V* o • * .0 O rf . . s * .<\ <* ^V "^0* ^°^ -J • " " \V n*. ' • ' * ■ A J * • M o ° y O V V a\ -^ .^ . - _ «*• aV ^ e> «, '•ft^^-,* "^ A*" fc have been a desire to foster and encourage the use of the Ionic order in preference to the Doric for temple construction. In this opinion he was later sustained by Tarchesius, another writer on architecture, who may be dated as sometime later than 470 b.c, and by Pytheus, whom Ave shall meet again as one of the architects of the tomb of Mausolus. Although Vitruvius mentions the origin of the Co- rinthian order in close connection with that of the Doric 58 SOME OLD MASTERS and Ionic, it must be borne in mind that Callimachus, whom he credits with the Corinthian, was a much later artist than Hermogenes. The use of the Corinthian column by the architect Scopas in the temple of Athene at Tegea in 396 B.C., has led to the inference that Cal- limachus must have lived prior to that date, and the fact that he gave to that style of architecture the appellation of Corinthian, that he was a native of Corinth. Liibke. in his "Outlines of the History of Art," however, does not give to Callimachus the full and undisputed credit for originating the Corinthian style, claiming that the order existed before his time, although he does not men- tion when or where. Liibke would interpret the story of Callimachus and the basket as meaning that it was he who gave to the capital its final perfection. It is somewhat strange also that although Callimachus is conceded to have been the first to develop this order, if he did not absolutely invent it, there is no mention of any building having been designed bv him in the Co- rinthian style. There seems to be little dispute over the fact that Callimachus was neither as a sculptor nor an architect to be placed in the van of the distinguished artists of early Greece. As a sculptor, in which capacity he is best known by his works, his style was stilted and arti- OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 59 flcial, rendered so by the artist's disposition to be finicky and fastidious in his execution. Indeed, he is said to have been unwearied in polishing and perfecting, and to have sacrificed the grand and sublime in the exercise of too great refinement and purity. Callimachus was never satisfied with himself, and possibly on that ac- count others were not satisfied with him, as a certain degree of self-esteem is necessary to invite public ap- proval. The Greeks gave him a name, based upon his peculiarities, which Pliny has translated as "Calumni- ator Sui." His faculty for invention was evidenced in other respects also, as he is credited with having origi- nated the art of boring marble, and Pausanius describes a golden lamp which he invented, and which he dedi- cated to Athene, which when filled with oil burned exactly a year without going out. It may be said broadly of the Grecian people in their employment of the three grand orders of architecture that the first two — namely, the Doric and Ionic — more closely harmonized with the dignity and nobility of their national character. In fact, Greece arrived at the pinnacle of her civilization and brought her philos- ophy of human existence not only in theory, but in practice, to its highest ideals before the Corinthian order of architecture appeared to claim a share in her 60 SOME OLD MASTERS artistic reputation. The stately solidity of the Doric and the graceful purity of the Ionic lent the perfection of architectural framework to the mental strength and loftiness of ideal of the Hellenic people. They seemed to accord with the philosophy that was originally preached from under the shadow of their pediments and entablatures. We can almost see the doubting and mystified Theon stepping from the Doric portico where Zeno held forth, to compare that philosopher's stoical dogmas with the doctrines of Prudence preached in the Ionic-encompassed garden of Epicurus, by a philos- opher ever destined to be misconstrued and wrongfully interpreted. "All learning is useful," taught Epicurus ; "all the sciences are curious ; all the arts are beautiful ; but more useful, more curious and more beautiful is the perfect knowledge and perfect government of ourselves. Though a man should read the heavens, unravel their laws and their revolutions; though he should dive into the mysteries of matter, and expound the phenomena of the earth and air; though he should be conversant with all the writings and sayings and actions of the dead ; though he should hold the pencil of Parrhasius, the chisel of Polycletas or the lyre of Pindar ; though he should be one or all of these things, yet not know the OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 61 secret springs of his own mind, the foundation of his opinions, the motives of his actions ; if he hold not the rein over his passions ; if he have not cleared the mist of all prejudice from his understanding; if he have not rubbed off all intolerance from his judgments ; if he know not to weigh his own actions and the actions of others in the balance of justice, that man hath not knowledge, nor, though he be a man of science, a man of learning or an artist, he is not a sage. He must sit down patient at the feet of Philosophy. With all his learning he hath yet to learn, and perhaps a harder task, he hath to unlearn." The Corinthian order, on the other hand, notwith- standing all its charm, beauty and variety, seemed to lack that steadfastness of character which bound so firmly the other tv r o orders to the hearts of the Grecian people, and was never admitted into their fullest trust and confidence. Indeed, it is generally conceded that the Corinthian model grew in favor as the architectural art of Greece declined ; and only when Greece, losing her autonomy, besan to lose her ambition and intellec- tual greatness and independence. It reached its fullest vogue with the later or Greco-Roman architects, who sacrificed much of purity in art for lavish and sightly display. With the Greeks the Corinthian was sparingly 62 SOME OLD MASTERS employed, and generally called upon for their smaller and less important buildings; on the other hand, with the Romans, enriched by additional features and orna- mentation of their own, it became the favorite order, not alone for portico and temple, but for public and private buildings of every nature. OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 63 CHAPTER IV. Early Grecian Architects. X the year 548 b.c. the great temple to Apollo at Delphi, the work of the legendary architects Agamedes and Trophonius, was destroyed by ■fire. Of the four temples to the same deity that had been reared upon the same site, this was the first in which marble was employed as a building material. Naturally the question will present itself, how could a temple built of marble be destroyed by fire ? The answer is, that while the main walls of the cell and the columns, entablatures, pediments and other exposed parts of the early Greek temples were built of marble,- stone or sun-dried bricks, the roofs were generally of wood, and were heavily timbered, sometimes calling for great strength to support marble tiles. Much of the interior building material was also of wood, as well as the statuary with which the earlier temples were lav- ished and enriched. Thus if fire was started within the building, either by accident or, as not infrequently 64 SOME OLD MASTERS happened, by the hand of an incendiary, there was suffi- cient combustible material for it to feed upon and to heat the entire structure, reducing the otherwise endur- ing marble to crumbling lime. The temple of Apollo having been thus destroyed, the much revered and highly respected Oracle was left without shelter and a place of business. This state of things of course could not long be allowed to continue, and the Amphictyons, a legislative body, having under its special care the Delphic temple, at once came to the front and ordered a new temple built at a cost of about $300,000. One-fourth of this sum was to be paid by the Delphians and the remaining three-fourths were to be contributed by the other cities of Greece and those nations which were in the habit of consulting the Oracle — a very proper distribution of the expense, considering how extensive and widespread was the renown and ap- preciation of the priestess. Amasis, King of Egypt, volunteered a thousand talents of alumina, thus showing what his feelings were in the matter, and the Alcnnv- onida?, one of the oldest and most aristocratic families of Athens, undertook the contract, it is hinted, mainly for political reasons. This may be true, as they were much involved in local politics, especially with the ban- ishment of Pisistratus, the tyrant, and they may have OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 65 seen an opportunity in the rebuilding of this temple to make themselves very popular. They certainly went about it in the right way to achieve such a result, and did actually gain much influence by their generosity and the broadminded manner in which they disregarded the strict terms of the contract to do handsomer and better work than it called for. One particular illustra- tion of their liberality has attracted the attention of the historian: it was the building of the temple in Parian marble, instead of Porine stone. While the Alcmseoni- dse were prosecuting the work in this generous spirit, they did not neglect their fallen enemies, the Pisistra- tidse, and threw out occasional innuendoes to the effect that the Pisistratida* could tell more about the origin of the fire that destroyed the late temple than they evi- dently cared to, thereby intimating a crime as against their rivals that it might have been difficult to have proved. They even won the Oracle to their side by similar simple and ingenuous methods, with the result that ever afterward the Oracle did not hesitate to speak a kind word for the Alcmaeonida 1 and favor their native city, Athens. The architect of this new temple was Spintharus, a Corinthian. As nothing further seems to be known of him, we have been somewhat particular to mention the 66 SOME OLD MASTERS importance of this work, to show that Spintharus was an artist who stood very high in his profession at the time. But as the temple was one of the longest in process of construction, taking about seventy-two years to complete, it is not likely that Spintharus lived to enjoy the full fruition of his work. It may be of interest to add that no structure of its kind throughout all Greece was made the depository of richer or more extensive treasure than this temple to Apollo at Delphi, a fact not to be marvelled at if we do not lose sight of the Oracle. We have already seen how it excited the cupidity of the brothers Agamedes and Trophonius. What they appropriated to themselves from the rich vaults of its predecessor was, however, comparatively insignificant to the wholesale robberies that went on from time to time of the fifth temple de- signed by Spintharus. Herodotus says that the wealth of Delphi was better known to the Persian Xerxes than were the contents of his own palace, and that after forcing the pass of Thermopylae he detached a portion of his army to capture Delphi. It failed to do so, only through the interposition of the Oracle or some other deity. Many years afterward the Phocians plundered the temple of what might be represented by $10,600,000 of our money. Still later the Gauls also made a rich OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. G7 haul, which the Romans afterward found in their city of Tolosa unexpended, probably because there was so much of it ; and J^ero is said to have taken from it five hundred bronze statues at one time. But these robberies fade into insignificance when the insult heaped upon the Delphians and their Oracle by Constantine the Great is recalled. This Roman vandal not only removed the sacred Tripod and Brazen Column which supported it, but degenerated their use to the adornment of the hippodrome of the new city he built on the Bosphorus. The Brazen Column may still be seen in Constantinople, but the sacred Tripod has dis- appeared forever. There is a little story connected with a first disappearance of the Tripod that may be worth the telling. It was lost at sea, but afterward recovered by some fishermen. When Pythia was asked to decide to whom it should be given, her answer was that it should be bestowed upon the wisest man in Greece. Accordingly it was sent to Thales of Miletos. He, how- ever, was too modest to retain it, and passed it over to Bias as a wiser man ; Bias was also embarrassed by the selection, and presented it to another of the Grecian sages ; he to still another, and so on, until it had made the circuit of pretty much every person in Greece with any claim at all to superior wisdom. Finally, however, 68 SOME OLD MASTEKS it came back once more to Thales, who successfully ended its itinerary by dedicating it to the Delphic Apollo. One of the earliest of the great temples to be erected in the Ionic order was that begun in the Ionian city of Ephesus in Asiatic Greece by Ctesiphon, a Cretan architect born in Cnossus, and his son, Metagenes. This temple was erected to the glory of the many-breasted and mummy-like appearing Artemis, a goddess peculiar to the Ephesians, whom the Greek colonists there doubt- less inherited from the Asiatic races that preceded them in their Ionian settlement. There was nothing of the graceful, virgin-like characteristics of Apollo's sister, the Arcadian Artemis, in this Ephesian goddess, but the Ionian Greeks were quite partial to her, attended her with eunuch priests, and built in her honor this temple, so grand and magnificent that it was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world. Before alluding to some of the interesting facts that have been preserved concerning the early history of this great temple it may not be out of place to touch upon a custom which prevailed in Ephesus in respect to the employment of architects, which Vitruvius relates. He says : "In the magnificent and spacious Grecian city of Ephesus an ancient law was made by the ancestors of OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 69 the inhabitants, hard in its nature, but nevertheless equitable. When an architect was entrusted with the execution of a public work, an estimate thereof being lodged in the hands of a magistrate, his property was held as security until the work was finished. If, when finished, the expense did not exceed the estimate, he was complimented with decrees and honors. So when the excess did not amount to more than a fourth part of the original estimate, it was defrayed by the public, and no punishment was inflicted. But when more than one- fourth the estimate was exceeded, he was required to pay the excess out of his own pocket." The honest Vitruvius almost sighs as he adds : "Would to God that such a law existed among the Roman people, not only in respect to their public, but also of their pri- vate buildings, for then the unskilful could not commit their depredations with impunity, and those who were most skilful in the intricacies of the art would follow the profession ! Proprietors would not be led into an ex- travagant expenditure, so as to cause ruin; architects themselves, from the dread of punishment, would be more careful in their calculations, and the proprietor would complete his building for that sum or a little more, which he could afford to expend. Those who can conveniently expend a given sum on any work with the TO SOME OLD MASTERS pleasing expectation of seeing it completed would cheer- fully add one-fourth more; but when they find them- selves burdened with the addition of half or even more than half of the expense originally contemplated, losing their spirits and sacrificing what has already been laid out, they incline to desist from its completion." There are, perhaps, some people even at the present time who can be found to echo these sentiments of Vitru- vius, and exclaim : "Would to God that such a law existed among the American people, especially in Xew York and Chicago ! Theodoras of Samos, it will be remembered, laid the foundation of the temple to Artemis of Ephesus in the year 600 b.c. To guard against the destruction of the temple by earthquakes, a marshy site was chosen, and Theodoras insured a firm foundation, by using charcoal, which was rammed down solidly, and then covered with fleeces of wool. Ctesiphon and his son did not, how- ever, begin the superstructure until about forty years later. The dimensions of the building were very extensive, and although the architecture was full of grandeur, grace and beauty were not sacrificed. The length was four hundred and twenty-five feet ; the width two hun- dred and twenty feet. One hundred and twenty-seven OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 71 Parian marble columns, each sixty feet in height, sur- rounded the cell in double rows, sixteen appearing in the front and rear fagades, and forty each on the sides. He- rodotus states that most of these columns were presented by the rich Croesus, and some by other kings. The cell, according to some authorities, was devoid of a roof, but Mr. Wood, in his "Discoveries at Ephesus," indicates otherwise. The whole edifice, both exteriorly and in- teriorly, presented great richness and elaboration of carving. The shafts of the columns in front of the building were carved in relief, in three broad bands, to nearly half their height, and those in the rear, in one band, to about one-quarter of their height. The frieze and pediments were also worked out by the chisel of the sculptor in designs of great and imposing beauty. Many of the stones used in the building were very massive. An idea of how huge some of these blocks were may be gathered from the fact that the architrave alone contained pieces of marble thirty feet long, and that Ctesiphon and Metagenes were forced to invent special machinery and contrivances to convey the stones for the columns to the building from the quarry eight miles distant. Vitruvius explains these contrivances as follows : "He [Ctesiphon] made a frame of four pieces of timber, two of which were equal in length to the 72 SOME OLD MASTEKS shafts of the columns, and were held together by the two transverse pieces. In each end of the shaft he inserted iron pivots, whose ends were dovetailed thereinto, and run with lead. The pivots worked in gudgeons fastened to the timber frame, whereto were attached oaken shafts. The pivots having a free revolution in the gudgeons, when the oxen were attached and drew the frame, the shafts rolled round, and might have been conveyed to any distance. The shafts having been thus transported, the entablatures were to be removed, when Metagenes, the son of Ctesiphon, applied the principle upon which the shafts had been conveyed to the removal of those also. He constructed wheels about twelve feet in diam- eter, and fixed the ends of the blocks of stone whereof the entablature was composed into them; pivots and gud- geons were then prepared to receive them in the manner just described, so that when the oxen drew the machine the pivots, turning in the gudgeons, caused the wheels to revolve, and thus the blocks, being enclosed like axles in the wheels, were brought to the work without delay. An example of this species of machine may be seen in the rolling stone used for smoothing the walks in palaestrae. But the method would not have been prac- ticable for any considerable distance. . From the quar- ries to the temple is a length of not more than eight OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 73 thousand feet, and the interval is a plain without any declivity. Within our own time, when the base of the colossal statue of Apollo in the temple of that god was decayed through age, to prevent the fall and destruction of it, a contract for a base from the same quarry was made with Pseonius. It was twelve feet long, eight feet wide, and six feet high. Pa?onius, driven to an expedi- ent, did not use the same as ]\Ietagenes did, but con- structed a machine for the purpose by a different appli- cation of the same principle. He made two wheels about fifteen feet in diameter, and fitted the ends of the stone into these wheels. To connect the two wheels he framed into them, round their circumference, small pieces of two inches square, not more than one foot apart, each extending from one wheel to the other, and thus enclosing the stone. Round these bars a rope was coiled, to which the traces of the oxen were made fast, and as it was drawn out the stone rolled by means of the wheels ; but the machine, by its constant swerving from a direct, straightforward path, stood in need of constant rectification, so that Pseonius was at last without money for the completion of his contract." The uninitiated