Vacation days in GreeceRichardson, Rufus B. (Rufus Byam)
History
Vacation days in Greece
Richardson, Rufus B. (Rufus Byam)
Greece -- Description and travel
The six large temples of Selinus lie in a worse condition than that in
which the Carthaginians left them. Earthquakes have been more active
here than at Akragas. But these ruins, in two large groups, one on the
acropolis and one on a plateau to the east, are the most interesting,
as well as the most impressive, ruins in Europe. Their interest lies
in the fact that they present us in tangible form the history of Greek
architecture as it unfolded itself in a provincial town. There is
Temple C (probably a Herakles temple; but archæologists have refrained
from giving doubtful names, and designated the temples by letters.
Perhaps the names given at Syracuse and Girgenti, though false,
are better pegs to serve the memory than letters), with "shapeless
sculpture," the well-known metope representing Perseus cutting off the
head of Medusa, and another with Heracles carrying the mischievous
Kerkopes flung over his shoulder. These grotesque attempts at
sculpture, as well as the general consideration that the first thought
of a colony was to erect a temple, allow us to date this oldest temple
of Selinus as early as 600 B.C. The architecture is vastly better than
the sculpture, a complete Doric style, with something of the clumsiness
which marks the venerable ruin at Corinth. Then we may notice Temple E,
probably a Hera temple, the southernmost of the three on the eastern
plateau, a large and beautiful temple, once most gorgeously painted,
and giving us, perhaps, more light than any other temple on the
subject of polychromy in Doric architecture. The metopes, the best
of which is Zeus receiving Hera on Mount Ida, mark this temple as a
product of the early part of the fifth century, about the time of the
temple of Zeus at Olympia. Then, at the other end of this line, on the
eastern plateau, is Temple G, so enormous that it is supposed, like its
brother at Akragas, to have been meant for none other than Zeus, the
King of the gods. It is a few feet longer and a few feet wider than the
great Akragas temple. Its date is given with a melancholy certainty;
for it, as well as the Akragas temple, was never finished. It may well
have taken a small community like this as much as the "forty and six
years" which the Temple of Jerusalem required to put up such a colossal
building. An especial interest attaches to it because we see it, as
it were, stopped midway in a lively process of coming into being.
Some of the huge drums are combined into columns, a few of which are
fluted from top to bottom, while others have a little start of fluting
at the top and bottom, and still others are only cut in the form of a
twenty-sided polygon. But one must go to Campo Bello, about five miles
distant, to feel in a still more lively manner the interruption of the
building process. Here one sees a cliff where in one case workmen had
just marked out, with a circular groove, a column-drum to be detached
from its bed. In another place is one around which workmen have hewn
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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