An historical essay on architecture Author:Thomas Hope Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. NATURE AND CHARACTER OF THE DIFFERENT ORDERS OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. However much the Greeks, during the period of their independence, continue... more »d faithful in the essential members of their architecture to the form of the wooden hut, it is not to be supposed that a nation so lively, so full of imagination, could be so slavishly restricted by that form, as not to bestow upon it all the additions, all the ornament of which it was susceptible. Indeed, out of the very destination of certain buildings, out of the functions performed in them, out of the wish to mark those purposes, and that distinction more forcibly—to give the beholder an idea of their nature and importance—to impress him with reverence for the office to which they were destined, or the person to whose honour they were dedicated, and to remind him of his own duties in regard to that office and person, arose gradually, in edifices of stone, many imitations totally distinct from those of the wooden hut, which afterwards became added to and inserted between these. Thus, iu the temples of certain deities, in whose honour garlands of peculiar flowers or fruits were hung round their altars, or the horns of peculiar animals sacrificed to them, suspended from the pillars that supported their throne, or their skulls placed on the beams that encircled their sanctuary, or certain instruments of sacrifice and worship displayed, or certain uses and ceremonies appointed,—these emblems, found by experience to be of a nature too perishable to serve for lasting commemorations, were reproduced and eternised in stone and marble, in the same place where the originals were wont to be displayed. Thus in Asia Minor, at Theos, we see the magnificent temple of Apollo, adorned with the chief objects, real and symboli...« less