who have speculated as to how the ancients succeeded in moving and transporting considerable distances such huge blocks of stone, without the assistance of our mod- 74 SOME OLD MASTERS ern machinery and contrivances, are given in this quo- tation from Vitruvius some hint as to the ingenuity and inventive ability of the early architects and builders. The temple, however, was slow in building, and Ctesi- phon and Metagenes, after writing a book on their great architectural work, passed away in due course of time. Their places were filled by other architects, of whom there is no record, but Demetrius, a priest of Diana, to- gether with Daphnis and Peonius, Ephenian architects, finally completed the work some two hundred and twenty years after it was begun by Ctesiphon and his son. In the course of that long interval, Scopas, an architectural sculptor of Paros, of whom there will be more to relate as we go on, contributed one column, which was regarded as so beautiful that it was accepted as a model for those that followed. Together with its architectural glories, the interior was made a depository for many of the finest works of the great artists of antiquity, and Scopas is said to have introduced Caryatides here. This is doubted, but he certainly furnished a very grand statue of Hecate ; and Praxiteles, with his almost equally gifted son, adorned the shrine. Tradition relates that upon the very night that the great Alexander was born, the'Ephesian temple was OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 75 destroyed by fire, through the rapacious greed for notoriety of one Herostratus. This antique fire-bug, when put to the torture for his crime, confessed that his only object was to gain immortality for his name, an ambition which he succeeded in accomplishing through the stupidity of the states-general of Asiatic Greece. They decreed that the name of Herostratus should never be mentioned, and of course it always was, as all the contemporary historians felt impelled to record the fact that a man by the name of Herostratus was not to be mentioned, and to give the reasons therefor, and much more about Herostratus which, had there been no decree, might have been left unsaid. The result was and has been that a crank of antiquity has lived by name for twenty-five hundred years, and is quite, likely to live for as many more. When Alexander the Great reached maturity, doubt- less feeling the depression consequent upon having his advent into the world which he was destined to domi- nate, associated with the destruction of so magnificent a temple to the Asiatic Diana, offered, it is said, to pay the cost of its restoration, provided — there is frequently a proviso coupled with these liberal offers — provided his name should be inscribed on the new edifice. While the Ephesians were made glad by the offer, they did not 76 SOME OLD MASTERS readily fall in with the proviso. The cleverness of their diplomatic reply, however, appealed to the susceptible side of Alexander's human nature, and effected a com- promise. They told the Macedonian that "it was not right for a god to make offerings to gods." The architect for the new temple was the great favor- ite of Alexander and his fellow-countryman, Dinocrates, who it is said rebuilt the edifice on even a more extrav- agant scale than was the first. Much of the marble and sculpturing of the old temple entered into the new, and the painters, statuaries and sculptors of the time again lavished upon it their best art. The walls were embel- lished from time to time by Parrhasius and Apelles ; and Timarete, the first female artist of note of whom there is any record, contributed a picture of the honored Arte- mis. It is related that the folding doors or gates of this new temple were made of cypress that had been allowed to season for four generations, and that when the pieces of cypress wood were glued together the glue was allowed to remain for four years to harden. Mutianus, a Roman architect, states that when he found them, which was four hundred years afterward, they were as fresh and beautiful as when new. Some remains of the splendor of this pagan temple are still doing architectural duty. The great dome of OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 77 the beautiful Byzantine church of Santa Sophia in Con- stantinople, now a Turkish mosque, is supported by columns of green jasper, brought from the Ephesian temple by the Roman Emperor Justinian, and two of the pillars in the cathedral at Pisa are also from the same source. There is some confusion as to the works of art and decorations associated respectively with the two temples just described which it would be vain to attempt to clear up, believing that it matters but little, inasmuch as it is not likely that Ilerostratus could have destroyed completely the first temple, and that the services of Dinocrates were engaged more in the line of making good the damage done than in erecting an entirely new edifice. The upper colonnades of Corinthian columns, however, which Mr. Wood shows as appearing in the interior of the temple, are clearly the work of Dinoc- rates. Demetrius, the priest of Diana, and his associates, Peonius and Daphnis, the three architects who com- pleted the first Artemesian temple, having flourished over two hundred years after the foundation of that structure was laid, are not, of course, to be classed among the earlier of the Grecian architects, and, properly, should not be treated under this heading ; but as they are 78 SOME OLD MASTERS all grouped together in the erection of another great Asiatic-Greek temple, and are not further met with, it may be just as well to add what there is in respect to them at this time. The temple referred to was that dedicated to Apollo in the Ionian city of Miletus, not far distant from the scene of the joint labors of these architects at Ephesus. Its order was also Ionic, and although not as large as that to Artemis, it could have been very little, if any, inferior to it in columnar effect and general impressive beauty, if not grandeur. It was three hundred and two feet in length by one hundred and sixty-four feet in width, and, like the temple at Ephesus, was surrounded by double rows of columns, each column, however, being sixty-three feet in height. Indeed, Strabo, the cele- brated Roman traveller and geographer, who visited the ruins of the temple during the first century before the Christian era, testifies that "it is the greatest of all temples," and adds that it remained without a roof "in consequence of its bigness" ; but this allusion to its roof- less condition is probably due to the fact that the build- ing was never wholly completed. Pausanias also gives it high praise, and speaks of it as one of the wonders of Ionia, and Vitruvius numbers it "as one of the four temples which had raised their architects to the summit OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 70 of renown"* — a renown, it would seem, that has been very much begrudged them, as the literature of their time furnishes practically no data in regard to them personally, and what estimate can be formed of them is wholly based upon the importance of their works. Peonius, we are told, was an Ephesian, but as to even the nativity of the other two architects we are in the dark, although Daphnis is supposed to have been a Mile- tian. There is also some little uncertainty as to the exact date when they exercised their profession, but it is probably safe to say that it was sometime within the first half of the fourth century before Christ. Two columns of the great temple to Apollo have stood proudly against the attacks of time, and although scarred by their long battles, are yet evidencing the glories of a structure of which they were once but an insignificant part. In the year 555 B.C. there lived four architects, to whose skill was entrusted the building of a temple that should be in all respects worthy to stand for the respect due the dignity, power and extreme longevity of the great Olympian Zeus — the king-god of the Greeks. *The other three temples which VUruvius praised thus highly were those to Diana at Ephesus, Jupiter Olympus at Athens, and Ceres at Eleusis. 80 SOME OLD MASTERS The foundation for this shrine was laid in the time of Pisistratus, a tyrant of Athens, who contributed sev- eral architectural works to that city, but whose several banishments greatly interrupted their building. This was particularly the case with the great temple to Zeus. However, it was sufficiently advanced for Pisistratus to dedicate it before he fell from power. It has been stated that it was due to the genuine dislike which the Athe- nians felt for Pisistratus and his sons, who succeeded him, that four hundred years were allowed to flow by before the temple was finished. This is hardly just to a ruler of great loyalty to his native city, and of unques- tioned integrity in the discharge of his public duties. It is more probable that the delay was due to the ani- mosity of the rival Athenian family of Alcma?onida\ who, piqued by jealousy, fanned a flame of opposition to the works of Pisistratus that continued for several centuries. Antistates, Antimachides, Calleschros and Porinus were the four architects engaged by Pisistratus, who. like their professional brothers employed on the temples of Diana, Apollo and Ceres, were, according to Vitru- vius, entitled to immortality for the grandeur of their works, but about whom there is no other information to be o;iven. OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 81 This temple to Jupiter was not built upon the Acrop- olis at Athens, like that to the patron goddess of the city, Minerva, but upon a raised peribolos within the city below, and on the site of an earlier temple to the same god, erected in the time of Deucalion, but which had perished from the ravages of ages. It was like most of the early Doric temples, of perip- teral construction, or surrounded by columns on all four sides. Aristotle, who saw it before it was finished, was so much impressed by its size that he compared it to the Pyramids ; and one of his scholars remarked that "though unfinished, it called forth astonishment, and when finished would be unexcelled." Perseus, king of Macedonia, and Antiochus Epiph- anes of Syria (176-164 b.c.) finally finished the cell and placed the Corinthian columns of the portico, em- ploying for the purpose a Roman architect of great skill by the name of Cossutius. It was then, probably, that Livy made the remark "that among so many temples this is the only one worthy of a god." Sylla, however, when he laid siege to Athens, some forty years later, robbed the temple most unmercifully, carrying away with him many of the columns to Rome. But his work of destruction was more than compensated for by his successor, Hadrian, two hundred years still 82 SOME OLD MASTERS later, under the immediate direction of the celebrated Roman architect, Luigi Cannia. Hadrian, in his love of great architectural effects, was inspired to beautify the peribolos with a peristyle one hundred rods in length, and his architect contributed a new section to the temple itself, and added three grand vestibules. The sacred enclosure, after Hadrian had finished it, which had a circumference of about twenty-three hun- dred feet, was ornamented by statues, contributed in great numbers by different cities. The length of the tem- ple at this time, according to Stuart, was, upon the upper step, three hundred and fifty-four feet, and its breadth one hundred and seventy-one feet. The columns, which surrounded the cell, now all Corinthian, numbered one hundred and twenty-four, all of Pentelican marble, of which there are sixteen still standing. In the pronaos, or inner portico, Hadrian caused to be placed four statues of himself, two in Thracian and two in Egyptian marble, which were, perhaps, three more than a moder- ately modest man might have felt necessary. Another gorgeous temple to the great Jupiter was be- gun about five years later than that at Athens by the architect Libon, an Eleian, in Olympia, which Lysias speaks of as '"the fairest spot in Greece." In Olympia the spiritual and physical natures of the Grecian people OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 83 may be said to have combined in the perfection of de- velopment. Here the glories of the body, the capabili- ties of the finest muscular strength and athletic action, ■were exhibited in gymnasium and stadion, and here the religious spirit of the people arose to the fullest inten- sity, and as though doubly inspired by the action and strength of the perfect body, found expression in temple and sanctuary. So great was the reward, so enthusiastic the reception accorded the champions in the athletic games of Olym- pia, that they call forth a protest from the sensitive Vitruvius, who seems to feel that the honors conferred upon them should have been reserved for the literary lights of the time. "The ancestors of the Greeks," he complains, "held the celebrated wrestlers who were vic- tors in the Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian and Xemean games in such esteem that, decorated with the palm and crown, they were not only publicly thanked, but were also, in their triumphant return to their respective homes, borne to their cities and countries in four-horse chariots, and were allowed pensions for life from the public revenue. When I consider these circumstances, I cannot help thinking it strange that similar honors, or even greater, are not decreed to those authors who are of lasting service to mankind. Such certainlv ouc;ht to 84 SOME OLD MASTERS be the case; for the wrestler, by training, merely hardens his own body for the conflict ; a writer, how- ever, not only cultivates his own mind, but affords every one else the same opportunity, by laying down precepts for acquiring knowledge and exciting the talents of his reader." So attractive was this spot on the banks of the Alpheus in Ellis, in natural charm, as well as in the purposes for which it was visited, that it is here, as nowhere else in Greece, with the possible exception of the Acropolis at Athens, the Grecian architects lavished their best skill and best illustrated their appreciation of the fact, that the effect of fine buildings is greatly augmented by grouping them gracefully together in one place, produc- ing, as it were, an architectural picture. "Many ob- jects," says Pausanias, "may a man see in Greece, and many things may he hear that are worthy of admira- tion, but above them all the doings at Eleusis and the sights at Olympia have somewhat in them of a soul divine." The worship of Zeus was an old worship in Olympia, so that when Libon was entrusted with authority to erect a new temple to that deity, out of the spoils taken in subjugating the Pisans and other neighboring cities which had revolted from the Eleans, he gave free reign OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 85 to his art, and produced a Doric temple which rivalled that in Athens, though not as large. Pausanias informs us that the Olympian temple was two hundred and thirty feet long, ninety-five feet wide and sixty-eight feet high ; that it was surrounded by marble columns and covered with marble cut in the form of tiles. The front and rear pediments were adorned with sculpture, as well as the metopes of the frieze. The interior was of two orders of columns supporting lofty galleries, through which there was a passage to the throne of Jove "glittering with gold and gems." It was this temple of Libon's that became, soon after its completion, the casket which held the chef d'ceuvrc of Phidias, the colossal statue of Jupiter carved in ivory and gold, of which Quintilian observes that it added a new religious feeling to Greece. The story is well known how Phidias, being asked by his nephew Panse- nus, a painter, who assisted him in the decoration of the temple, how he could have conceived that air of divinity which he had expressed in the face of this noble statue, replied that he had copied it from Homer's description of the god. Jupiter was presented naked to his waist, but draped from his girdle down. The significance of this was that the great Jove, knowing himself to be of heavenly origin, thought it best to conceal himself in 86 SOME OLD MASTERS part only from man. He was also given a beard for the reason that the Greeks, clinging to the Oriental notion, believed that beards carried with them an air of majesty ; an idea, by the way, which was not shared in by the Romans, who spoke with derision of their bearded fore- fathers, and permitted the wearing of beards only to those who were in disgrace, and to poor philosophers, who probably, like our poor modern poets, found a visit to the barber's an unnecessary and expensive luxury. Rome during these early times, and before she had awakened to the cultivation of the arts at home, was prone to borrow from Greece the talent of which she was in need. It was about this time that we find the first record of such a call made by Rome upon her east- ern neighbor for architects. The demand was answered by the two architectural sculptors Damophilus and Gorgasus, who were imported by the Dictator Posthu- mius to erect two temples in Rome, one to Castor and Pollux or, as some authorities assert, to Liber and Libera (Bacchus and Proserpine), which stood near the Forum and Temple of Vesta, and the other to Ceres, on the slope of the Aventine hill, near the Circus. These tem- ples were vowed by Posthumius, in his battle with the Latins, 496 B.C., and were dedicated by Viscellinus some years later. • OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 87 Before closing this chapter, in which the attempt is made to gather together some of the earlier architects of Greece, it may be as well to include within it a number of such artists who though not rising to the highest fame, or who were not connected with the most elegant buildings of their time, nevertheless had the good for- tune to have their names preserved in history. Pliny tells a rather amusing and interesting account of such an architect by the name of Bupalus, who prob- ably flourished about the year 524 B.C. He is said to have come from a very old family of artists who exer- cised the art of the statuary from the beginning of the Olympiads ; but as Pliny simply speaks of him as an architect and artist, but does not mention any building attributed to his skill, he becomes a subject for notice only in connection with the Iambic poet Hipponax, whom he used his art to torment. Pliny relates that Bupalus and his brother Athenis amused themselves by making caricatures of the satirical poet. Hipponax was undersized, thin and ugly, and probably, like the modern poet Pope, suffered his physical defects to give him a cynical view of life. The caricatures of the playful Bupalus and Athenis naturally affected unpleasantly his amour pro pre, and he employed the weapon at his com- mand, his ironical pen, to strike back at his tormentors, OO SOME OLD MASTERS with the result that he gave them a good pen lashing in a satirical poem, in which he also chastised his Ionian brethren for what he considered their effeminate luxury. In the same poem, also, he did not spare his own parents, and it is said that he even had the temerity to ridicule the gods. There is, of course, always some one to start the story that a woman is at the source of all the infirmities that any particularly conspicuous man suffers from, and there are those who claim that Bupalus did not originate the trouble, but that it started through the fact that the architect had a very beautiful daughter of whom Hip- ponax was greatly enamored. Like the earlier Iambic poet Archilochus, who got into a similar scrape, the girl's father refused to permit his daughter to marry a poor little withered poet, with the result that the poet's life was ever after embittered. How very bitter Hip- ponax became, especially against the ladies, is illustrated by a remark which is attributed to him : ''There are," he said, "only two happy days in the life of a married man — that in which he receives his wife, and that in which he carries out her corpse." After his death Leonidas of Tarentum, in an elegant epigram, warned travellers not to pass too near his tomb, lest they rouse the sleeping wasp. The grave of Hip- OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 89 ponax, by the way, instead of being covered with ivy and roses, like that of a mild poet, was planted with thorns and thistles. Pausanias mentions several of these more obscure architects. Agnaptus was one, who built a porch in the Altis, or wall at Olympia, called afterward by the Eleans the "porch of Agnaptus," and Antiphilus, Potharus and ^legacies were three other waifs on our sea of oblivion. They were responsible for the Treasury