Perry, Walter Copland: Greek and Roman sculpture: a popular introduction to the history of Greek and Roman sculpture (London, 1882)

STRUCTURE OF GREEK TEMPLE*.

CHAPTER IV.
THE GREEK TEMPLE.

It would be beside our present purpose to speak of Greek architecture
as such, but Greek sculpture is so closely connected with its sister art,
that some knowledge of the forms of the Greek temple—and especially
of those parts in the adornment of which the painter and the sculptor
were allowed to display their skill—is essential to the student of plastic
art.

As the dwelling of a God, the temple was carefully separated from
immediate neighbourhood and contact with profane buildings by being
placed in a rifisvos (sacred enclosure) or on a raised platform of solid
masonry —the so-called o-repsoftd-njs. The Doric temple, such as we
see it in its perfection in the Temple of Pactum, of which the pr obable
date is about 600 B.c., was in the main the same as we find it in the
zenith of Hellenic glory, in the age of Pericles. It consisted of an
oblong cella (i'£wr, ajjKos), in which stood the image of the God ; the
proneos (Trpoviws, trpohop,os), (vestibule); and the opistliodomos (back*
chamber), which was entered from the rear and was generally used as
a treasure-house. In its simpler form the temple was either without
columns (uarvXos) or had them only in front (TrpoaTvXos). Temples of
a costlier style had columns both on the east and west fronts (dp,(pi-
Trpoarvkos) or on all four sides {trepiTnepos), and some were even
surrounded by a double row of columns (BtTrrspos). Another variety,
of which we have an example in the Parthenon, had a double row of
columns at each end, and only one row on each of the longer sides.

Resting immediately on the pillars, and connecting them firmly
together, was the heavy architrave or epistyle (fig. 10, a), the surface of
which was generally plain and smooth, and not adorned with reliefs