The domestic and palatial buildings of the Greeks have decayed or been destroyed, leaving but few vestiges. We know their architecture exclusively from ruins of public buildings, and to a limited extent of sepulchral monuments remaining in Greece and in Greek colonies. By far the most numerous and excellent among these buildings are temples. The Greek idea of a temple was different from that entertained by the Egyptians. The building was to a much greater extent designed for external effect than internal. A comparatively small sacred cell was provided for the reception of the image of the divinity, usually with one other cell behind it, which seems to have served as treasury or sacristy; but there were no surrounding chambers, gloomy halls, or enclosed courtyards, like those of the Egyptian temples, visible only to persons admitted within a jealously guarded outer wall. The temple, it is true, often stood within some sort of precinct, but it was accessible to all. It stood open to the sun and air; it invited the admiration of the passer-by; its most telling features and best sculpture were on the exterior. Whether this may have been, to some extent, the case with Persian buildings, we have few means of knowing, but certainly the attention paid by the Greeks to the outside of their temples offers a striking contrast to the practice of the Egyptians, and to what we know of that of the Assyrians. [Illustration: FIG. 50.--PLAN OF A SMALL GREEK TEMPLE IN ANTIS.] The temple, however grand, was always of simple form, with a gable at each end, and in this respect differed entirely from the series of halls, courts, and chambers of which a great Egyptian temple consisted. In the very smallest temple at least one of the gables was made into a portico by the help of columns and two pilasters (Fig. 50). More important temples had a larger number of columns, and often a portico at each end (Figs. 50a and 55). The most important had columns on the flanks as well as at the front and rear, the sacred cell being, in fact, surrounded by them. It will be apparent from this that the column, together with the superstructure which rested upon it, must have played a very important part in Greek temple-architecture, and an inspection of any representations of Greek buildings will at once confirm the impression. [Illustration: FIG. 50a.--PLAN OF A SMALL GREEK TEMPLE.]