of the Cartha- ginians also at Olympia. Pyrrhus, with his two sons, Lacrates and Ilermon, built the Olympian Treasury of the Epidamnians. There were ten of these Treasuries, by the way, raised by different states, which were not only architecturally very beautiful, but which contained statues and other offerings of great value. Strabo mentions an architect and sculptor by the name of llermocreon, who designed a gigantic and beau- tiful altar at Parium on the Propontis in Asia Minor; and Eurycles, a Spartan architect, who built the baths at Corinth, and "adorned them with beautiful marbles," must not be overlooked, although he may have been of a much later date. 90 SOME OLD MASTEKS CHAPTER V. THE ARCHITECTURAL EPOCH OF PERICLES. HE age of Pericles was so distinctively an era X I in the advancement of the arts, especially archi- tecture, not alone in the city where Athene shed her divine intelligence and tutelary influence with gen- erous favor, but throughout all the Hellenic states, and has left so many models and criterions for the architects of all time to follow, that a few words in reference to Pericles himself and the sculptor Phidias, into whose hands he entrusted the direction of his public buildings and the adornment of Athens, may be admissible, before we consider the architectural geniuses who sprung for- ward to meet the great requirements of the time. Pericles was a descendant of that noble and refined, if sometimes unfortunate, house of Alcma?onida?, which did so much for the Delphic temple of Apollo, and a son of Xanthippus, the victor of Mycale, and Agariste, niece of Cleisthenes, founder of the later Athenian constitu- tion. The date of his birth is not known, but that he OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 91 early evinced a leaning toward the fine arts and philos- ophy is recorded. Under Pythocleides he studied music, under Damon political science, under Zeno philosophy ; but it remained for the erudite Anaxagoras to give the final burnish to his character and thought. He was therefore, both by birth and disposition, as well as cul- tivation, possessed of a mind singularly comprehensive in its grasp of the advantages which the arts of peace could contribute to the progress of his people, and natu- rally turned his attention to their exploitation and devel- opment, when he became dominant in the year 444 b.c. His rule of peace lasted but thirteen years, or until the breaking out of the Poloponnesian war, but was crowded with numerous artistic and architectural triumphs. That he may have gone a step too far in the encour- agement of pleasure and the peaceful virtues among a people of warlike antecedents and a future before them of foreordained defence and conquest, if not final de- feat, may be a subject for speculation ; but that he gave an impetus to literature and art, and by the fervent warmth of his patronage fostered the growth of genius in a way that had not been equalled before his time, and which has never been excelled since, is the principal rea- son, doubtless, for his immortality. His head was abnormally long, a defect which the 92 SOME OLD MASTERS artists of his time invariably corrected with a helmet when painting or sculpturing his portrait, and the con- temporaneous comic poets and satirists as continually ridiculed in verse and jest. Speaking of his eloquence and powers of persuasion, Thucydides relates a pleasant story in respect to his dexterity in this regard. When Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, asked Thu- cydides whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he replied : "When I have thrown him and given him a fair fall, he, by persisting that he had no fall, gets the better of me, and makes the bystanders, in spite of their own eyes, believe him." But in other respects his physique was well proportioned and his bearing noble and commanding. His manner was dignified and re- served, his eloquence strong, fearless and convincing, and his general appearance such as to inspire the people to compliment him with the name "Olympian Zeus," a character in which his portrait was also painted by his favorite, Phidias. An English writer well says that the age of Pericles was "the milky way of great men," for it was certainly clouded to whiteness Avith intellectual stars. The names associated with this era are not only among the most celebrated in all Grecian history, but among the most renowned that have sprung forward in the history of OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 93 all the world. Poets, philosophers, dramatists, musi- cians, sculptors, painters, architects, not only arose in great numbers under his fostering encouragement, but to the highest eminence in their respective avoca- tions. In fact, it seems as though the human plant that had long been growing, strengthening and broaden- ing upon Hellenic soil had suddenly sprung into the fullest flower and enveloped itself in intellectual beauty. The Athens which we so frequently see pictured in all her restored architectural grace and grandeur, the Athens which from her Acropolis of chiselled white so proudly surveys the iEgean sea and surrounding plains, is the Athens of Pericles, noblest of all cities in the pur- suits of virtue, of beauty and contentment, and in the pure realization of that happiness which the practice of the arts alone can afford. The budding of Athenian architectural magnificence may be said to have begun under Themistocles and Cimon, the immediate predecessors of Pericles, but not to have ripened and flowered in its perfection until his advent into power. Then it was that the task of build- ing a city in every way worthy of the people who had proved their prowess before the Persian hosts in war, and who in peace could delight in the musical poems of '.' I SOME OLD MASTERS Homer, \v;is pushed to a speed v realization with enthu- siasm. Nothing in all the biography of Pericles lias contrib- uted SO greatly to the perpetuity of his fame as this attention which he gave to the development of the archi- tectural magnificence of Athens. "That which gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens," says Plutarch, "and the greatest admiration and oxen aston- ishment to all strangers, and that which now is Greece's Only evidence that the power she boasts of and her ancient wealth are mt romance of idle stow, was his construction of the public and sacred buildings. The materials were stone, brass, LVOry, gold, ebony and cypress-wood; the artisans that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and carpenters, moulders, founders and braziers, stone-cut ters, dyers, goldsmiths, ivory - workers, painters, embroiderers, turners; those again that conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and mariners arid ship-masters by sea ; and by land, cart- wrights, cattle breeders, wagoners, rope-makers, tlax- workers, shoemakers and leather-dressers, road-makers, miners. And every trade in the same nature, as a cap- tain in an army has his particular company of soldiers under him, had its own hired company of journeymen and laborers belonging to it banded together as in array, OF GBEEK ARCHITECTUEE. 95 to be, as it were, the instrument and body for the per- formance <>f the service Thus, to say all in a word, the occasions and services of these public works distrib- uted plenty through every age and condition." "Architecture," says Robert Adam, "in a particular manner depends upon the patronage of the great, as they alone are able to execute what the architect plans." This being bo, the architects of his time had in Pericles a patron in every way worthy their best efforts. Indeed, so ambitious was he to grace the city of his nativity with all the beauties of architecture that his enemies found here a pretext for censure, and complained that he spent too much of the public treasure for such a purpose. lie met the criticism, however, with the argument that those who pursued the arts of war should not be the only ones to receive support at the expense of the state, but that those who possessed the .-kill and industry of true artists and artisans were quite as much entitled to public en- couragement and support as the soldier. This answer for a time appeased the clamor of the opposition, which had been >d up again si what they would lead the people to believe was extravagance and wastefulness on the part of Pericles. Bu1 it soon broke out again. When finally it became no longer bearable, Pericles addressed his accusers and said: "If you think 96 SOME OLD MASTERS that I have expended too Uracil let the money he charged to my account, not yours, only let the new edifices be in- scribed with my name and not tint! of the people of Athens/' It is to the credit of the Athenians that their pride was touched hy the words of their ruler and their cupidity restrained. They at once replied that Pericles might spend as much of their money as he pleased, and they even went further, and insisted that he should not spare the public treasury in the least. Like all great men, Pericles was assailed in a variety of ways. When his enemies did not accomplish their purpose in bringing him to public disgrace by one method of assault, they tried another. We have seen how they failed in one in- stance ; another was similar in accusing him, in com- plicity with Phidias, of appropriating to his own use the public treasure, donated to pay for the golden plate- on the chryselephantine statues of the latter's creation. But this charge also not proving successful, they at- tacked his religious character, strange as it may appear, when it is remembered how deeply he was interested in erecting temples of pagan worship. But he survived the slanders of his time and continued his aims and purposes in life, content, doubtless, that posterity should judge him aright, as did the majority of the people of his own time. His last words arc perhaps the best epitome of OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 97 his life's work: "No Athenian ever put on black through me." Teleclides has put into verse the great surrender which the Athenian people appeared finally to make to Pericles of their rights in peaco and war : "The tribute of the cities, and, with them, the cities too, To do with them as he pleases, and undo ; To build up, if he likes, stone walls around a town ; And, again, if so he likes, to pull them down ; Their treaties and alliances, power, empire, peace and war. Their wealth and their success forevermore." As already stated, in no branch of the arts did the age of Pericles make a deeper and more lasting impression than in that of architecture. Although the Doric order was employed many hundred years before his time, and the Ionic scarcely less many, yet the finest types of each and the examples of these orders which stand for their most perfect and artistic development are to be found in the Acropolis at Athens in the time of Pericles, the Parthenon serving as the criterion of one and the Erech- theum as the model of the other. That these orders should have been brought to such perfection and en- dowed with their crowning dignity and grace, must alone prove without further argument, if need be, that 98 SOME OLD MASTERS the architectural talent and artistic sense of the age was incomparable. The part which the great sculptor Phidias played in the art drama of his time has been already alluded to, but not sufficiently, perhaps, to exclude a further ref- erence to him. The comparison has often been made between Phidias and the talented revivalist of the fifteenth century, Michael Angelo, and a casual consideration of the two eminent artists would indicate that it was a proper one. They were both sculptors, both painters, both engravers (Phidias of gems), but they were not both architects, as is erroneously assumed. xVs to the respective degrees of talent which each manifested toward the branches of art which he professed, they also differed widely. In sculpture the school of Michael Angelo will not outlive that of Phidias, but in painting, especially in its appli- cation to mural decoration, the Greek must bow to the Italian. In architecture also Phidias possessed none of the technical knowledge and skill which in Michael Angelo enabled him to suspend the great dome of St. Peter's "as if in the air," and which was so important a factor in his long artistic career, manifested in other ways as well, and gaining for him perpetual applause. However, the two artists may be well compared, inas- OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 99 much that they both created epochs of their own ; and both excelled in exhibiting a noble understanding as to the high and exalted possibilities of art that has never been equalled. Phidias's comprehensive grasp of broad artistic ef- fects had as much to do, probably, with gaining for him the favor of Pericles as his technical skill. Quintilian calls him the "Sculptor of the gods." He realized the greatness of large things and could calculate their power m influencing the imagination and understanding. He was once invited, together with his contemporary artist, Alcamenes, to design a statue of Minerva, destined to be placed upon a high column. When both statues were finished and exhibited, that made by Alcamenes was at once preferred on account of its elegance of finish, while that by Phidias was rejected as being rough and crude. Phidias, however, insisted that each should be shown from the high pinnacle upon which it might ultimately be placed. When this was done all the elegant graces of the statue of Alcamenes were lost to sight, as well also the apparent roughness of that by Phidias, which now took on the perfect proportions he had foreseen. This story will serve to illustrate the breadth of his artistic discernment. Of all the artists of his time, Phidias was by far the J 100 SOME OLD MASTERS best gifted to have placed in his hands, by Pericles, the supervision of the public buildings of Athens, and to have entrusted to his discretion and judgment the plan- ning, posing and arranging of the grand architectural mise en scene,, which his patron had determined should be set there. If Phidias did not draw the actual plans of a building or other structure, his judgment could indicate its order, its location and such other characteristics it should possess to harmonize with the features with which it was to be associated. He could group the majestic masonry of his time in grand display, could beautify it with his own chisel, and could form and mould the com- plete architectural picture. If he was not the architect of the Parthenon, he at least enhanced its effect with the magnificence of his sculpturings and designs in the metopes of the frieze and the timpanums of the pedi- ments, some of which are still to be seen among the ''Elgin marbles" in the British Museum, of which Canova remarked they would alone compensate for a visit to England. It is not improbable, also, that he may have suggested the Caryatides of the Erechtheum, and proved to the Egyptians, from whom the architectural idea was borrowed, how far more beautifully and grace- fully such figures could be carved in Athens than on the banks of the ^Nlle. OF GKEEK ARCHITECTURE. 101 There can be no doubt as to the value of statuary, which was the special province of Phidias, in enhancing the ensemble of Grecian architectural grouping, and particularly valuable was the colossal figure of Minerva Promachus in contributing to the grandiose effect of the Athenian Acropolis. This noble work of Phidias was seventy feet high and made entirely of bronze, said to have been taken from the Medes, who disembarked at Marathon. The colossal goddess stood exposed, and in a position where, in looking far away over the ^Egean sea, she might be an inspiration to the returning Athe- nian mariner, and where, in glancing from her lofty em- inence, "she seemed, by her attitude and her accoutre- ments, to promise protection to the city beneath her, and to bid defiance to her enemies." Another architectural statue, if it may be called such, was that of the same goddess, in gold and ivory, which dominated the interior of the Parthenon. This work of Phidias, second only in beauty and size to the chrysele- phantine statue of Jupiter at Olympia, is said to have cost $465,000. The figure of Minerva was forty feet in height, and was presented standing in a tunic which reached to her feet. A casque covered her head, her right hand held a spear, and her left a figure of Victory. The exquisite workmanship of the carving on the 102 SOME OLD MASTERS buckler resting at the feet of the deity came near in- volving Pericles and Phidias in another web of trouble, for it was asserted that the sculptor had introduced his own portrait and that of his patron among the comba- tants of a battle between the Athenians and Amazons, there portrayed. The captious objection was set up that such a liberty was insulting to Athene. Phidias, as re- lated by some writers, was cast into prison for this act of impiety, and died there. Others claim, however, that this was not so, but that Phidias, before sentence could be passed, fled to Elis, where he at once entered upon the work of modelling the great statue of the Olympian Jupiter. In respect to both statues, he was implicated with Pericles, as accused by his enemies, with pilfering the gold donated for their construction. These various ac- cusations have led to considerable confusion in respect to much of his personal history and final end, and al- though it was proved by removing the gold plates and weighing them, that he was not guilty of the alleged crime, it is very probable that his death was as much due to disappointed hopes and mortification consequent upon the false charge as it was to any public executioner of the time. OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 103 CHAPTER VI. THE ARCHITECTS OF THE AGE OF PERICLES. T is not the intention, in recalling some of the more conspicuous architects who flour- ished in the time of Pericles, to confine them to those only who were directly in his employ, but to group together all who became prominent factors in the architectural development of that age, both for some years before and after Pericles's reign of power. To have carried forward the many important works which the great leader instituted, and which were ad- vanced with a precision and rapidity remarkable for that or any other time, considering their size and im- portance, the skill and services of many architects were brought naturally into requisition. As a result we have the record of an unusually large number of such artists, and in respect to a few some little specific data relating to their lives. The architects, however, of many of the most important works are unknown. If we approach Athens, like the Attic mariner of old, 104 SOME OLD MASTERS through the Piraeus, one of its sea gates, we are attracted at once to the beautiful architectural display which this seaport town, some five or six miles distant from the Grecian metropolis, presents. The entrance to the har- bor was ornamented with two lions, and the harbor- basin was fringed with magnificent colonnades and porticos, which disguised the warehouses and bazaars. Within the town were numerous temples, two theatres and other buildings of artistic effect and merit. The road to Athens lay between massive fortified walls having a width of fifteen feet at the top, and built to a height of sixty feet. They were known as the '"Long Walls," and they enclosed a space about the Piraeus, said by Thucydides to have been not less than one hundred and twenty-four stadia in circumference, or about fifteen mile-. It is only just to state that the walls which led from Athens to Piraeus, as well as those which connected it with the other sea gates of Munychia and Phalerus, were originally planned and partly executed under Themis- tocles and Cimon. Themistocles intended to construct these walls to a height of one hundred and twenty feet ; but Pericles deemed this entirely unnecessary, and cut the height in two, as we have seen. He also added a third wall between that running to the north of the Piraean OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 105 fortifications and that reaching to the Phaleram. Soc- rates speaks of having heard Pericles mention this wall to the people. The architects for much of this massive mural work were ITippodamus and Callicrates, and because Pericles did not hurry them to the same extent that he hurried others engaged in perhaps less important, if more dec- orative, undertakings, Cratinns, the satirist, ridiculed the slowness of the work, while aiming a sly shaft of irony at Pericles's oratorical gifts : "Stones upon stones the orator has pil'd With swelling words, but words will build no walls." Hippodamus was one of the genuises of his day, and has been called the "Wren of his age." Perhaps it would be more fitting to speak of Sir Christopher Wren as the Hippodamus of his time, inasmuch as the architectural achievements of the Greek were on a much more mag- nificent scale than those of the Englishman. Among some of the conspicuous works credited to him was the grand Athenian Agora, or Forum, which was made up of a rich assemblage of colonnades, temples, altars and statues, all taking his name as the ITippodam?ea. But whether he is to be credited with being more especially a civil engineer than an architect may be inferred from his work at the Piraeus and in laving out entire cities. 