Greek temple

“ Greek Temples.—In Greece the most beautiful edifices were constructed to the honor of the gods, and when we speak of Greek architecture it is their temples that we have in mind.
A Greek temple is not, like a Christian church, designed to receive the faithful who come thither to pray. It is the palace [86] where the god lives, represented by his idol, a palace which men feel under compulsion to make splendid. ”

“ The Christian architect seeks to affect the emotions of the votary with a sense of vastness filled with unseen power. Our cathedrals are symbols of the universe where God is everywhere pavilioned and invisible. The Greek temple was a practical, utilitarian dwelling-house, made beautiful enough to suit divinity. The modern church is an idea expressed in stone, an aspiration of the spirit, shooting up from arch and pinnacle and spire into illimitable fields of air. ”

“ As at Athens, the ground is occupied by one principal temple of moderate size and several subordinate chapels. Perfect grace, exquisite proportion, most varied and capricious grouping, here take the place of massiveness; so lending to Egyptian forms an irregularity of treatment that is almost gothic and a lightness that is almost Greek.
And now we catch glimpses of an inner court, of a second propylon, of a pillared portico beyond; while, looking up to the colossal bas-reliefs above our heads, we see the usual mystic form of kings and deities, crowned, enthroned, worshiping and worshiped. ”

“ We now return to the early years of the 6th century, and proceed to trace, by the aid of recent discoveries, the rise of architecture and sculpture. The Greek temple in its character and form gives the clue to the whole character of Greek art. It is the abode of the deity, who is represented by his sacred image; and the flat surfaces of the temple offer a great field to the sculptor for the depicting of sacred legend. The process of discovery has emphasized the line which divides Ionian from Dorian architecture and art. ”

“ Architecture, regarded as a fine art, had been brought by the Greeks to the highest perfection of which it was capable under the limitations which they imposed upon themselves. The Greek temple appeals to the aesthetic sense by the simplicity and harmony of its proportions as well as by the rational correspondence between function and decoration in its several members. On these lines there was no room for progress. It is true that the Etruscans modified the type of the Greek temple and profoundly influenced Roman construction in this respect. ”

“ A Greek temple was not a place where people met to worship, and it was never intended to hold a very large number of people. The religious ceremonies were carried on in the great spaces outside the temples, and sacrifices were offered on the altars which were always in the open air. The temple was the dwelling-place of the god and the treasury where the gifts brought by the worshippers were kept. ”

“ Hence they may very well have borrowed their use of the arch from early Greek teachers, and thus imposed it upon the Romans and upon the world. But does it really matter to my argument? Even the Romans, who perfected the use of the arch, were not satisfied with it unless they had put it inside a Greek face of pillars and architraves. The Greek temple has afforded a model which has been copied in every capital of Europe, and in its most perfect form has an artistic splendour which is second to none among the buildings of the world. ”

“ The connection of their architecture with the genius, the spirit, and the life of the Greek people, is indicated in the following passage: “In place of the spectacle of an assemblage united for a single end, all appears directed towards the exterior, and presents us the image of an animated promenade. There men who have leisure abandon themselves to conversations without end, wherein rule gayety and serenity. The whole expression of such a temple remains truly simple and grand in itself, but it has at the same time an air of serenity, something open and graceful.” ”

“ The point it stands on is so little elevated, that a person might leave Athens without perceiving it to be placed on any hill at all, yet nobody can fail to observe that it is a conspicuous object, and looks well in every point of view.
The cell of a Greek temple, is you know a simple, oblong building. In the earlier periods it was probably nearly destitute of ornament, and except for the cornice, and for the smallness of the dimensions, much like a barn. Afterwards a porch was added, supported by columns, and the entablature began to receive some embellishment. ”

“ The Greek temple entirely differed from the gloomy buildings of Egypt or India, which were constructed as symbols of hell, earth, and heaven; hell was for the sinners, the outcasts and the poor; earth for the respectable middle-classes; and heaven for the priests, the kings and their high officials. ”

“ Though the remains of these prehistoric ages show in some degree the form of an ancient Greek acropolis, with its royal dwelling of courts and halls, and the sepulchral monuments before its gates, they are yet insufficient to complete even the main outlines of the picture by giving any understanding of the temple—that structure destined to become the ideal of Hellenic architecture. ”

“ The kind of vitality expressed in Greek architecture is quite different from that expressed in Gothic, but the æsthetic basis of both styles is the same; the principle we have in view will justify any art in which there is the spirit of life. A Greek temple shows us power, braced and conscious, but in repose. ”

“ It is not easy to answer with a simple yes or no. Many of the attempts to represent the facts by restorations on paper have been crude and vulgar enough. On the other hand, some experiments in decorating modern buildings with color, in a fashion, to be sure, much less liberal than that of ancient Greece, have produced pleasing results. At present the question is rather one of faith than of sight; and most students of the subject have faith to believe that the appearance of a Greek temple in all its pomp of color was not only sumptuous, but harmonious and appropriate. ”

“ The Greek temple was a larger and somewhat idealized man's dwelling—a home for deified men and women. It was limited in design to straight lines, since the idea of a curved arch had not yet been achieved in practise. Yet it was a perfect realization of the conception which it was intended to embody—a limited conception, since the idea of deity which makes God to consist of heroic or idealized men and women must necessarily be cramped and limited. ”

“ The genius of Greek art seems to have exhausted itself in inventing ornaments, which, while they should heighten the gorgeous effect of the work, must yet harmonize with the grand design of the temple. The enormous keystone over the entrance has slipped down, no doubt from the shock of an earthquake, and hangs within six inches of the bottom of the two blocks which uphold it on either side. ”

