DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4325#0004
TO THE READER.
After having, in our volume of Ionian Antiquities, presented the Public with
specimens of the elegant, luxuriant, and in some instances fanciful, Architecture of
the Asiatic Greeks, we now offer to their consideration a few examples of the more
chaste and severe style, which prevailed in Greece itself and its European colonies;
where a greater degree of rigour, both in private manners and public discipline,
maintained for a longer time the genuine simplicity of ancient taste.
This style of Architecture is commonly called Doric, but might more properly be
called Grecian, as being the only style employed, either in Greece, or its European
colonies, prior to the Macedonian conquest; when all the distinctive characteristics
of the different nations, which became incorporated in that empire, were, by the
policy of the conqueror and his successors, gradually blended and lost in each
other. Hence, from the combined tastes and habits of different countries, arose fan-
ciful and capricious designs and compositions; and that restless desire of novelty,
which has always been the bane of true taste.
Prior to that period, all the temples of Greece, Sicily, and Italy, appear to have
been of one Order, and of one general form; though slightly varied in particular
parts, as occasional convenience or local fashion might chance to require.
After having, in our volume of Ionian Antiquities, presented the Public with
specimens of the elegant, luxuriant, and in some instances fanciful, Architecture of
the Asiatic Greeks, we now offer to their consideration a few examples of the more
chaste and severe style, which prevailed in Greece itself and its European colonies;
where a greater degree of rigour, both in private manners and public discipline,
maintained for a longer time the genuine simplicity of ancient taste.
This style of Architecture is commonly called Doric, but might more properly be
called Grecian, as being the only style employed, either in Greece, or its European
colonies, prior to the Macedonian conquest; when all the distinctive characteristics
of the different nations, which became incorporated in that empire, were, by the
policy of the conqueror and his successors, gradually blended and lost in each
other. Hence, from the combined tastes and habits of different countries, arose fan-
ciful and capricious designs and compositions; and that restless desire of novelty,
which has always been the bane of true taste.
Prior to that period, all the temples of Greece, Sicily, and Italy, appear to have
been of one Order, and of one general form; though slightly varied in particular
parts, as occasional convenience or local fashion might chance to require.