106 SOME OLD MASTERS He was called the "Excentric Architect" doubtless because he mingled with the practice of his profession a desire to be considered as thoroughly versed in all the physical sciences, a personal affectation which caused him to be ranked among the sophists. It is claimed that it was against Hippodamus that Aristophanes aimed much of his wit. Hippodamus was the son of Euryphon of Miletus, one of the most famous of the Greek physicians and among the first to have knowledge of the difference be- tween the veins and arteries, and the uses of each. As to his early education and advantages we are not in- formed, he being referred to by early writers only in a professional way. Besides his employment upon the "Long Walls," the Agora and other edifices, Pericles engaged his talents, as we have intimated, in laying out the port of Piraeus, which he did, with broad streets and avenues intersect- ing each other at right angles across the city. This plan of street construction he also introduced in other cities of Greece and her colonies with which he had to do, especially at Thurii on the site of the ancient Sybaris, which he visited with the Athenian colonists, and later at Rhodes. This last-mentioned city, which in the age of Pericles was one of the most beautiful, OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 107 regular and prosperous of the times, was almost wholly the work of Hippodamus. Callicrates, who assisted Hippodamus with the "Long Walls," was also an associate of Ictinus, perhaps the greatest architect of his time, in the building of the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis. The architect Callicrates should not be mistaken for the Lacedse- monian sculptor of the same name who achieved great celebrity for his skill in carving the most minute ob- jects, and of whom it is related that he made ants and other insects in ivory which were so very small that their limbs could not be distinguished by the naked eye. This seems all the more remarkable when it is remem- bered that the ancients had no magnifying glasses. A walk of five or six miles under the shadows of the tall walls of Hippodamus and Callicrates to view the greater architectural glories of the city of Athens in the time of Pericles will doubtless repay us. While this queen city of the ancient world is enrobed in many tri- umphs of the builder's art, we will probably pass them all by for the time being to examine more carefully the gems that stand forth from the Acropolis, glittering under the blue Grecian sky like white jewels in the proud city's coronet. This magnificent citadel, protected by Pelasgian walls 108 SOME OLD MASTERS and dedicated to the pagan deity Minerva, could be entered but upon one side, the western, where the mas- sive gate or vestibule of the Propylaea occupied the cen- tre. Fragments of this great gate still give evidence to the modern traveller of its former stately splendor. "Here," says Bishop Wordsworth, "above all places at Athens, the mind of the traveller enjoys an exquisite pleasure. It seems as if this portal had been spared in order that our imagination might send through it, as through a triumphal arch, all the glories of Athenian antiquity in visible parade. It was this particular point in the localities of Athens which was most admired by the Athenians themselves; nor is this surprising; let us conceive such a restitution of this fabric as its surviving fragments will suggest — let us imagine it restored to its pristine beauty — let it rise once more in the full dignity of its youthful nature — let all its architectural decora- tions be fresh and perfect — let their mouldings be again brilliant with their glowing tints of red and blue — let the coffers of its soffits be again spangled with stars, and the marble antse be fringed over as they were once with delicate embroidery of ivy-leaf . . . and then let the bronze valves of these five gates of the Propylaea be suddenly flung open and all the splendors of the in- terior of the Acropolis burst upon the view." OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 109 If this imaginative restoration of the sublimities of the Propyhea is not sufficient to excite some interest in the building and the slave-born architect who was its creator, let the glowing words of Symonds be added, which refer not only to the grand vestibule itself, but to the Panathenaic processions which were wont to pass its gates. ''Musing thus upon the staircase of the Propyhea we may say with truth that all our modern art is but as child's play to that of the Greeks. Very soul-subduing is the gloom of a cathedral like the Milanese Duomo when the incense rises in blue clouds athwart the bands of sunlight falling from the dome, and the crying of choirs upborne on the wings of organ music fills the whole vast space with a mystery of melody. Yet such ceremonial pomps as this are but as dreams and shapes of visions when compared with the clearly defined splendors of a Greek procession through marble peri- styles in open air beneath the sun and sky. That spec- tacle combined the harmonies of perfect human forms in movement with the divine shapes of statues, the radi- ance of carefully selected vestments with hues in- wrought upon pure marble. The rhythms and melodies of the Doric mood were sympathetic to the proportions of the Doric colonnades. The grove of pillars through 110 SOME OLD MASTEKS which the pageant passed grew from the living rocks into shapes of beauty, fulfilling by the inbreathed spirit of man nature's blind yearning after absolute comple- tion. The sun itself, not thwarted by artificial gloom or tricked with alien colors of stained glass, was made to minister in all his strength to a pomp the pride of which was a display of form in manifold mag- nificence. The ritual of the Greeks was the ritual of a race at one with nature, glorying in its affiliation to the mighty mother of all life, and striving to add by human art the coping stone and final touch to her achievement." The Propylaea stretched in all about one hundred and seventy feet across the western side of the citadel, and was entirely built of Pentelic marble. In the centre was a portico sixty feet broad of six fluted Doric columns, each column thirty feet in height, and all supporting a noble pediment. From this portico projected on either side a wing, entered through three Ionic columns. Six Ionic columns assisted in supporting the roof of the vestibule. The marble beams of this roof were from seventeen to twenty-two feet in length and correspond- ingly solid. The ceiling was richly carved and orna- mented. Immediately in the rear of the Ionic columns and at the end facing the Acropolis stood the terminal OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. Ill wall, with its five bronze gates, the centre one, which was the largest, being sufficiently broad to allow the passage of a chariot or other such vehicle. Beyond this wall and its gates was the posticuni, adding eighteen feet to the depth of forty-three feet which the build- ing otherwise possessed. The temple of the "Wingless Victory," and the "Painted Chamber," containing the finest works of the painter Polygnotus, as they have been named, formed the wings, which presented un- broken Avails to the front, relieved only by the four Ionic columns that supported the graceful entablature and pediment of the temple of Xike Apteros on the right. As the building was begun in the year 437 B.C., and was entirely completed within a period of five years, and was one of the most imposing structures of its day, Pau- sanias is led to reflect that, "in felicity of execution and in boldness and originality of design, it rivalled the Parthenon." Lubke's comment on the structure is: "Thus in this building the idea of fortress-like defence, as well as festive welcome, was equally expressed. Espe- cially admirable, however, was the rich ceiling of the great three-naved court, both on account of the bold span of its beams and the magnificent decoration of the spaces between them (the coffers), which were brilliant with 112 SOME OLD MASTERS gold and colors.* The Ionic form of the columns in the interior also corresponded with this festive, cheerful character; while the two rows of columns on the out- side, together with the rest of the exterior of the build- ing, exhibited the seriousness and dignity of the Doric style." Thus has much been quoted in description and eulogy of this noble piece of architecture ; would that as much might be quoted in respect to the talents and career of its gifted designer, but of him there is only the shadow of comment, from which it is possible to weave but the faintest fabric of certainty concerning his life. His name was Mnesicles, and we are told that he was a slave born in the household of Pericles. That he should have been chosen to create so important an architectural work speaks for the privilege which the humblest born might hope to attain in rising to posi- tions of trust and prominence in the days of that great leader. Mnesicles early manifested an aptitude for architecture, and was permitted by his illustrious patron and owner to exercise his talent in the erection of build- ings of inferior consequence before being entrusted with more ambitious works. The Propyla?a was not the only * The decoration referred to was the work of the distinguished painter Protogenes. THE FALL OF MNESICLES FROM THE PROPYL.EA. OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 113 work of magnitude upon which he was engaged, nor was it the most beautiful, in the judgment of some critics, although the most important, for he was the architect as well of the graceful Doric temple of Theseus, which has always been regarded as one of the finest architectural conceptions the ancient city of Athens possessed. An incident in his life which awakened the affec- tionate interest of Pericles and the solicitude of the goddess Athene, whom he was serving so well, is told by Plutarch and other early biographers. It is in effect that while inspecting the almost completed work of the Propylaea he fell from the summit of the pediment and was most severely injured. He was taken at once to the house of Pericles, where he received the personal atten- tion of the great ruler. It was while he lay at death's door that it is said Minerva appeared to Pericles in a dream, and told him to administer to Mnesicles a medi- cine distilled from the wall-plant pellitory. This was done, and the life of the architect was spared. The only other fact associated with the life of Mnesicles which has been preserved to us is one mentioned by Pliny to the effect that the sculptor Stipax of Cyprus made a statue of the architect which became very celebrated in its time, and which yas called Splanchnoptes. It was given this name because it represented a person roasting 114 SOME OLD MASTEKS the entrails of the victim at a sacrifice, at the same time blowing the fire with his breath. There is nothing sug- gestive of the architect in question or his profession, but it is supposed to have been a statue of Mnesicles, from the fact that Pliny speaks of the subject as having been a slave of Pericles, who was cured of the wounds received in a fall from the Propyhea by an herb which Minerva had suggested should be given as a medicine. It is un- fortunate that the statue has not survived to give us some idea of the features of at least one of the great architects of antiquity. Some recent discoveries on the Acropolis have, however, brought forth fragments which are supposed to have been parts of the base. If there is any one of the Greek architects of the time of Pericles who can be said to have secured for himself a degree of popular notoriety throughout subsequent ages it is the accomplished Ictinus, the chief architect of the Parthenon and the designer of at least two other conspicuously beautiful buildings of which we know — namely, the temple of Apollo Epicurus, near Phigalia in Arcadia, and the temple of Ceres and Proserpine at Eleusis. It is, no doubt, due, however, to his connec- tion with the Parthenon that his fame has so long en- dured. As already stated, Callicrates assisted in the building OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 115 of the Parthenon, and Phidias contributed the designs for the relief carvings in the pediments and metopes, executing much of the work with his own hands. Al- though Vitruvius savs that "both Ictinus and Callic- rates exerted all their powers to make this temple worthy of the goddess who presided over the arts," it is not likely that Callicrates's share in the work was equal to that of Ictinus, but was confined more to the heavy masonry, and in offering to Ictinus such advice as he might seek in giving to the building the greatest sub- stantiality and permanency. The Parthenon, which, among the several master- pieces of the Acropolis, must be acknowledged the great- est, stood upon a rocky elevation in the citadel, which so far elevated the structure as to bring the pavement of the peristyle upon a level with the capitals of the columns of the eastern portico of the Propylaea. This was the same site which had been occupied formerly by an earlier temple to Minerva, known among the Athe- nians as the Hecatompedon on account of its propor- tions. The Parthenon of Ictinus is said to have cost one thousand talents, or what would be equal to about $1,100,000 of our money. It was begun the year 422 B.C., and completed at the expiration of sixteen years. 116 SOME OLD MASTERS It conformed to the usual shape of the Greek temples, being rectangular and peripteral. The length from east to west was two hundred and twenty-seven feet and seven inches, the width a little over one hundred and one feet. The Doric order was employed for the exterior, the columns which surrounded the cell on all sides being thirty-four feet in height, with a diameter of six feet at the base. There were forty-six of these columns, spring- ing directly from the stylobate or steps, all fluted with twenty channels, and each carrying its share of a very beautiful entablature. The gables or pediments at each end of the temple were of flat pitch. The total height of the building from the steps to the top of the gables was sixty-four feet. White marble from Mount Pentelicum, "wrought," as Mr. Kinnaird expresses it, "with the ex- quisite finish of a cameo," was the material employed for the entire structure, with the exception of the supporting timbers of the roof, which were wood covered with marble tiles. The interior, to quote Mr. Kinnaird again, "en- shrined the chryselephantine colossus with all its gor- geous adjuncts, and comprised sculptural decoration alone for one edifice exceeding in quantity that of all recent national monuments ; consisting of a range of eleven hundred feet of sculpture and containing, on cal- OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 117 dilation, upward of six hundred figures, a portion of which were colossal, enriched by painting and probably golden ornaments. Here has been really verified the prediction of Pericles that, when the edifices of rival states would be mouldering in oblivion, the splendor of his city would be still paramount and triumphant/' In respect to the richness of its interior treasures, very much the same idea is expressed by Bishop Wordsworth, who says, in the course of his description of the build- ing : "It would, therefore, be a very erroneous idea to regard this temple which we are describing merely as the best school of architecture in the world. It was also the noblest school of sculpture and the richest gallery of painting." The cleverness of the architects in insuring to the Parthenon, after its completion, the appearance of abso- lute harmony of proportion in all its outward lines, is one of their best claims to that celebrity which they have justly earned. As it goes so far toward illustrating their great professional skill, the reader may be interested in reading the language used by Professor Roger Smith of London in explaining the measures adopted by Ictinus and possibly Callicrates also, to correct the optical de- fects which the Parthenon might otherwise have pos- sessed when completed. 118 SOME OLD MASTERS "The delicacy and subtlety of these [optical illusions] are extreme, but there can be no manner of doubt that they existed. The best known correction is the diminu- tion in diameter or taper, and the entasis or convex curve of the tapered outline of the shaft of the column. With- out the taper, which is perceptible enough in the order of this building, and much more marked in the order of earlier buildings, the columns would look top-heavy ; but the entasis is an additional optical correction to pre- vent their outline from appearing hollowed, which it would have done had there been no curve. The columns of the Parthenon have shafts that are over thirty-four feet high, and diminish from a diameter of 6.15 feet at the bottom to 4.81 feet at the top.. The outline between these points is convex, but so slightly so that the curve departs at the point of greatest curvature not more than three-quarters of an inch from the straight line joining the top and bottom. This is, however, just sufficient to correct the tendency to look hollow in the middle. "A second correction is intended to overcome the ap- parent tendency of a building to spread outward toward the top. This is met by inclining the columns slightly inward. So slight, however, is the inclination, that were the axes of two columns on opposite sides of the Parthenon continued upward till they met, the meeting OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 119 point would be 1952 yards, or, in other words, more than one mile from the ground. "Another optical correction is applied to the hori- zontal lines. In order to overcome a tendency which exists in all long lines to seem as though they drop in the middle, the lines of the architrave of the top step and of other horizontal features of the building are all slightly curved. The difference between the outline of the top step of the Parthenon and a straight line joining its two ends is at the greatest only just two inches." Still another correction which Professor Smith al- ludes to, in respect to the vertical proportions of the building, he does not discuss more than to say: "The small additions, amounting in the entire length of the order to less than five inches, were made to the heights of the various members of the order, with a view to secure that from one definite point of view the effect of foreshortening should be exactly compensated, and so the building should appear to the spectator to be per- fectly proportioned." The Parthenon was not, as is popularly supposed, a temple for the worship of Minerva. The sanctuary for that particular purpose was in the Erechtheum, a triple temple, located upon the Acropolis not very far distant from the Parthenon, and having wings dedicated re- 120 SOME OLD MASTERS spectively to Minerva Polias, to Erechtheus or Neptune, wherein was a well of salt water, and to the Xvmph Pandrosus, daughter of Cecrops. The Parthenon, how- ever, served as a national treasury and repository for the valuable offerings to the goddess, as well as "a cen- tral point for the Panathenaic festival," where prizes might be distributed to the victorious competitors. In- deed, the decorations of Phidias would tend to corrob- orate this inference, as the sculptured low relief of the frieze represented the Panathenaic procession. The rich relief carvings in the tympanums of the front and rear pediments of the building, also by Phidias, the de- signs of which may be found described in almost any work on Grecian art, have been reproduced in some of the vignettes of this book. In alluding to the Erechtheum, which, like the Par- thenon and the Propyhca, still presents shapely and beautiful ruins to grace the Acropolis, attract the tourist and lend to the lover of art the best criterion of the ideal age of Grecian architecture, we must mourn the fact that the architect who designed this magnificent example of the Ionic order is not known, and it is not likely that he ever will be. The building was