MATERIALS AND MODES OF CONSTRUCTION. 45

Hermogenes was adopted from the East, and became thenceforth
the definite type. A later development of it, found in the Forum
of Trajan, is illustrated here (Plate XXI).
A number of Ionic capitals are to be found in the Christian
basilicas of Rome, many (though not all) of which have been taken
from classical buildings (compare Plate XXI). The shaft is often
unfluted ; its height was from 8 to 9 diameters.
The Corinthian Order.1
In Republican Rome the Ionic and Corinthian orders are distin-
guished only by their capitals. The type of cornice in use at the
end of the Republic and down to the time of Augustus was that
of the temple of Fortune Virilis, so-called and it has recently
been pointed out by Fiechter that the cornices of the temples
of Saturn and Julius Caesar, of the Regia (Plate XXII), and, we
may add, of the Horrea Agrippiana all belong to this period.
If the Doric and Ionic orders found but little favour with the
Roman architects in the designs for their temples, it was far other-
wise with the Corinthian. Not only did the richness of its decoration
appeal much more to the Roman instinct, but it had the special
advantage of presenting the same design in all four faces, and could
be employed equally well for the peristyle of a rectangular or
circular building, or in the decoration of the hemicycles which played
so important a factor in the setting out of the plan. The Greek
Corinthian capital, though varied in design, and in many cases
of great beauty, was never completely developed, and it remained
to the Roman to systematise the double range of leaves which
surround the lower part of the bell, and to give a greater sense of
1 Vitruvius informs us that the capital was invented by Callimachus at
Corinth. Now Callimachus was the craftsman who is said by Pausanias to
have made a golden lamp for the goddess Minerva Polias in the Erechtheum,
and probably also the bronze palm tree reaching to the roof which drew off the
smoke. As the earliest Greek Corinthian capitals all suggest a metallic origin,
and as Callimachus is known to have worked also in marble, it is conjectured
that he reproduced in marble a type of capital which was copied from one in
bronze. Pausanias (ii, 3) refers also to Corinthian bronze, which he says “ got
its colour by being plunged red-hot into this water,” referring to some parti-
cular spring. Corinthian bronze, for various reasons, was celebrated in ancient
times, and Pliny (Nt. H., XXXIV, 13) speaking of the Porticus built by
Casus Octavius in 168 b.c., says it was called Corinthian from its brazen
Corinthian capitals. The title, therefore, may have been given because it was
invented by Callimachus of Corinth, or on account of the material in which
the first prototype was wrought. Phny’s statement, however, goes still
further, as it suggests that the leaves and tendrils of the Corinthian capital
were occasionally wrought in bronze, instead of being carved in stone or
marble.