Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 3, Anatomy-Astronomy

ARCHITECTURE.
History, plest form of what has been called the Doric Order,
though it would be more correctly designated the Doric
Style ; for the term Order is objectionable, because it sup¬
poses- rules and limitations to what in its best times was
subjected to neither. As, however, it is the term best
understood, we shall not hesitate to continue it. It is dif¬
ficult, if not impossible, to ascertain where and in what
manner the Doric order originated. The example we have
referred to, though the earliest, does not differ in its lead¬
ing features and characteristics from the more perfect
specimens of later date ; and it bears no direct and easy
analogy to any species of columnar arrangement of other
countries and earlier times. The story of Vitruvius, even
supposing it rational, does not coincide with the Greek
style of Doric at all, but, if with any thing, with the Ro¬
man examples of it, which at the best are mean and in¬
elegant deteriorations of the simple and beautiful original.
This author says that “ Dorus, the son of Hellenus and of
the nymph Orseis, king of Achaia and of all the Pelopon¬
nesus, having formerly built a temple to Juno in the an¬
cient city of Argos, this temple was found by chance
to be in that manner which we call Doric.”1 In another
place he deduces the arrangements of this same order
from those of a primitive log-hut in the first place, through
all the refinements of carpentry, leaving nothing to chance,
but settling with the utmost precision what, in the latter,
suggested the various parts of the former. Chance in
one case, and experience in another, however, are not
enough for this author ; but he also tells us that the Doric
column was modelled by the Grecian colonists in Asia
Minor, on the proportions of the male human figure, and
was made six diameters in height, because a man was found
to be six times the length of his foot; and that eventual
improvements occasioned the column to be made one dia¬
meter more, or seven instead of six. “ Thus the Doric
column was first adapted to edifices, having the propor¬
tions, strength, and beauty of the body of a man !” The
earliest examples of this order, however, are those which
least agree with the primitive forms and proportions of
Vitruvius; the columns at Corinth hardly exceed four
diameters in height, while in later examples they gradu¬
ally extend, till, in the temple of Minerva on the promon¬
tory of Sunium, the columns are nearly six diameters, be¬
ing one of the tallest specimens of pure Greek origin ever
executed. If the trunks of trees used in the structure of
tents suggested the first idea of columns, and of the Doric
in particular, as many contend, how is it that the earli¬
est specimens discovered are the most massive ? For the
merest saplings would have formed the wooden proto¬
columns, and necessarily, when imitated in stone, they
would not have been made more bulky than the less tena¬
cious nature of the material required; much less would
the slender wooden architrave have been magnified into
the ponderous entablature of the primitive permanent ar¬
chitectural structures of all nations. In the construction
of edifices with the trunks of trees, and timber generally,
then, we do not find the origin of Doric architecture. If
we have recourse to Egypt, the mother of the arts and
sciences, we shall indeed find many things even in the
more ancient structures which may have furnished an idea
of the Doric arrangements to the fertile imagination of a
Greek, fhe later works of that country cannot be trust¬
ed for originality, as they may themselves have been in¬
fluenced by Greek examples; but we hardly dare assert
that the Doric order was suggested by any thing in Egyp¬
tian architecture, though in making such assertion we
should be supported by the opinions of many competent
judges. The temple at Amada in Nubia can hardly be History,
positively assumed as an example of the proto-Doric,
though it may of the proto-columnar. Nevertheless, the piate LL
example is striking, as it certainly possesses the Doric
character. The broad square abacus, and the cylindrical
or even conoidal tendency of the shaft, marked as it is, as
if for fluting, with the plain, simple, and massive epistyle
or architrave superimposed, are all in accordance with
the Hellenic columnar ordinance; still there is nothing
to connect that rude model with the positive and some¬
what formally arranged example at Corinth with which
we began. It must be remembered, however, that two
connecting links between Egyptian and Greek architec¬
ture are lost; Lower Egypt, with its splendid capital
Memphis, and Phoenicia; through which latter the learn¬
ing and taste of the inhabitants of the former country ap¬
pear to have taken their course; but of neither of these
do we possess architectural remains that bear on the sub¬
ject in question. In the Pharaonic structures of Thebes
we find both the tumescent and the cylindrical columns;
and an amalgamation and modification of the two would
easily produce the Doric column, or something very much
like it, which may have been executed in those places, and
so transferred to Greece. Of the triglyphs, the most dis¬
tinguishing part of the Doric entablature, there are manv
indications in the early works of Upper Egypt; and in the
structures of the Ptolemies they are still more evident;
though it may be objected that, in these, those indications
were borrowed from the Greeks after the Macedonian con¬
quest. But it must be borne in mind that the Egyptian na¬
tion did not change its character, religion, or usages by the
change of its governors ; and the Egyptians were, through
the whole period of their existence as a nation, an origi¬
nating and not an imitative people; whereas the Greeks
seized on a beauty wherever they found one, and made it
their own by improving it. The forms and arrangement,
too, of many of the Greek mouldings, and the manner of
carving to enrich them, are common in the earliest ornate
works of the Egyptians; and such things are as strong
evidence of community of origin, as the existence of simi¬
lar words having the same meaning in different languages
is of theirs. We may be asked, why the Greeks cannot
be allowed to have originated that beautiful style of ar¬
chitecture which they brought to the perfection it displays
in their works ? To which we think it a sufficient answer,
that it would be against the common course of events if it
were so. In Egypt we can trace a progress from the ruder
to the more advanced, and, with trifling discrepancies, to
the most perfect; but in Greece, the earliest specimen of
columnar architecture that presents itself displays almost
all the qualities and perfections which are found in works
of periods when learning and civility were at their acme in
that country. We cannot find in Greece a stepping-stone
from the Celtic or Pelasgic Gate of the Lions of Mycenm, to
the Doric columns at Corinth, and hardly to the Fane of
Minerva in the Acropolis of Athens; and have therefore to
seek the gradations among the people with whom we have
seen they were connected, and whose country furnishes
them in a great measure, if not entirely. Differences in
climate and in political constitution, as well as in forms
of religion, account sufficiently for the differences between
the arrangements of the religious structures of the Greeks
and those of Egypt. At the present day we find, that
though they may be built in the same style, and for the
worship of the same divinity, there is a wide difference be¬
tween a church in Italy and a church in England, and a
still greater between a church in the former country and
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1 Vitruvius, lib. i. cap. i.