A Text-Book of the History of Architecture: Seventh Edition, revisedHamlin, A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster)
History
A Text-Book of the History of Architecture: Seventh Edition, revised
Hamlin, A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster)
Architecture -- History
+ROMAN PERIOD.+ During this period, _i.e._, throughout the second and
first centuries B.C., the Roman dominion was spreading over Greek
territory, and the structures erected subsequent to the conquest partake
of the Roman character and mingle Roman conceptions with Greek details
and _vice versâ_. The temple of the +Olympian Zeus+ at Athens (Fig. 39),
a mighty dipteral Corinthian edifice measuring 354 by 171 feet, standing
on a vast terrace or temenos surrounded by a buttressed wall, was begun
by Antiochus Epiphanes (170 B.C.) on the site of an earlier unfinished
Doric temple of the time of Pisistratus, and carried out under the
direction of the Roman architect, Cossutius. It was not, however,
finally completed until the time of Hadrian, 130 A.D. Meanwhile Sulla
had despoiled it of several columns[12] which he carried to Rome (86
B.C.), to use in the rebuilding of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol,
where they undoubtedly served as models in the development of the Roman
Corinthian order. The columns were 57 feet high, with capitals of the
most perfect Corinthian type; fifteen are now standing, and one lies
prostrate near by. To the Roman period also belong the +Agora Gate+
(circ. 35 B.C.), the +Arch of Hadrian+ (117 A.D.), the +Odeon of
Regilla+ or of Herodes Atticus (143 A.D.), at Athens, and many temples
and tombs, theatres, arches, etc., in the Greek provinces.
[Footnote 12: L. Bevier, in _Papers of the American Classical
School at Athens_ (vol. i., pp. 195, 196), contends that these
were columns left from the old Doric temple. This is untenable,
for Sulla would certainly not have taken the trouble to carry
away archaic Doric columns, with such splendid Corinthian columns
before him.]
+SECULAR MONUMENTS; PROPYLÆA.+ The stately gateway by which the
Acropolis was entered has already been described. It was the noblest and
most perfect of a class of buildings whose prototype is found in the
monumental columnar porches of the palace-group at Persepolis. The
Greeks never used the arch in these structures, nor did they attach to
them the same importance as did most of the other nations of antiquity.
The Altis of Olympia, the national shrine of Hellenism, appears to have
had no central gateway of imposing size, but a number of insignificant
entrances disposed at random. The +Propylæa+ of +Sunium+, +Priene+ and
+Eleusis+ are the most conspicuous, after those of the Athenian
Acropolis. Of these the Ionic gateway at Priene is the finest, although
the later of the two at Eleusis is interesting for its anta-capitals.
(_Anta_ = a flat pilaster decorating the end of a wing-wall and treated
with a base and capital usually differing from those of the adjacent
columns.) These are of Corinthian type, adorned with winged horses,
scrolls, and anthemions of an exuberant richness of design,
characteristic of this late period.
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