshrine the simulacrum of the deity, and not, like Christian churches, to accommodate great throngs of worshippers. Nor were they, on the other hand, sanctuaries designed, like those of Egypt, to exclude all but a privileged few from secret rites performed only by the priests and king. The statue of the deity was enshrined in a chamber, the _naos_ (see plan, Fig. 31), often of considerable size, and accessible to the public through a columnar porch the _pronaos_. A smaller chamber, the _opisthodomus_, was sometimes added in the rear of the main sanctuary, to serve as a treasury or depository for votive offerings. Together these formed a windowless structure called the _cella_, beyond which was the rear porch, the _posticum_ or _epinaos_. This whole structure was in the larger temples surrounded by a colonnade, the _peristyle_, which formed the most splendid feature of Greek architecture. The external aisle on either side of the cella was called the _pteroma_. A single gabled roof covered the entire building. [Illustration: FIG. 31.--TYPES OF GREEK TEMPLE PLANS. a, _In Antis_; b, _Prostyle_; c, _Amphiprostyle_; d, _Peripteral_ (_The Parthenon_); N, _Naos_; O, _Opisthodomus_; S, _Statue_.]