not, finished at the time of the death of Pericles. Because of an inscription found in the Acropolis, and now in the OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 121 British Museum, containing the particulars of a minute professional survey of the unfinished parts, made by an Athenian architect named Philocles, in the year 336 B.C., this architect has been given by some the credit of having been the author of the entire structure ; but that he could not. have been is clearly proven by the known fact that much of the temple was constructed, as we have stated, in the time of Pericles, or about one hundred years earlier. Nothing further, by the way, is known of Philocles than is here given. About two thousand years had passed without that great leveller Time or the corroding influences of the elements marring to any very serious extent the beauty and completeness of the Parthenon, during which period it had suffered two changes most antagonistic to its orig- inal purpose, having been transformed at one time into a Christian church and at another into a Turkish mosque. In respect to the first transformation, it is well to note that the significance of its name was not wholly lost in the change. Parthenon means Virgin, and the Christians called the church into which they turned it the Church of the Blessed Virgin. It was seen entire by Spon and Wheeler in 1676. But when the Venetians, in their war with the Turks, eleven years later, besieged the citadel, they threw a bomb upon the 122 SOME OLD MASTERS roof of the noble structure, which, passing through it, ignited the powder which had been stored in the build- ing by the Turks. The result was an explosion which divided and reduced the temple to its present condition, save for further depredations which seem hardly credit- able. The iconoclastic Turks found this pride of Peri- cles most useful as a quarry upon which to draw for much of the material used in their own buildings, and it is to be regretted also that Lord Elgin should have found it necessary to enrich a distant museum in London with many of its most beautiful carvings, adding further desecration to "what Goth and Turk and Time had spared." Vitruvius informs us that Ictinus, in collab- oration with another architect, not otherwise mentioned, wrote a book upon the Parthenon, his greatest master- piece. After searching the world over for her dear, lost daughter, the beautiful Proserpine, who had been spir- ited away to the realm of Pluto, Ceres finally gave up the quest and mournfully settled down at Eleusis, a city in fertile Boeotia, about fourteen miles from Athens. Here was erected in her honor and in memory of Proser- pine an Ionic temple by the people for whom she became sponsor. The Persians, during their invasion of Attica, burned the temple, but Pericles caused it to be rebuilt. OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 123 and selected Ictinus as the architect. He erected a hand- somer structure in the Doric style, which, it is said, was without exposed columns. Whether Ictinus lived long enough to complete the temple to Ceres and Proserpine or not, or was called away for other purposes, is not known, but it appears that other architects were associated with its design and erection, both before as well as after his connection with it. Corcebus is mentioned also as an architect, in the employ of Pericles, who began the work on the mystic cell, but that his sudden death resulted in the substitu- tion of Ictinus. It is more probable, however, that Ictinus had previously furnished the design of the build- ing and that Coroebus had been merely acting under his supervision. Following Ictinus was another Athe- nian architect appointed by Pericles, and the designer of the demos of Cholargos. He is said to have built the pediment of the temple with the timpanum open, according to an ancient fashion, in order to light the cell, which, if Strabo is to be believed, was capable of accommodating thirty thousand persons. In the time of Demetrius Phalereus, the immediate successor of Alexander, Philo, or Philon, as his name is sometimes written, a very eminent architect, also of Athens, was engaged to add a portico of twelve Doric 124 SOME OLD MASTEES columns to this temple of Ceres. That Metagenes of Xypete, and son of Ctesiphon, who has already been discussed in our allusion to the temple of Diana at Ephesus, should be mentioned as the architect who com- pleted the entablature and an upper row of columns to this Eleusian temple, is probably a mistake. The time of Metagenes was, as we have seen, much earlier (about 560 b.c), and while he might have been engaged upon the first temple to Ceres at Eleusis, it is quite impossible for him to have been employed by Pericles in the build- ing of that with which Ictinus had to do. When Alaric, the German, made his angry invasion into Greece in 396 b.c, because refused command of the armies of the Eastern empire, he destroyed very many works of Greek art, and this temple among them was one of the unfortunates that assisted to satiate his wrath. The third important work with which Ictinus is re- ported to have been connected was the Doric temple to Apollo in the village of Bassae, near Cotylion, in Ar- cadia, which was known as the temple to Apollo Epi- curus (the Preserver). Pausanias speaks of this as being next to that at Tagea, the finest temple in the Peloponnesus "from the beauty of its stone and the symmetry of its proportions." This temple is still a OF GEEEK ARCHITECTURE. 125 beautiful ruin, thirty-four of the original thirty-eight columns of the peristyle standing. The structure, which in the interior possessed two rows of columns in the Ionic order, was originally admirably planned for sculptural decoration and statuary and held many fine specimens of the handiwork of Phidias and his school. Some of the carvings of the frieze and other parts of the building, which are to be seen in the British Museum, are spoken of by Lubke as the boldest and most animated compositions among all that is preserved to us of the productions of Greek art. On the southeast slope of the Acropolis Pericles caused to be erected a building which departed broadly from the prevailing rectangular construction of the time. In was oval on plan, Doric in order, and its por- tico was enclosed by thirty-two columns. The most original feature of the building, however, was the roof, which was constructed in the shape of a cone and was supported by rafters formed of the masts of the ships captured in the Persian wars. From just above the cornice of the drum there projected around the entire roof a row of windows which may possibly be credited with being the archetypes of our modern dormer win- dows. This building was called the Odeum, or, as it is now termed, the Odeon, and was devoted to music. 126 SOME OLD MASTERS Cratinus, the comic poet, who had levelled his satire at Pericles when building the "Long Walls/' found in the roof of the Odeon, the idea for the cone shape of which, by the way, it is claimed the architects bor- rowed from the pavilion of the King of Persia, another mark for his shafts of ridicule. He sings : "As Jove, an onion on his head he wears ; As Pericles, a whole orchestra bears ; Afraid of broils and banishments no more, He tunes the shell he trembled at before." The allusion to an onion by Cratinus is explained when it is remembered that on account of the peculiar, long shape of his head the poets of Athens called Per- icles Schinocephalos, or squill-head, from schinos, a squill, or sea-onion. Another version of Cratinus's satire is given thus : " So, we see here, Jupiter Long-pate Pericles appear, Since ostracism time he's laid aside his head, And wears the new Odeum in its stead." Music received a considerable share of attention in the education of the Greeks, and such was the influence which it is said to have possessed over the physical as well as the mental nature of the people, that it was credited with being an antidote for many of the infirmi- ties of the bodv as well as the mind. The Odeon was OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 127 therefore an institution of considerable importance in Athens. Here Pericles conducted in person the musi- cal contests between the Choruses which the wealthy citizens of Athens instituted, and awarded to the win- ners the tripod-trophies, which as marks of special honor they were permitted to place upon their monu- ments. A street in Athens was devoted almost entirely to these choragic monuments, many of which were archi- tecturally most beautiful. The architect of the Odeon of Pericles is not known, but after its destruction by Aristion in the Mithridatic war, it was rebuilt by Ariobarzanes II, Philopator, king of Cappadocia, in the original form, who em- ployed for the purpose the brother Roman architects, Caius and Marius Stallius, together with a third archi- tect by the name of Menalippus, who recorded their connection with the building upon the base of a statue which they erected in honor of their patron Ariobar- zanes. It is said that on certain days this later Odeon was used as a grain market. If in the Parthenon on the Acropolis the acme of Doric magnificence was reached by Ictinus and Callic- rates, there was another temple located below the Acropolis, which by many is ranked as the peer of the Parthenon, in its perfection of Doric symmetry and 128 SOME OLD MASTERS grace. This was the building to which allusion has already been made as another example of the genius and skill of Mnesicles, the slave-architect of the Propylsea. It was dedicated to the founder of Athens, the adven- turous Theseus, and stood not only as a temple in his honor, but as a mausoleum for his ashes. Wordsworth, whose words of praise for the Propylsea have been quoted, is also enthusiastic in his admiration of this second example of the skill of the talented Mnesicles : "Such is the integrity of its structure and the distinctness of its details that it requires no descrip- tion beyond that which a few glances might supply. Its beauty defies all ; its solid yet graceful form is, indeed, admirable; and the loveliness of its coloring is such that from the rich, mellow hue which the marble has now assumed it looks as if it had been quarried not from the bed of a rocky mountain, but from the golden light of an Athenian sunset." Although the temple of Theseus was one of the more modest Athenian temples in point of size, it has always ranked as one of the most perfect of the Attic-Doric order, and stands to-day as one of the least dilapidated among all that have existed of the beautiful edifices of ancient Greece. Indeed, as it was supposed to have been begun before the Parthenon, or in the time of Cimon, it OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 129 is claimed by some writers that Ictimis took it for his model, although the Parthenon was about twice as large. The Theseum was surrounded by columns, six at the front and rear and thirteen on either flank. It was forty- five feet wide by one hundred and four feet long. The building material was Pentelican marble, which in the course of the centuries has taken on the soft yellowish tinge which Bishop Wordsworth refers to. Ornamental sculpturing was more sparingly employed than upon the Parthenon or some of the other structures of the time, but such as was used was so judiciously handled as to o-ive the very noblest results. The sculpturing in the metopes of the frieze and on the pronaos was the work of Phidias. It was built after the battle of Marathon, and, it would seem, after an awakening on the part of the Athenians to that high sense of obligation toward their early hero, Theseus, which had slumbered for centuries. It was due to the Delphic Oracle that his remains were brought back to Athens from their long banishment in the island of Scyros, and given honorable burial, the son of Miltiades being selected to execute the Oracle's decree. The occasion was made one of festivity and re- joicing, and the entombment in the beautiful new tem- ple one of sacrifice and solemnity. 130 SOME OLD MASTERS In closing this brief reference to the Theseum, the graceful lines from Haygarth's Greece, which so beauti- fully applaud it, may well be quoted : "Here let us pause, e'en at the vestibule Of Theseus's fane — with what stern majesty It rears its pond'rous and eternal strength, Still perfect, still unchang'd, as on the day When the assembled throng of multitudes With shouts proclaim'd tlr accomplish'd work and fell Prostrate upon their faces to adore Its marble splendor. How the golden gleam Of noonday floats upon its graceful forms, Tinging each grooved shaft, and storied frieze And Doric triglyph ! How the rays amidst The op'ning columns glanc'd from point to point Stream down the gloom of the long portico ; Where, link'd in moving mazes youths and maids Lead the light dance, as erst in joyous hour Of festival ! How the broad pediment, Embrown'd with shadow frowns above and spreads Solemnity and reverential awe ! Proud monument of old magnificence ! Still thou survivest, nor has envious time Impair' d thy beauty, save that it has spread A deeper tint, and dimm'd the polished glare Of thy refulgent whiteness. Let mine eyes Feast on thy form, and find at every glance Themes for imagination, and for thought ; Empires have fallen, yet art thou unchang'd ; And destiny, whose tide engulphs proud man Has rolPd his harmless billows at thv base." OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 131 In the brilliant galaxy of great architects and sculp- tors of this age, none shines more deservedly conspicu- ous by reason of true merit and noble purpose than Poly- cletus of Argos, who is remembered more as a statuary than by reason of his achievements in architecture. He exercised his art between the years 452 and 412 b.c, and, like his distinguished contemporaries, Myron and Phidias, was a pupil of the Argive sculptor, Agelades. His celebrity has been compared to that of his most fa- mous brother pupil, Phidias, for the reason that while Phidias gave the ideal standard in the portrayal of deities, Polycletus created for all ages the perfect canon of the human form in art. This he expressed in the figure of a youth holding in his hand a spear, which was called the Doryphorus. In this figure the sculptor laid down the rules of universal application with regard to the proportions of the human body in its mean standard of height, breadth of chest, length of limbs and so on. Socrates, according to Xenophon, went so far as to place Polycletus on a level as a statuary, with Homer, Sophocles and Xeuxis in their respective arts. A similar anecdote to that told of Phidias, when he listened to the criticisms of the public upon his colossal statue of the Olympian Zeus, is also related of Poly- cletus. He is said to have made two statues, one of 132 SOME OLD MASTERS which he perfected according to his own ideals, and the other he exhibited to the public and altered according to the suggestions volunteered. In due time he exhibited both publicly side by side. The one he had himself made was universally admired, while that which he had changed to suit the popular fancy was condemned. "You yourself," he exclaimed, "made the statue you abuse, I, the one you admire." One of his most celebrated works was the chrysele- phantine statue of Hera, executed in his old age to rival the Athene and Zeus by Phidias. Strabo con- sidered that this statue equalled in beauty those of Phidias, though it was surpassed by them in costliness and size. In the respect that Polycletus followed the Homeric description of Hera, and presented the goddess clothed from her waist down, he may be said to have followed the precedent of Phidias; in other respects, however, he drew upon his own fancy. Juno was seated upon a golden throne ; her head was crowned with a garland on which were worked the Graces and the Hours ; in one hand she held the symbolical pomegranate and in the other a sceptre surmounted by a cuckoo, a bird sacred to Hera on account of having herself been changed into that form by Zeus. As an architect Polycletus will be found as the OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 133 designer of the theatre at Epidaurus, where was also located the beautiful temple dedicated to ^Esculapius, and which Pausanias pronounced to be superior in sym- metry and elegance to every other in Greece and Rome. It was capable of accommodating twelve thousand spec- tators, and its ruins, as well as those of the white marble circular Tholus, by the same artist, are still to be seen in an unusual condition of preservation. Among the other architects who have been variously mentioned as having pursued their profession toward the close of this century, but who can hardly take equal rank with those already alluded to, may be mentioned Eupolinus, an Argive artist, who rebuilt the great Herseum at Mycenae after its destruction by fire in the year 423 B.C., the entablature of which was ornamented with sculptures representing the wars of the gods and giants and the Trojan wars; Clecetas, who was one of the assistant architects under Phidias, and whose chief claim to distinction is based upon his construction of the starting place in the Olympian Stadium, and Democ- opus Myrilla, who built the theatre at Syracuse. Vitru- vius also speaks of an architect and author of about this time — namely, Silenus — who wrote on the Doric order. It is difficult to close this chapter, in which bi t very superficial reference has been made to the architectural 134 SOME OLD MASTEKS lights of the golden age of art in Greece, without glanc- ing back at the magnificent city of Athens, the grand product of much of their creative skill, with feelings of regret that with all her numerous and noble monuments, dedicated to gods and men, there is not one that bears the imprint of its creator. We see in this glance forest- like colonnades of glittering white columns ; we see the House of the Five Hundred Senators, the Tholus, the Hall of Hermse, the Agora, the Pnyx, "where the Athenian orator spoke from a block of bare stone ;" the Stoic Hall, in which philosophy was taught ; the Pryta- neum, where the loved laws of Solon were preserved ; the Lyceum, with its hundred columns from Lydia ; the Theatre of Bacchus and the Mausoleum of Tolus. We see temples innumerable, the grandest of all those to Jupiter and Theseus ; but others of fascinating merit, those of Ceres and of Cybele and of Mars, and of Vul- can, of Venus, of ^Eacus, of the Dioscuri, of Hercules, of Diana Agrotera, of Bacchus Lunmeus, of ^Esculapius, of Eumenides, and that to Glory, erected with the booty from the glorious field of Marathon, wherein stood the Venus of Phidias ; and we see the Acropolis towering above all, lending other magnificent architectural tri- umphs to the ensemble ; and although we see slabs among them "inscribed with the records of Athenian OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 135 history, with civil contracts and articles of peace, with memorials of honors awarded to patriotic citizens or munificent strangers," we find no monument, whether in the time of Pericles or later, inscribed with the name of Ictinus, or Hippodamus, or Callicrates, or the poor slave, Mnesicles, who was saved by Minerva to be for- gotten by man. 136 SOME OLD MASTERS CHAPTER VII. LATER GREEK ARCHITECTS. |HE first architect as well as artist of decided J merit who arose to historic distinction at the Jbeginning of the later Attic school, or that 1 which followed immediately upon the school of Phidias, and one of the first to treat the Corinthian idea, then flowering into favor with originality and artistic skill, was the deserving and accomplished Scopas. Refer- ence has already been made to this artist in connection with the temple of Diana at Ephesus, for which, it is said, he furnished the most beautiful of all the numer- ous columns with which that temple was enriched. This statement is made without prejudice to the great Praxi- teles, who was contemporaneous with Scopas, and who excelled him as a statuary, if he did not compete with him as an architect. A mistake of Pliny, which assigned Scopas to an earlier age, has finally been corrected, and it has been settled that the period when he exercised his art was OF GEEEK ARCHITECTURE. 