DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9188#0074
56
Architecture
barbarians, destroying all that came in their way. Even
Sparta in its earlier days was not a mere military machine.
Discoveries made in 1906-9 suggest that from the ninth to
the seventh centuries b.c. Sparta had some sort of an art of
its own showing traces of Asiatic influence in its pottery—
a little later Sparta concluded an alliance with Croesus, King
of Lydia, and Bathycles, an artist of Magnesia in Ionia, was
treated with honour in Sparta. The Dorians were something
more than fighters, they seem to have possessed some sort of
civilization, and to have been endowed with a natural capacity
for the arts, which after two or three centuries of experiment
will find its own splendid expression within very definite and
original lines. The legend of the return of the Heracleidae
was to be justified by their later history. No merely imitative
race could have evolved the perfect manner of the great Doric
temples from the scraps of Egypt and the East, and the
rudimentary buildings of Crete and Mycenae.
Greek architecture for the purpose of this study is Dorian
architecture, and its elements are simple. It was evolved in
the design of their temples, and with the exception of their
theatres it was summed up in these temples. From the period
during which Greek architecture was being built up to its
maturity, say from the seventh century b.c. to the completion
of the Parthenon in the fifth century b.c, the whole life of
the Greek was coloured and dominated by his religion and its
observances ; and his religion was not the sinister mystery of
Egypt, but on the whole a cheerful open-air Pantheism that
gloried in the life and beauty of the visible world in which
he lived. He himself was content to live in a poor house, so
long as he had his market-place, his ceremonial theatre, and
the glorious temples of his Gods. Moreover, to whatever
depths the Athenians may have sunk in the time of St. Paul,
in the heroic days of Pericles they were remarkable for con-
stancy of purpose and the steadfastness of their ideals. They
Architecture
barbarians, destroying all that came in their way. Even
Sparta in its earlier days was not a mere military machine.
Discoveries made in 1906-9 suggest that from the ninth to
the seventh centuries b.c. Sparta had some sort of an art of
its own showing traces of Asiatic influence in its pottery—
a little later Sparta concluded an alliance with Croesus, King
of Lydia, and Bathycles, an artist of Magnesia in Ionia, was
treated with honour in Sparta. The Dorians were something
more than fighters, they seem to have possessed some sort of
civilization, and to have been endowed with a natural capacity
for the arts, which after two or three centuries of experiment
will find its own splendid expression within very definite and
original lines. The legend of the return of the Heracleidae
was to be justified by their later history. No merely imitative
race could have evolved the perfect manner of the great Doric
temples from the scraps of Egypt and the East, and the
rudimentary buildings of Crete and Mycenae.
Greek architecture for the purpose of this study is Dorian
architecture, and its elements are simple. It was evolved in
the design of their temples, and with the exception of their
theatres it was summed up in these temples. From the period
during which Greek architecture was being built up to its
maturity, say from the seventh century b.c. to the completion
of the Parthenon in the fifth century b.c, the whole life of
the Greek was coloured and dominated by his religion and its
observances ; and his religion was not the sinister mystery of
Egypt, but on the whole a cheerful open-air Pantheism that
gloried in the life and beauty of the visible world in which
he lived. He himself was content to live in a poor house, so
long as he had his market-place, his ceremonial theatre, and
the glorious temples of his Gods. Moreover, to whatever
depths the Athenians may have sunk in the time of St. Paul,
in the heroic days of Pericles they were remarkable for con-
stancy of purpose and the steadfastness of their ideals. They