Vacation days in GreeceRichardson, Rufus B. (Rufus Byam)
History
Vacation days in Greece
Richardson, Rufus B. (Rufus Byam)
Greece -- Description and travel
But the object of greatest interest is the Zeus Temple, still farther
west in the line. This justifies the saying of Empedocles above quoted,
being so large that the Parthenon could be lost in one corner of it, as
the wooden ladle was lost in Lady Wouter Van Twiller's pocket. It is
the most massive of Greek temples, in the sense in which the temple of
Zeus at Olympia is more massive than the Parthenon--_i.e._, its columns
and all its members are larger. So enormous were its dimensions that
the architect readily saw that he must deviate from the ordinary
rules of construction. Columns of friable stone fifty-five feet high,
supporting an unusually heavy entablature, needed support themselves.
Accordingly they were embedded in a continuous wall. What one here saw
was not a line of graceful columns between which and the cella one
could walk about, but only a great wall with half columns protruding
from it. These half columns were not really independent members. The
small blocks composing them run over into the wall to the right and
left. They simply serve to break up a monotonous wall, and to present
the appearance of columns. This contour, which is a little over a
semi-circumference, averages about twenty feet, being, of course,
greater at the bottom. A man's back, as was remarked by Diodorus
Siculus, easily fits into the flutings. The clearest idea, however, of
the large proportions of the temple I got by noting that the grooves
in a triglyph lying on the ground measured fifteen feet in length. It
would also be no exaggeration to say that a company could dance on the
top of one of the capitals lying about.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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