137 between the years 395 and 350 b.c. Scopas was a native of Paros, a subject island of Athens, and sprung from a family which for several generations before his advent into the world had practised the plastic arts. His descendants- also walked in the same artistic paths of life for many generations. Like Polycletus, with whom he is most favorably compared, the architectural side of his career was greatly eclipsed by that which dis- played his genius as a sculptor. His statues were numerous, and fortunately many of them still exist scattered in various European museums and galleries. Among such of his works considered the most interesting is the well-known series of figures representing the destruction of the sons and daughters of Xiobe. In the time of Pliny these statues stood in the temple of Apollo Socianus at Rome, and it was then a question whether they were the works of Scopas or Praxiteles. In fact, many of the former's finest efforts have been attributed to the latter artist. Of this group Sehlegel says: "In the group of Xiobe there is the most perfect expression of terror and pity. The up- turned looks of the mother, and mouth half open in supplication, seem to accuse the invisible wrath of Heaven. The daughter clinging in the agonies of death to the bosom of her mother, in her infantile inno- 138 SOME OLD MASTERS cence can have no other fear than for herself ; the innate impulse of self-preservation was never represented in a manner more tender or affecting. Can there on the other hand be exhibited to the senses a more beautiful image of self-devoting, heroic magnanimity than Xiobe, as she bends her body forward that, if possible, she may alone received the destructive bolt ? Pride and repug- nance are melted down in the most ardent maternal love. The more than earthly dignity of the features is the less disfigured by pain, as from the quick repetition of the shocks she appears, as in the fable, to have become insensible and motionless. Before this figure, twice transformed into stone, and yet so inimitably animated — before this line of demarcation of all human suffer- ing the most callous beholder is dissolved in tears." Another highly esteemed work of Scopas, which Pliny says stood in the shrine of Cneius Domitius in the Fla- minian circus in Rome, represented Achilles conducted to the island of Leuce by the divinities of the sea. It consisted of figures of Xeptune, Thetis and Achilles surrounded by Nereids sitting on dolphins and other large fish, and attended by Tritons and sea monsters. In the opinion of Pliny, these figures alone would have been sufficient to have immortalized the artist, even if they had cost the labor of his entire life. OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 139 His statues of Venus, are, after all, perhaps the most remarkable of his works in sculpture. One of these statues, if not the original, is supposed to have been the prototype of one of the most celebrated and beautiful portrayals of that charming deity in the world to-day. Another to which Pliny gives particular prominence was that in which the goddess is presented nude and which was found in the temple of Brutus Callaicus in Rome. This statue, he adds, "would have conferred re- nown upon any other city, but at Rome the immense number of works of art and the bustle of daily life in a great city distracted the attention of men." It is prob- ably this work of art, which is thought by some to have been superior to that by Praxiteles, which, with some modifications, is credited with being the model after which Cleomenes fashioned the celebrated Venus de Medicis. Pausanias and Pliny mention also other por- trayals of Venus by Scopas, but it is left to Waagen and some other critics to ascribe the celebrated statue of Aphrodite, in the Louvre in Paris, and known as the Venus de Milo, to this great sculptor and architect. It is foreign to the purpose, however, to devote too much space to this side of the art life of Scopas, but in treating of his connection with the magnificent mauso- leum which Artemesia erected at Halicarnassus, to her 140 SOME OLD MASTERS husband, Mausolus, king of Caria, it will be argued doubtless that the work of this artist on that famous mortuary monument, which ranked as one of the seven wonders of the world, was more in the line of a deco- rative sculptor than of an architect. In this undertaking Scopas was associated with three other architectural sculptors — namely, Bryaxis, Timo- theus and Leocarus — all of whom were Athenians. Each took as his special work the decoration of one side of the building, Scopas choosing the east or principal facade. The north and south sides had a width of about sixty- three feet ; the east and west were not quite so vide. Before outlining further the principal characteristics of the building, it is only fair to say that the professional architects to whom is due the credit for the plan of the structure were Phileus, an Ionian whose name Vitru- vius spells in a variety of ways, and Satyrus, whose native city is not given, but who, according to the same authority, wrote a description of the mausoleum. Phileus was also an author on architecture, having writ- ten a volume on the Ionic temple of Athene Polias at Priene, of which he was the designer, and which was one of the most renowned buildings in Asia Minor, and a treatise on the mausoleum, which was also located in that part of the globe. As for Satyrus, whatever may . OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 141 have been the other public buildings of which he was the architect, there is no record. The mausoleum had a total height of one hundred and forty feet, and in general appearance combined orientalism in tomb-structure with the perfections of Grecian architectural grace and elegance. The tomb was contained within a rectangular substructure. Above was an Ionic peristyle temple with nine columns on each side and eleven at the ends. The frieze was elaborately carved and decorated, and the roof, which was pyram- idal in form, gave the oriental cast to the entire build- ing. At the apex of the roof was a colossal marble quadriga, in which a statue of the deceased king Mausolus appeared. It is said that in the sculptures and carvings of the different sides the respective artists strove to rival each other, and that although queen Artemesia died before the tomb was finished the four artists were so interested and absorbed in their work that they determined to complete it at their own risk. Up to the twelfth century after the Christian era this grand tomb stood in a fairly good state of preserva- tion, but soon after fell to pieces, and was used from that time as a quarry by the Knights of St. John, from which they took stone for the castles they built on the 142 SOME OLD MASTERS site of the old Greek Acropolis. Later still much of the marble was taken to repair their fortifications, and it is even said to make lime, showing to what ignominious uses the very greatest of architectural glories may finally come. However, some of the carvings have been re- deemed from the fortification walls and unearthed from other places in Budrun, the modern Halicarnassus, to find a final resting place, let it be hoped, in the British Museum. These rescued pieces of marble, of which there are perhaps sufficient to reconstruct a quarter of the whole frieze, though they are not continuous, are pronounced by competent judges to be specimens of the work of the different artists, but there is no means of determining which of them, if any, came from the chisel of Scopas. The temple of Athene Alea at Tegea in Arcadia, often a sanctuary for fugitives from Sparta, was an archi- tectural creation of Scopas, which it would appear be- longed to him exclusively. Of all the temples in the Peloponnesus this is said by Pausanias to have been the largest as well as the most magnificent. That observant traveller, however, must have been carried away some- what by his enthusiasm over its architectural attrac- tions in ascribing to it such great size, as its dimensions were not more than one hundred and sixtv-four bv sev- OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 143 enty feet, being very much smaller than other Grecian temples. The temple which Scopas built was not the first to the goddess to occupy the same site, but followed a very much more ancient one, which was destroyed by fire in the year 394 b.c. The tendency to introduce the Corin- thian order, which followed after the Peloponnesian wars, and which continued to grow as Greece became more and more intermixed with Roman ideas, is here early displayed. The columnar arrangement of the temple was unusual ; for the outside the Ionic style was used, there being six columns at each end and fourteen on the sides ; but on the inside the Doric order was em- ployed surmounted by the Corinthian. Both pediments of the building were sculptured by Scopas or from his designs under his immediate supervision. The pedi- ment over the front portico portrayed the chase of the Calydonian boar, and that in the rear the battle of Tele- phus with Achilles ; both being, according to Pausanias, very animated compositions. The statue of the goddess Athene Alea, contained in the cell, was carried off by the Emperor Augustus and placed at the entrance of his new forum in Rome. Some fragments of the pedi- mental sculptures have been discovered and placed in the British Museum. 144 SOME OLD MASTERS To Scopas, in co-operation with Praxiteles, is also attributed the graceful and beautiful Choragic monu- ment of Lysicrates, at one time called "the lantern of Demosthenes/' from the mistaken supposition that the great orator used it as a study — a very strange use when it is remembered that the little structure possessed neither doors nor windows. In its day this monument was the pride of the street of Tripods, and it still stands one of the best preserved evidences of the taste and skill of its designers. In this monument the Corinthian style of decoration is displayed in its perfection of grace, better, perhaps, than in any other structure of that early time which is known to us. Stuart describes it as follows: "The colonnade was constructed in the following manner: six equal panels of white [Pentelic] marble, placed contiguous to each other on a circular plan, formed a continued cylindrical wall, which of course was divided from top to bottom into six equal parts by the junctures of the panels. These columns projected somewhat more than half their diameters from the surface of the cylindrical wall, and the wall entirely closed up the intercolumination. Over this was placed the entablature and the cupola, in neither of which any aperture was made, so that there was no admis- OF GKEEK AKCHITECTUKE. 145 sion to the inside of this monument, and it was quite dark." The "flower," or crowning ornament of the monu- ment, was a particularly graceful and beautiful ar- rangement of acanthus leaves and volutes, and the roof was worked out with great delicacy and originality in the form of a thatch of laurel leaves and Vitruvian scrolls. If there was any apportionment of the work on this monument between Scopas and Praxiteles, it would be interesting to know what it was. Of the other architectural sculptors associated with Scopas in the adornment of the tomb of Mausolus none is mentioned as having had any other connection with architecture in a similar way, but all were statuaries of distinction and high merit, who executed works in mar- ble or bronze, or both, that gave them prominence in their art. Among other works by Bryaxis were five colos- sal statues in the island of Rhodes, of which the celebrated "colossus of Rhodes," however, was not one, and also a statue of Apollo, which was destined for the temple of Daphnis near Antiochus. The story is related that Julian the Apostate wished to render to this figure peculiar worship and homage, but was prevented from so doing by a miraculous destruction of the temple and statue bv fire. Clement of Alexandria asserts that 146 SOME OLD MASTERS Bryaxis was the artist of many works ascribed to Phid- ias. As to the share which Timotheus took in the decora- tion of the mausoleum there is dispute among the Greek authorities, some ascribing his work to Praxiteles ; but there does not seem to be any just foundation for the supposition that the sculpturing on the south side of the tomb was by any other hand than that of Timotheus. As one of the great statuaries of the later Attic school he was also among the most prominent, his figure of Artemis being deemed worthy to be placed by the side of the Apollo of Scoj)as, and the Latona of Praxiteles in the temple which Augustus erected to Apollo on the Palatine. Other statues of conspicuous merit are aiso ascribed to him by Pausanias and Pliny. Leochares, the last of the quartette, was also inferior only to Scopas and Praxiteles in his school of art. He was particularly skilful with portrait-statues, the most successful of which were those of Philip of Macedon, Alexander his son, Amyntas, Olympias and Eurydice, all of which were made of ivory and gold, and were placed in the Phillippeion, a circular building in the Altis at Olympia, erected by Philip in celebration of his victory at Cha?roneia. But the chef d'oeuvre of Leochares was a bronze statue of the rape of Ganymede. OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 147 Pliny says of this work that the eagle seemed to be sensi- ble of what he was carrying and to whom he was bearing the treasure, taking care not to hurt the boy through his dress with his talons. The original statue was fre- quently copied both in marble and on gems, several of which copies are still extant : one in the ]\Iuseo Pio- Clementino, another in the library of St. Mark in Venice, and still another figures in Stuart's Athens, as an alto-relievo found among the ruins of Thessalonica. 148 SOME OLD MASTERS CHAPTEK VIII. THE ALEXANDRIAN ERA AND ROMAN SPOLIATION. HAT epoch in the art life of the Hellenic people _|_ associated with the influences arising out of the career and conquests of Alexander the Great, which we have now reached, was one scarcely inferior in interest to that of the time of Pericles. Overflowing as was the great Macedonian leader's love of art and great as was his ambition to leave behind him lasting monuments that should fittingly stand for the artistic culture of his time, still, for reasons arising partly out of his own career and partly from the ever-changing im- pulses of human feeling and taste, the art culture of his time must bow to the- superiority of that of the time of Pericles, if, in respect to those other features of his leadership and accomplishment, to which history gives a superior rank, his genius is eclipsed by none in the chronicles of civilization. Alexander's short life, so active in conquest and war, and so much of it passed away from European associa- OF GEEEK ARCHITECTURE. 149 tions or even the influences of colonial Greece, neces- sarily gave him little time for indulgence in the arts at home, while it permitted him to manifest it to some considerable extent in founding cities and rearing tem- ples in foreign lands. To this self-imposed banishment, accompanied, as it was, by large armies brought from Greece and her colonies, and the intermixing of her people with foreigners of new tastes and habits of mind, may be attributed that change of art feeling at home which began to assert itself about this time. On the other hand, however, its effect was beneficial to the con- quered countries in introducing a more elevated art standard than had existed within them before. Personally, Alexander manifested a keen apprecia- tion of the arts ; whether founded upon the same sin- cerity as that which appeared more natural to the char- acter of Pericles is a question ; but we find that Praxi- teles, Lysippus and Apelles, the great artists of his time, were no less publicly honored or more highly flat- tered thah were Phidias or Polycletus in the days of Pericles. It is related as an evidence of Alexander's en- thusiasm for art, that he compensated Apelles for his celebrated portrait of him by ordering that the artist's reward should be measured out in gold instead of being counted, an order which perhaps quite as much illus- 150 SOME OLD MASTERS trated the theatrical impulses of which he could be guilty as the calm expression of a genuine appreciation. Even had Alexander been spared, and had returned to Greece to continue a long life of usefulness to his people, instead of having been cut off in his prime at Babylon, although he might have done much more for art than he did, still he could not have accomplished for it what had been attained by Pericles. This may be argued from his birth, schooling and the stronger trend of his mind, which led in very different directions. The Macedonian had not certainly the traditions of art culture in his veins, as was the case with the more pol- ished Athenian, and being fonder of the dazzlement of pomp and show, natural to a leader who from infancy had been almost continuously associated with the accou- trements and regalia of armies, it is not likely that what- ever he might have accomplished for art more than that which he actually did, would have manifested that purity of ideal, as well as refinement of execution which so marked and dignified the work of Pericles. As there is always some time which must elapse be- fore the tide, having reached its flood, turns once more to slowly ebb, so was there a time to be expressed in a few years when the plastic arts of Greece, reaching their highest development in the age of Pericles, remained OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 151 stationary, before ebbing away to so-called Roman de- generacy, and the mixed influence of various compara- tively uncultured nationalities. The Alexandrian epoch marks the beginning of this turning-point. The decadence took almost as many suc- cessive generations to the time when Corinth was sacked by the Romans in 116 b.c.^ and the Italian soldiers cast their dice upon the pictures of Aristides, as it had taken to advance in the earlier ages of Greece, to the time when the chryselephantine statues of Zeus and Athene, by Phidias, were the recognized perfect standards of godlike majesty and beauty, and the Doryphorus of Polycletus was accepted as the criterion of human grace and proportion. Of course the standard by which the perfection of architectural dignity and purity can be measured is largely one of individual taste and preferment, as is sometimes evidenced by the conflicting judgments of the best critical authorities, but if we accept the conclu- sions of centuries of the highest criticism, we must be prepared to concede that the arts to which we refer reached their zenith as stated. However, the expression, Roman degeneracy, is much too severe a one, if taken in other than a comparative sense ; for, whatever Grecian architecture may have lost in ideal a?stheticism by 152 SOME OLD MASTERS reason of Roman interference, it must be granted the Romans that their own evolution in the appreciation of the arts and the accomplishments of architecture re- sulted in a magnificence which, when compared with our own time, gives them rank second only to the Greeks, from whom they borrowed so much, and whom they did not scruple to rob of nearly all their portable art treas- ures. "Among the innumerable monuments of archi- tecture constructed by the Romans," says Gibbon, "how many have escaped the notice of history, how few have resisted the ravages of time and barbarism ! And yet even the majestic ruins that are still scattered over Italy and the provinces would be sufficient to prove that those countries were once the seat of a polite and powerful empire. Their greatness alone or their beauty might deserve our attention ; but they were rendered more in- teresting by two important circumstances, which con- nect the agreeable history of the arts with the more useful history of human manners. Many of these works were erected at private expense, and almost all were intended for public benefit."' But the burnishing of the Romans to the high polish which they finally attained in the arts was a slow proc- ess, and one which met with many interruptions, ac- cording as their rulers were individually affected bv a OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 153 love of the artistic — a fact which in itself would show that art was not an inherent quality in the Roman nature to the like degree that it was in that of the Greek. To admire the Grecian aesthetic culture was at first con- sidered an evidence of effeminacy, and even Cato ex- claimed against the arts not seventeen years after the taking of Syracuse. The Consul jMummius, in 14G B.C., some hundred years later, after the battle which resulted in the capture of Corinth, proved very conclu- sively that he had very little appreciation of the merit of the treasures he found there, for he not only destroyed a great many, but shipped to Rome many more, for the simple reason that, recognizing how much they were prized by the Corinthians, he wisely saw that they might be useful in Rome. This sacking of Grecian cities was quite popular, and the Roman generals, in their con- quests, seemed to strive which should bring away to Rome the greatest number of statues and pictures. The