DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5596#0025
■2
INTRODUCTION.
These porticos do not exceed ten feet in width.
Nothing could be easier, or more natural, than to
cover these porticos with stone. Argument would
be unnecessary to prove it, for experience shows it
in the remains of every ancient temple. It is from
these ceilings of the outer porticos, the stone or
marble lacunaria, overlaid with gorgeous colouring
and gilding, that architects have too rashly presumed
that the interior also of the temple was covered
in a like manner. But this opinion is unsupported
by any proof, or any confirmation.1 Nevertheless, the
opinion has been received and adopted, and modern
buildings, as for instance our National Museum,
which are erected after the Greek manner, have
their ceilings, it may be, of cast-iron girders, or
lath and plaster, painted to imitate, what it would be
impossible to execute—a marble roof. Such, then,
is the tradition of the so-much-talked-of trabeated
ceilings of the ancients. So little do we know of
the interior of the Greek temples, that Ave cannot
even decide upon their arrangement. Some have
supposed that the hypgethron consisted of a range
of skylights on either side, ignorant of the sacred
signification of an hypasthron. Some have supposed
that there was only one order of columns within
the temple; others that there were two, and that
1 Unless the temple were very small, or the cella of diminished
width, as in the temple of Apollo at Bassas, the roof of which
Pausanias expressly mentions was of stone.—Paus. xli. 5.
INTRODUCTION.
These porticos do not exceed ten feet in width.
Nothing could be easier, or more natural, than to
cover these porticos with stone. Argument would
be unnecessary to prove it, for experience shows it
in the remains of every ancient temple. It is from
these ceilings of the outer porticos, the stone or
marble lacunaria, overlaid with gorgeous colouring
and gilding, that architects have too rashly presumed
that the interior also of the temple was covered
in a like manner. But this opinion is unsupported
by any proof, or any confirmation.1 Nevertheless, the
opinion has been received and adopted, and modern
buildings, as for instance our National Museum,
which are erected after the Greek manner, have
their ceilings, it may be, of cast-iron girders, or
lath and plaster, painted to imitate, what it would be
impossible to execute—a marble roof. Such, then,
is the tradition of the so-much-talked-of trabeated
ceilings of the ancients. So little do we know of
the interior of the Greek temples, that Ave cannot
even decide upon their arrangement. Some have
supposed that the hypgethron consisted of a range
of skylights on either side, ignorant of the sacred
signification of an hypasthron. Some have supposed
that there was only one order of columns within
the temple; others that there were two, and that
1 Unless the temple were very small, or the cella of diminished
width, as in the temple of Apollo at Bassas, the roof of which
Pausanias expressly mentions was of stone.—Paus. xli. 5.