“ The favourite type of Greek temple was that known as hexastyle peripteral, of which the temple of Aphaea at Aegina, of the Doric order, is one of the best-preserved examples; on account of the width of its naos it was necessary to provide columns inside it to carry the ceiling and the roof, so that it represents the fully developed type of a Greek temple. The plan of the temple is shown in fig. 18; the elevation is given in fig. ”

“ In the Greek temple there is no space inclosed by a solid wall but that of the cella, which, by its purpose, answers to 357the σηκός of the Egyptian buildings. Both the peristyle and the pronaos are open to the air and to the view of all comers; the statues of the pediments, the reliefs of the friezes are all visible from outside, and the eye rejoices freely both in masterpieces of sculpture and in the long files of columns, which vary in effect as they are looked at from different points of view. ”

“ Because the Greek architect was at liberty to improve upon the work of his predecessors if he could, no temple was just like any other, and they form an ascending scale of excellence, culminating in the Acropolis group. Every detail was considered not only with relation to its position and function, but in regard to its intrinsic beauty as well, so that the merest fragment, detached from the building of which it formed a part, is found worthy of being treasured in our museums for its own sake. ”

“ The latter appears to have been the case in smaller temples, which could obtain sufficient light from the open door; but larger temples must necessarily have been in comparative darkness, if they received light from no other quarter. And although the temple was the abode of the deity, and not a place of meeting, yet it is impossible to believe that the Greeks left in comparative darkness the beautiful paintings and statues with which they decorated the interior of their temples. ”

“ This, too, may be the explanation of what must strike an architect as an anomaly of design, the Greek habit of placing enormous figures in the interior of their temples. The Greek, in his own way, was a very religious man. In his temple, he was doing his utmost to set forth the majesty of his God, and if it was necessary for this purpose he was even prepared to sacrifice his principles as an artist, to ignore the scale of his interior and the rhythmic harmony of his design, by the introduction of gigantic figures. ”

“ There is even something in unity of tone that delights the modern eye. Thus, though we feel that the old Greek temples have lost all their original brightness, yet, as I have myself said, and as I have quoted from Bishop Wordsworth, the rich mellow hue which tones all these ruins has to us its peculiar charm. The same rich yellow brown, almost the color of the Roman travertine, is one of the most striking features in the splendid remains which have made Pæstum unique in all Italy. ”

“ In antiquity the Sacred Way was 178lined with tombs and temples and shrines. Moderns are detained only by the lovely mediæval Convent of Daphne, at the top of the pass, but the ancient procession lingered not only at the Temple of Apollo which occupied this spot, but at many other sacred stations, to offer sacrifices, sing hymns, and engage in dances, solemn or joyous or wild. This was the reason for leaving Athens so early to cover only thirteen miles before another sunrise. ”

“ Greek architecture was an architecture of exteriors, designed for people who spent the greater part of the year out of doors. With no temple ritual comparable to the services of the church or cathedral, the Greeks lavished their attention upon externals, and as a great admirer of the Greeks, Sir Reginald Blomfield well says, “may have been more successful with the outside of their buildings than with the inside.” To fail with the interior in a northern climate is to fail with the essentials of a habitation; and these vast rooms, for all their ornament, too often remained bleak. ”

“ Inside and out everything is shown as it really is, the exact duty done by every stone in the structure is clearly visible to even an uncareful observer. This may be thought true of early Greek work as well: but then the structure of the Greek{110} temple is the simplest conceivable, a mere carrying of stone beams upon stone posts—no arches to thrust, no windows to open in the wall, most of all, no attempt to roof anything with masonry except in so far as a stone beam is strong enough to span a small open space between two strong pillars. ”

“ The earliest that have been excavated on free sites are the temples of Hera at Argos and Olympia, and these are now dated not earlier than the ninth century B.C. But the traditions of the earliest temple at Delphi, and of that of Athena on the {32} Athenian Acropolis, suggest a greater antiquity than this. ”

“ They were generally small compared with the temples of Egypt, and with the vast dimensions of Roman amphitheatres; only three or four would compare in size with a Gothic cathedral,--the Parthenon, the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens, and the Temple of Diana at Ephesus; even the Pantheon at Rome is small, compared with the later monuments of the Caesars. The traveller is always disappointed in contemplating the ruins of Greek buildings so far as size is concerned. ”

“ This presence of the temple is equally true of the Phœnician cities and of the Greek and Roman as they arise. The palace of Cnossos, with its signs of comfort and pleasure-seeking, and the kindred cities of the Ægean peoples, include religious shrines, but in Crete there are also temples standing apart from the palatial city-households. All over the ancient civilized world we find them; wherever primitive civilization set its foot in Africa, Europe, or western Asia, a temple arose, and where the civilization is most ancient, in Egypt and in Sumer, there the temple is most in evidence. ”

“ The Greek savants have at last laid open, and explained, the whole plan of the temple, which was built by Ictinus, in Pericles’s time, but apparently restored after a destructive fire by Roman architects copying faithfully the ancient style. The excavators have shown that the shrine had strange peculiarities. And this is exactly what we should expect. For although no people adhered more closely to traditional forms in their architecture, no people were more ready to modify these forms with a view to practical requirements. ”

“ Greek and Roman.—In Greece the earliest example of a temple is that of the Heraeum at Olympia, ascribed by Dr Dörpfeld to the 10th century B.C. The Heraeum (fig. 7) consisted of a central naos or sanctuary with pronaos in front and opisthodomus in the rear, the whole enclosed by a peristyle, thus presenting the characteristics of the fully developed temple of the 5th century. ”

“ There is even something touching and admirable, in this view, in the readiness and completeness of the sacrifice to beauty which the reproducers of the Greek temples made of all their merely material comforts and conveniences, something that we miss in the adapters. ”