ABSTRACT
The Doric order in architecture, after the temples of Ægina and Olympia, achieved its most perfect expression in the Parthenon of Ictinus and brought the long efforts towards eurhythmy, proportion, and optical anticipations to completion. Henceforth Doric buildings could be multiplied; Mnesicles solved some difficult problems in the Propylæa— thought as much of by the Ancients as the Parthenon—and Ictinus also erected the temple at Phigalia. Nevertheless there was no further progress, rather even a decadence in the Doric order. The Ionic order, which came into being in Greece in Asia, had not yet been used in continental Greece except for isolated columns—supporting ex votos, and not architectural—and the Treasury of Siphnus was a purely Ionian work implanted in the soil of Delphi. The Ionic first made its way into continental Greece under the ægis of the Doric. Departures from the strict rules of the Doric order opened the door to the newcomer. The Parthenon, like the old Hekatompedon of the Pisistratidæ, maybe, had certain Ionic elements such as the frieze, and details of the mouldings, and the number of the columns of the façade. This was still but a small thing. Mnesicles went further: he placed two interior rows of three Ionic columns in the Propylæa. Other buildings of the second half of the 5th century show this same association of orders, the Ionic still playing a subordinate rôle (exterior frieze of the Theseum; columns and interior frieze of the temple of Phigalia, etc.). Finally, the Ionic became entirely emancipated from Doric tutelage. The temple of Athena Nike is conceived entirely in this order, of which the Erechtheum, larger and more sumptuous, was the ultimate consecration on Greek soil. Richer, more elegant and more supple in its ornament, it responded better to the new tendencies of luxury and wealth that appeared in the second half of the 5th century, and which developed progressively; it was to win general favour. But then comes the rise of the Corinthian capital in much the same way. A variant of the Ionic, inspired by the acanthus crowning funerary stelae (Fig. 10), it was employed for the first time in the temple of Phigalia for the head of an isolated column, and this building demonstrates the hierarchical alliance of the three principles—the Doric constituting the mass of the building, the Ionic providing the columns and interior friezes, and the Corinthian limited to a single column in the cella. The tholos of Polyclitus the Younger at Epidaurus still preserved the subordination of Ionic to Doric. But the Choragic ex voto of Lysicrates at Athens (335-4), in the 4th century, is the first entirely Corinthian building. Still richer and more deeply sculped than the Ionic, the Corinthian capital—one can hardly speak of an order—corresponds with the third phase of an architecture that was evolving in the direction of a growing luxuriousness.