elder Scipio despoiled Spain and Africa, Flamius Sylla and Mummius exported shiploads of the art of Greece, JEmilius despoiled Macedonia, and Scipio the younger, when he destroyed Carthage, transferred to Rome the chief ornaments of that city. In fact, the Roman generals were remarkable as art pilferers, using the spoils not alone to adorn their public 154 SOME OLD MASTERS buildings and institutions, but in some instances their private houses and palaces as well. It is related of Scaurus that he embellished his temporary theatre, erected for a few days' use, with no less than three thou- sand statues. He also returned to Rome with all the pictures of S icy on, one of the most eminent schools of painting in Greece, on a pretence that they would com- pensate for a debt due the Roman people. From this habit of drawing on foreigners it finally came to pass that private citizens took the fever and entered upon the luxury. None was earlier in the field than the Luculli, particularly Lucius Lucullus. Julius Ca?sar was per- sonally a great collector, his. hobby being gems, while his successor, Augustus, displayed an acute interest in Co- rinthian vases. Augustus did much for the architectural adornment of Rome, and his much-quoted remark to the effect that he found Rome a city of bricks and left it one of marble, was, to a great degree, true. In fact, Augustus mani- fested an aesthetic nature in many respects. Spence says, speaking of the arts, that ''the flavor of Augustus, like a gentle dew, made them bud forth and blossom ; and the sour reign of Tiberius, like a sudden frost, checked their growth, and killed all their beauties." Men of genius were flattered, courted and enriched under Au- OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 155 gustus, as they were some four hundred years' earlier in Athens under Pericles, with the result that Vergil, Horace, Ovid and other poets of the greatest merit sprung forward. Rome became in this age the seat of universal government also, its wealth was enormous, its architectural decorations numerous and splendid, and even its common streets were decked with some of the finest statues in the world. Other great architectural epochs of Rome were those of the time of Trojan and Hadrian. But as evidence of the intermittent character of her art development, very little was realized, as very little could be expected under the reigns of such mon- sters as Tiberius, Caligula and Xero. To Xero, how- ever, we must accord some little credit in having built a very remarkable architectural composition, although un- dertaken for no public benefit, but to satisfy his own profligate vanity. His ''Golden Palace," built under the direction of the architects Celer and Severus, the most eminent of their time, was ranked as the most "stu- pendous" structure of its kind in all Ttaly. The palace was built after the conflagration during which Xero is supposed to have amused himself with a violin. Tacitus tells us that it was ornamented in every part with "pearls, gems and the most precious materials," espe- cially gold, which was used in reckless profusion. In 156 SOME OLD MASTEES the centre of a court adorned with a portico of three rows of lofty columns, each row a mile long, stood a colossal statue of that colossal sensualist and wicked monarch, which was one hundred and twenty feet in height. Ves- pasian tore down the whole of this piece of architectural vanity, restored the land which it had occupied and by which it was surrounded to the people from whom it had been stolen, and erected in its place the great public Coloseum and the magnificent Temple of Peace. In alluding to the public palaces of amusement, Curio, a Roman Pnetor, some few years before the Christian era, is said to have built two wooden theatres close to- gether, which turned on pivots. During the day they were turned away from each other, and different plays were performed in each ; then, with all the spectators, they were turned together, forming an amphitheatre in which combats took place. The zeal of the Roman archi- tects to win popular favor by something novel and strik- ing was often very great. In Pompey's theatre water was made to run down the aisles, between the seats, in order to refresh spectators in the heat of summer. But that the Roman architects were not always as careful in the inspection of the buildings under their supervision as they should have been, and, like some of our modern architects, permitted their works to be used OF GEEEK ARCHITECTURE. 157 when in an unsafe condition, is shown from the unfor- tunate catastrophe which resulted in the unexpected tumbling to pieces of the theatre of Fideme near Rome. This accident happened in the reign of Tiberius, and the name of the architect who suffered banishment for his neglect was Attilius. The theatre was built of wood, and out of fifty thousand people who were in- jured in the collapse twenty thousand are said to have died. Of all the Roman emperors none is more interesting to the student of Grecian architecture than Hadrian, who was a great admirer of Greece, seeking to introduce the Hellenic institutions and modes of worship in Rome, as well as the art, poetry and learning of Greece. He also undertook to restore Athens, which had suffered greatly during the four or five hundred years which had elapsed between his time and that of Pericles, to some- thing of her former architectural grandeur. Pope's couplet might have been Hadrian's inspiration : "You, too, proceed ! make falling arts your care, Erect new wonders and the old repair." Indeed, he caused to be inscribed upon the Arch of Honor, which he erected in Athens, after the restoration, two inscriptions which, if not in the best of taste, were in harmony with their author's self-love, of which he 158 SOME OLD MASTERS possessed no inconsiderable share. Upon that side of the arch which faced the ancient city he wrote : "This is Athens, the old city of Theseus," and on that which fronted upon the new city of his restoration and adorn- ment was inscribed : "This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus." In other words, the visitor was ex- pected to make his own comparison and perhaps draw the conclusion intimated that Theseus was not, after all, to be compared with the Roman Hadrian. Hadrian's particular penchant was architecture, and his predominant vices were vanity and jealousy, both of which were manifested in his practice of that art. The magnificent villa which he erected at Tiber, where he spent his declining years, and the ruins of which even now cover a space equal to a large town, would indicate this, as well as the grandiose mausoleum which towered high above the banks of the Tiber at Rome, and which is now depleted of much of its statuary and ornamenta- tion, the Christian church of Saint Angelo. The treat- ment which he accorded Trajan's great architect, the accomplished Apollodorus, is still another evidence of his vanity. Hadrian, like Louis I. of Bavaria, found delight in practising personally the profession of architecture, and drew plans of buildings, which the people thought was OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 159 "unbecoming a prince. Possibly this objection was raised to discourage their ruler rather than the more truthful one that, his plans were not up to the high standard of his time. However that may be, he insisted upon their being executed, and it is said was rather pleased if the architects found fault with them. But this was not the case with Apollodorus, whether because of what he had accomplished for his predecessor Trajan, or because of professional jealousy. Apollodorus was the architect of the Trajan column, composed of only twenty-four stones, although one hun- dred and twenty-eight Roman feet in height, and the square which surrounded it, considered the most beau- tiful assemblage of buildings then known. The relief carvings which were wound spirally around the Trajan column like a ribbon, represented the incidents of the expedition against the Darians. The column sup- ported a statue of Trajan, which Pope Sextus V. substi- tuted for one of Saint Peter. A greater absurdity can hardly be conceived than that of placing a peaceful apostle over the warlike representations of the Dacian war. Apollodorus was also the architect and engineer of the srreat bridge which stretched across the Danube in lower Hungary, which was formed of twelve piers and twenty- 160 SOME OLD MASTEKS two arches, said to have been the grandest use of the arch in such works. Each arch was sixty feet wide and one hundred and fifty feet high. The total height of the bridge was three hundred feet and its length a mile and a half. Hadrian destroyed this magnificent work, some say through fear of its use by barbarians, others through jealousy. Perhaps the circumstances attending the death of Apollodorus would point to the second rea- son as the true one. Hadrian had made the drawings of the double temple of Venus at Rome, which he submitted to Apollodorus, doubtless for his commendation rather than his criti- cism. The architect saw at a glance that the sitting figures of the two goddesses, Roma and Venus, which the Emperor had introduced in the little temple, were out of proportion, and so large that if they stood up they would bump their heads against the roof, if they did not take it off entirely. He called the Emperor's attention to this fact with the result that Hadrian became very angry, or pretended to be so, and Apollodorus lost his head for his frankness. The favorite architect of Hadrian was Detrianus, to whom he entrusted many of his most important under- takings. We find that he restored the Pantheon of Agrippa, the Basilica of Xeptune, the Forum of Au- OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 161 gustus and the Baths of Agrippina. As original works he designed the Mausoleum of Hadrian, to which we have already alluded ; the bridge of ^Elius, ornamented with its covering of brass, and supported by its forty-two columns, terminating at the top with as many statues, and the villa at Tivoli. He also erected many structures for his royal patron in Gaul, among which was the Basilica Plotina, the most superb building in that coun- try, and again other buildings in England. The Roman wall from Eden in Cumberland to Tyne in Northumber- land, a distance of eighty miles, which was built as a defence against the Caledonians, is attributed to Detria- nus. In Greece he embellished the famous temple of Jupiter Olympus, and in Palestine he rebuilt Jerusalem, erected a theatre and various pagan temples out of the stone from the Jewish temples, and completed his sac- rilege there by placing a statue of Jupiter on the spot where Christ rose from the dead, and one of Venus on Mount Calvary. A feat, however, which has perpetu- ated his fame quite as much as any other of his profes- sional acchievements was the removing of the colossal bronze statue of jSTero, which stood in the court of the "Golden Palace." This difficult task he is said to have accomplished without changing the erect posture of the huge figure, which, it will be remembered, was one hun- 162 SOME OLD MASTERS dred and twenty-eight feet high, by the assistance of twenty-four elephants. In returning once more to the Greek architects who have been left, while a rather garrulous ramble has been made into the architectural personality of Rome, it may be well not to attempt to do so at once, but to pause for a moment, since we are so far from the chronology of our subject, while the reader makes the acquaintance of two Hellenic artists who, in the time of Quintius Metel- lus, 147 B.C., found professional employment in Roman territory. Metellus was one of the first Romans to favor magnifi- cent architecture in his home capitol, and with the booty gathered in his Macedonian campaigns he erected two temples in Rome, said to have been the first temples built of marble in that city, one of which was dedicated to Jupiter Stator, and the other to the white-armed Juno. The interiors were profusely ornamented with the works of the great Grecian masters, Praxiteles, Poly- cletus and Dionysius figuring largely. The names of the architects which Metellus brought or imported from Greece for this work were Saurus and Batrachus, who may possibly have been Ionians, inasmuch as they employed the Ionic order. These tem- ples were restored in the Corinthian style, under Augus- OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 163 tus, two hundred years later, by Hermodorus of Sala- mis, who was also the architect of the temple of Mars in the Flaminian Circus. It is told of Saurus and Batrachus that they were so much pleased with their work that they asked for no reward other than the privilege of having their names inscribed on the temples. But as this honor was denied them, they resorted to expedient to effect the same end. As the name Saurus stood for lizard and Batrachus for frog, they carved lizards and frogs on the temples, and were comparatively satisfied. A rather absurd mistake occurred in respect to these two temples after they were completed. It seems that nothing remained to be done but to add the statues of Jupiter and Juno to each re- spectively ; but by some strange oversight the figure of Jupiter was erected in the house of Juno, and that of Juno before the shrine of Jupiter. However, as the two deities were rather closely connected by marriage, the mistake was conveniently attributed to a whim of the gods and was not remedied. 164 SOME OLD MASTERS CHAPTEK IX. THE ALEXANDRIAN ARCHITECTS. HE boldest, most ingenious and original archi- tect who found favor in the sight of Alexander the Great was undoubtedly Dinocrates, who, like his august patron, was also a Macedonian, and to whom an allusion has already been made in connection with the temple of Diana at Ephesus. His very introduction into the notice and attention of his distinguished fellow-countryman would tend to prove that Dinocrates was a person of expediency, if nothing else. Let Vitruvius tell the story : "Dinoc- rates, the architect, relying on the powers of his skill and ingenuity, while Alexander was in the midst of his conquests, set out from Macedonia to the army, desirous of gaining the commendation of his sovereign. That his introduction to the royal presence might be facilitated, he obtained letters from his countrymen and relations to men of the first rank and nobility about the king's per- son, by whom, being kindly received, he besought them DINOCRATES BEFORE U.EXAMIKR THE CREAT. OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 165 to take the earliest opportunity of accomplishing his wish. They promised fairly, but were slow in perform- ing, waiting, as they alleged, for a proper occasion. Thinking, however, that they deferred this without just grounds, he took his own course for the object he had in view. He was, I should state, a man of tall stature, pleasing countenance and altogether of dignified appear- ance. Trusting to the gifts with which nature had en- dowed him, he put off his ordinary clothing, and, having annointed himself with oil, crowned his head with a wreath of poplar, slung a lion's skin across his left shoul- der, and, carrying a large club in his right hand, he sallied forth to the royal tribunal, at a period when the king was dispensing justice. "The novelty of his appearance excited the attention of the people, and Alexander, soon discovering with astonishment the object of their curiosity, ordered the crowd to make way for him, and demanded to know who he was. 'A Macedonian architect,' replied Dinoc- rates, 'who suggests schemes and designs worthy your royal renown. I propose to form Mount Athos into the statue of a man holding a spacious city in his left hand and in his right a huge vase, into which shall be collected all the streams of the mountain, which shall thence be poured into the sea.' 166 SOME OLD PIASTERS "Alexander, delighted at the proposition, made im- mediate inquiry if the soil of the neighborhood were of a quality capable of yielding sufficient produce for such a state. When, however, he found that all its supplies must be furnished by sea, he thus addressed Dinocrates : 'I admire the grand outline of your scheme, and am well pleased with it ; but I am of opinion he would be much to blame who planted a colony on such a spot. For as an infant is nourished by the milk of its mother, depending thereon for its progress to maturity, so a city depends on the fertility of the country surrounding it for its riches, its strength in population, and not less for its defence against an enemy. Though your plan might be carried into execution, yet I think it impolitic. I never- theless request your attendance upon me, that I may otherwise avail myself of your ingenuity.' From that time Dinocrates was in constant attendance on the king, and followed him into Egypt." Vitruvius does not explain why it was that Dinoc- rates singled out the curious costume, or rather lack of costume, which he did to attract the attention of Alex- ander. It was, in fact, the garb of an athlete. Among the early Greeks a professional athlete was regarded as a person of social distinction, and if a particularly suc- cessful one, a personage to whom a statue might be OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 167 erected, or upon whom other honors might be conferred. In fact, the uniform of an athlete was, as a rule, a pass- port to the best society. Dinocrates undoubtedly knew this, and as he was seeking an entre into the very high- est court circles, he took not an extraordinary method of gaining it. Mount Athos, which the architect proposed to take as a basis for what was really to be a gigantic statue of Alexander himself, was a pyramidal mountain, at the extreme end of the Acte peninsula, having an altitude of 6780 feet, and crowned with a cap of white marble, which Dinocrates undoubtedly had in mind to utilize for a helmet. The country surrounding the mountain was remarkable for its rural beauty, its woods and ravines, and its people for their longevity. Xo wonder that Alexander did not wish to disturb this peaceful neighborhood. Alexander Pope, who has given us an admirable rhymed translation of the songs of Homer, seems to have been greatly impressed with the practicability of this remarkable idea of Dinocrates. Spence, the author of "Polymetis," was once discussing the in- cident which Vitruvius relates with Pope, remark- ing that he could not see how the Macedonian architect could ever have carried his proposal into execution, when 168 SOME OLD MASTERS Pope at once replied : "For my part, I have long since had an idea how the thing might be done ; and if any- body would make me a present of a Welsh mountain and pay the workmen, I would undertake to see it ex- ecuted. T have quite formed it sometimes in mv imagi- nation: the figure must be in a reclining posture, be- cause of the hollowing that would be necessary, and for the city's being in one hand. It should be a rude, un- equal hill, and might be helped with groves of trees for the eyebrows, and a wood for the hair. The natural green turf should be left wherever it would be necessary to represent the ground he reclines on. It should be con- trived so that the true point of view should be at a considerable distance. When you are near it, it should still have the appearance of a rough mountain, but at a proper distance such a rising should be the leg, and such another an arm. It would be best if there were a river, or rather a lake, at the bottom of it, for the rivulet that came through his other hand to tumble down the hill and discharge itself into the sea." Mrs. Baillie, in her "Tour on the Continent," has also a comment to make on this proposition of Dinocrates and recalls the fact that a somewhat similar idea was ad- vanced to Xapoleon I. "It is somewhat singular," she says, "that Mr. Pope should have thought this mad OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 1 69 project practicable, but it appears that there are still persons who dream of such extravagant and fruitless undertakings. Some modern Dinocrates had suggested to Bonaparte to have cut from the mountain of the Sim- plon an immense colossal figure, as a sort of Genius of the Alps. This was to have been of such enormous size that all the passengers should have passed between its legs and arms in a zigzag direction." Another ingenious conception is attributed to Dinoc- rates in respect to the temple of Diana, which he erected in the city of Alexandria for Ptolemy Philadelphus, in memory of the sister-wife of that potentate, Arsinoe. This relationship, by the way. i- said to have been the first ever formed, although it became quite common later in the time of the Ptolemies. Arsinoe was much beloved by her husband, who not only called an entire district in Egypt. Arsinoites, after her, but also gave her name to several cities within his realm. Her features are still preserved to us upon coins struck in her honor, and which represent her crowned with a diadem. When Dinocrates received the commission to erect a temple to so highly esteemed and devotedly remembered a queen, he apparently set his ingenuity to work to give birth to a novelty that should not only please the king, but astonish his subjects. It finally matured in a prop- 170 SOME OLD MASTERS osition to roof the proposed temple with loadstones, in order that they might attract into the air an iron statue of Arsinoe. As the figure of the queen would thus appear suspended in the air without any apparent mun- dane reason, the inference could be drawn that it was by the divine will. Some authorities say that the entire inner walls of the temple were to have been lined with loadstones, so that the statue might appear suspended in the very centre of the cell, touching nothing. Fortu- nately, both Dinocrates and Ptolemy died before the project could be executed, otherwise they might have been witnesses to the miserable failure such a chimerical fancy must have proved if attempted, as any modern electrician will attest. When at Ectabana with Alexander, Dinocrates had still another opportunity to display his resourceless orig- inality, in directing the obsequies of Hephiestion, which were of a most extraordinarily elaborate nature, costing, it is recorded, 12,000 talents, or what would be equiva- lent to over $1,300,000. Tlephsostion was a Macedonian and a close and warm friend of Alexander, accompany- ing the young king in a military capacity throughout most of his early foreign campaigns. So attached was Alexander to his friend that he not only showed him many marks of his personal esteem, but bestowed upon OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 171 him in marriage Drypetis, the sister of his own bride, Statira. At Ectabana Hepha?stion was attacked by a fever which had a fatal termination after an illness of seven days. Alexander's grief over the loss of his brother-in-law was violent and extreme, and is said to have found vent in the most extravagant demonstrations. He ordered general mourning throughout the entire em- pire, and Dinocrates to build a funeral pile and monu- ment to him in Babylon, where the body had been con- veyed from Ectabana, at a cost of $1,000,000. But the richest occasion afforded Dinocrates to dis- play to the fullest his great talents and genius was the laying out of the city which Alexander determined to found in Egypt, and which, bearing the conqueror's name, was destined to become the centre of the com- mercial activity of the new empire. This great city, which rapidly grew to be one of the most populous of ancient times, and which has maintained, if not its original share of industrial supremacy, at least an im- portant existence throughout the ages that have elapsed from its nativity to the present time, we cannot resist thinking was probably as much the inspiration of Alex- ander's favorite architect, realizing its professional pos- sibilities, as it was that of Alexander himself. Pliny informs us that Dinocrates died before he could give 172 SOME OLD MASTERS the city the full proportions which he had planned, but not certainly until its principal features were executed. Strabo, the "squint-eyed" geographer, gives a more circumstantial account of the planning of the new city by Dinocrates and his powerful and ambitious patron. It must have been indeed an interesting sight to see the two Macedonians upon the plane which was selected for the site of the city, laying out the streets and avenues, marking the run of the walls that were to surround it, locating the different sites where were to stand the pub- lic buildings, parks, palaces and temples, and perhaps disputing and arguing over the questions that arose, as two such dominant intellects might very naturally be supposed to do. The basis of the plan were two main streets crossing each other at right angles, each one hundred feet wide and lined with colonnades. The other streets were to run parallel to these. ISTear the centre of the proposed city was to be clustered the public buildings, the Mu- seum and the Serna, which subsequently contained an alabaster coffin in which rested the remains of Alexan- der. Alabaster, which the Greks obtained from Thebes, was much used for mortuary purposes, as well as for columns and statues. Plutarch also describes the planning of the city as OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 173 follows : "As chalk-dust was lacking, they laid out their lines on the black, loamy soil with flour, first swinging a circle to enclose a wide space, and then drawing lines as chords of the arc to complete with harmonious propor- tions, something like the oblong form of a soldier's cape. While the king was congratulating himself on this plan, on a. sudden a countless number of birds of various sorts flew over from the land and the lake in clouds, and, set- tling upon the spot, devoured in a short time all the flour, so that Alexander was much disturbed in mind at the omen involved, till the augurs restored his confidence again, telling him the city he was planning was destined to be rich in resources and a feeder of the nations of men," a prophecy which proved its truth in the fulfil- ment. Dinocrates was not, however, the only architect em- ployed in laying out so large a city, as might naturally be supposed, although he was, of course, the governing one. How many more there were it would be difficult to say, but there is record at least of two others, both probably employed by the rapacious and unscrupulous Cleomenes, whom Alexander left in Egypt as hyparch under Ptolemy Philadelphia. Olynthius is the name given of one of these architects and Parmenion of the other. The latter was entrusted more particularly with 174 SOME OLD MASTERS the superintendency of the works of sculpture, espe- cially in the temple of Serapis, which, by the way, came to be called by his name, Pharmenionis. Bryaxis is also credited with statuary work there. Upon the island of Pharos, which was joined to the city of Alexander by a wide mole, about three-quarters of a mile long, in which were two bridges over channels communicating between the eastern and western har- bors, was built by Ptolemy Soter and his son in the year 282 B.C., a most famous lighthouse and a very glorious ancestor of such guardians of the coast as exist to-day. This lighthouse was planned by Sostratus, another re- markable character in the architectural roll of honor of those early times. He was a native of Cnidus, a town in Caria in Asia Minor, to the south of Ionia and Lydia, celebrated also as the birthplace of several other men who rose to distinction in the early days of the Greek colonies as mathematicians and astronomers. Cnidus was almost equally remarkable in its possession of two famous works of the statuary's art : one the figure of a lion carved from a single block of Pentelic marble, ten feet long by six feet wide, which was executed to com- memorate the great victory of Caria ; the other a statue of Venus by Praxiteles, which occupied one of the three OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 175 temples to the goddess in that city. It is said that Nico- medes of Bithynia was so fascinated by the rare beauty of this figure that he offered to liquidate the debt of Cnidus, which was by no means a small one, if the citi- zens would cede the statue to him. They refused, how- ever, to part with it at any price, esteeming it one of the glories of their city. Cnidus contained many beautiful architectural monuments, the ruins of which are still prominent. Sostratus, the architect, was the son of Dexiphanes, and must not be mistaken for any one of several other artists of the same name who are conspicuously men- tioned by the early writers. His first fame was ac- quired through his connection with the celebrated so- called hanging gardens which he built in his native coun- try. They consisted of a series of porticos or colon nades supporting terraces, surrounding an enclosure, possibly the Agora of the city, and served as a prome- nade for the inhabitants. Pliny says that Sostratus was the first to erect anything of the kind. This state- ment may be excused, either because the hanging gar- dens of Sostratus differed widely from the well-known ones of Babylon, which antedated them by several hun- dred years, or because Pliny forgot for a moment those of Semiramis. 176 SOME OLD MASTEES Strabo, who was probably right in his judgment, thinks that the greatest of Sostratus's works was the towering light-house at Pharos, which he built at a cost of about $900,000, although from its size it would seem that it should have cost more. This colossal tower at once took its place among the seven wonders of the ancient world. It pierced the sky at a height of four hundred and fifty feet, or about one hundred and sev- enty-five feet above the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge and fifty feet above the torch with which the Goddess of Liberty illuminates the harbor of New York. But its height alone was not more marvellous than its other proportions, which were upon a most extravagant scale. The ground story was hexagonal, the sides alternately convex and concave, and each was one-eighth of a mile in length. The second and third stories were each of the same form, although decreasing in size ; the fourth was square, flanked by four round towers, and the fifth or top story was circular. A grand staircase led through each story to the roof of the building, where every night massive fires were lighted, revealing the sea for a hun- dred miles. When we consider that this colossal building was made entirely of wrought stone — when we reflect upon the amount of labor involved in its construction, its OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. l77 ponderous size and dizzy altitude — we cannot but marvel at the extraordinary breadth of conception manifested by its architect and builders and the tenacity with which they must have held to the completion of their huge undertaking. It is not to be wondered at that when Sostratus stood off and contemplated this mighty prod- uct of his imagination and genius, after its completion, he should have been actuated with the desire to have his name associated with it for all time, and indelibly en- graved somewhere upon its imperishable stone. The story is that Sostratus engraved an inscription upon one of the stones which he afterward covered with cement, and on the cement he inscribed the name of Ptolemy, knowing that in time the cement would decay and leave exposed the hidden writing upon the stone beneath. Strabo says that the concealed inscription read: "Sostratus, the friend of kings, made me ;" but Lucien gives it differently, thus: " Sostratus of Cnidus, the son of Dexiphanes [that he might not be mistaken for any other Sostratus, doubtless], to the Gods the Saviors for the safety of Mariners." Pliny does not share the opinion that the inscription was a concealed one, but speaks of the incident as a special instance of the magnanimity of Ptolemy, that he should not only have allowed the name of the architect ITS SOME OLD MASTERS to be inscribed upon the building, but that he should have also left its nature and language to the discretion of Sostratus. The words "Gods the Saviors/' he be- lieves, referred to the reigning king and queen, with their successors, who were ambitious of the title '"Soteros" or Savior. It would be unfair, perhaps, to the great Grecian architects of the time of Alexander if Andronicus Cyr- rhestes were to be classed among them, and Cyr- rhestes also, having been a scientific character with a leaning toward astronomy, might with some justice feel aggrieved were he to know that he was to be considered in a category of professional men to which his calling was in no degree related. Still the little building which he designed and erected in Athens is such an interest- ing one, and has always held so prominent a place among the architectural treasures of the Attic city, that it might be regarded as an intentional oversight to leave him out in a book of this kind. Some authorities place this building as belonging to the time of Alexander the Great, others believe that it was erected at a later period, and one writer gives Andronicus an existence as late as 100 B.C. This building, which Delambre speaks of as "the most curious existing monument of the practical gnomonics OF GKEEK ARCHITECTURE. 179 of antiquity," has sometimes been called the ''Tower of JEolus." Let us see what Vitruvius has to say regard- ing the winds and the building: "Some have chosen to reckon only four winds: the East, blowing from the equinoctial sunrise ; the South, from the noonday sun ; the West, from the equinoctial sun-setting; and the Xorth, from the Polar Stars. But those who are more exact have reckoned eight winds, particularly Androni- cus Cyrrhestes, who on this system erected an octagon marble tower at Athens, and on every side of the octagon he has wrought a figure in relievo, representing the wind which blew against that side ; the top of this tower he finished with a conical marble, on which he placed a brazen Triton, holding a wand in his hand ; this Triton is so contrived that he turns with the wind, and always stops when he directly faces it, pointing his wand over the figure of the wind at that time blowing." It is in connection with his allusion to the tower of Cyrrhestes, and his description of how to construct a sun-dial, that Vitruvius gives some valuable hints as to the way the ancients laid out a city so that its streets were protected from the prevailing winds. He says : "Let a marble slab be fixed level in the centre of the space enclosed by the walls, or let the ground be smoothed or levelled, so that the slab may not be necessary. In the 180 SOME OLD MASTERS centre of this plane, for the purpose of marking the shadow correctly, a brazen gnomon must be erected. The shadow cast by the gnomon is to be marked about the fifth ante-meridional hour, and the extreme point of the shadow accurately determined. From the central point of the space whereon the gnomon stands, as a centre, with a distance equal to the length of the shadow just observed, describe a circle. After the sun has passed the meridian watch the shadow which the gnomon continues to cast till the moment when its ex- tremity again touches the circle which has been de- scribed. From the two points thus obtained in the cir- cumference of the circle describe two arcs intersecting each other, and through their intersection and the centre of the circle first described draw a line to its extremity : this line will indicate the north and south points. One-sixteenth part of the circumference of the whole circle is to be set out to the right and left of the north and south points, and drawing lines from the points thus obtained to the centre of the circle, we hav? one-eighth part of the circumference for the region of the north, and another eighth part for the region of the south. Divide the remainders of the circumference on each side into three equal parts, and the divisions or regions of the eight winds will be obtained; then let OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 181 the directions of the streets and lanes be determined by the tendency of the lines which separate the different regions of the winds. Thus will their force be broken and turned away from the honses and public ways ; for if the directions of the streets be parallel to those of the winds, the latter will rush through them with greater violence, since from occupying the whole space of the surrounding country they will be forced up through a narrow pass. Streets or public ways ought therefore to be so set out that when the winds blow hard their violence may be broken against the angles of the different divisions of the city, and thus dissipated." This tower still stands a fairly well-preserved ruin, and retains many of its original architectural features and decorations. There are two entrances through distyle porticos, the capitals of the columns presenting an original treatment of the Corinthian order. One of these entrances is on the northeast side and the other on the southwest. On the south side is a circular apsidical projection. This was probably originally used for a reservoir to hold the water brought from the spring Clep- sydra, on the northwest of the Acropolis, which was employed as the power to run a clepsydra, or water- elock, taking its name, as may be inferred, from the spring. The remains of this clock are still visible. The 182 SOME OLD MASTERS exterior of the building was also arranged as a sun- clock, having lines engraved upon the different sides, with gnomons above them, forming a series of sun-dials which indicated the time by shadows. Thus were the people of Athens kept publicly posted as to the time of day — by the sun when it shone, or by the water-clock when it was obscured by clouds. The character of the architecture, the proportions of the building, as well as its secular uses, were all quite out of harmony with Grecian art and methods, and are essentially Roman. As a similar structure existed at one time in Rome, supposed to have been built by the same scientist, the thought is naturally suggested that Cyrrhestes may have been a Roman. In closing this reference to the prominent architects of the disintegrating period of Grecian history, it would seem that it only remains to recall Philo, or Philon, as some of the writers have preferred to call him, once more, who nourished about 318 b.c. As there were several artists of his name who became conspicuous at about the same time, our Philo will be distinguished from the others in being a native Athenian. The reader will probably remember that he has been already mentioned as the architect employed by Demet- rius Phalerus, to build a portico of twelve Doric col- OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE. • 183 imms to the great temple of Ceres and Proserpine at Eleusis, originally erected by Ictinus ; but his most am- bitious work was probably the armory, so called, which he designed for Lycurgus in the Piraeus, and which it is said was large enough to contain the arms for one thou- sand ships. He was also engaged in enlarging the port of Piraeus, and was the architect of the white marble theatre at Athens, which was finished by Ariobarzanes, and many years afterward rebuilt by Hadrian. Vitru- vius says that he also designed a number of Greek temples. Philo must have been a man of considerable versatil- ity, for it is related that in giving an account of his work at Piraeus "he expressed himself with such pre- cision, purity and eloquence that the Athenian people — excellent judges of those matters — pronounced him equally a fluent orator and an admirable architect." He wrote also several works on the architecture of temples and one on the naval basin which he constructed in the Athenian port. THE END. INDEX. 1S5 INDEX OF ARCHITECTS AND ARCHITECTURAL SCULPTORS. ,-Eacus, Agamedes, AgXAPTXS, Antimachides, axtiphilus, axtistates, Apollodorus, Athenis, Batrachus, Bryaxis, BUPALUS, . Calleschros, Callicrates, Caiximachus, Calos (see Perdix; Caxxia, Luigi, Celer, Chersiphrox, Clecetas, . gorcebus, . CossrTius, Ctesiphox, page . 27 42, G3 . 89 . SO . 80 . 80 19, 158 . 87 . 162 140, 145, 174 . 87 . 80 105, 114 53, 58 S2 155 38 133 123 81 08 186 INDEX. *» Cyrbhestes, Andronicus D.EDALUS, . Damophilus, Daphnis, . Demetrius, Detrianus, DlBUTADES, DlNOCBATES, EUPOLINUS, EUEYCLES, . Gaudentius ( Note ) , GlTIADAS, . gobgasus, . Hermocbeon, Hebmodobus, Hebmogenes, Hebmon, HlPPODAMUS, ICABUS, ICTINUS, Lacbates, . Leochabes, Libon, Megacles, Menalippus, Metagenes, mxesicles, mutianus, Mybilla, Democopus Olynthitts, , Pabmenion, -1 ffft PAGE . ITS . 30 . 80 74, 77 74, 77 19, 160 37 19, 76, 164 133 89 17 41 86 89 163 53 89 105 32 19, 107, 114, 123 . 89 140, 146 82, 84 . 80 . 127 68, 124 I, 112, 128 76 133 173 173 1! INDEX. 187 PAGE Peonius, 74, 77 Perdix, 31, 30 Phileus, 140 Phidias, 13, 85, 90, 98, 115, 131 Philo, 123,182 Philocles, 121 polycletus, 13, 131 polycritus, 37 PORINUS, 80 POTH^US, 89 Praxiteles, 13, 74, 130, 144 Pteras, 3 ^ Pyrrhus, 8y Pytheus, 57 Rhoecus, 19, 38 Satyrus, I 40 Saurus, 1° 2 Scopas, 58, 74, 130 Severus, • 155 SlLENUS, 1^3 Smilis, 3S sostratus, i? 1 * Spintharus, . 65 Stallius, Caius, 127 Stallitjs, Marius, 127 Talos ( see Perdix ) . Tarchesius, 57 Theodorus, 19, 38, 70 Timotheus, 140, 140 Trophonius, 42, 63 Vitruvius, 20, 49, 68, 71, 79, 83, 104, 170 > v v ..r aT o . * o * o ' -0 »°*V SI * V 6 0«« ,40 V o iP -T '«. -i> A> fc". ^ A 1 ^* o * ^ vPV vv (^ - W a ^ •" *v °«/» °"° ^ ?>* ^^ "W^ a- * 7 * a° V '- 1