the British Museum Author:Henry Ellis 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 IV. PLAN AND PROPORTIONS OP THE GRECIAN TEMPLES. The Greeks are supposed by some to have borrowed the idea and form of their temples from the Egypt... more »ians; but Mr. Wilkins thinks the temples of Greece show so great a similarity in the distribution and proportion of their parts, as to warrant the conclusion that they were studiously copied from some one great model, which model he conceives to have been the second temple of Jerusalem. This opinion we merely state for the consideration of others. If the Greeks followed no foreign pattern, we must consider them as the inventors of their own style, since their temples, from the earliest to the latest, with which we are acquainted, are evidently constructed upon fixed principles. It seems the most probable supposition that the type of their temples was a construction of wood. Among the many volumes which have perished by time and accident, or have been purposely destroyed, are the invaluable treatises of certain Greek writers on architecture. If these remained, accurate data would be furnished to us of the principles upon which the architects proceeded, and of the harmony and symmetry of their designs. Her- mogenes is recorded as the author of a treatise on the Ionic Temple of Diana at Magnesia, and of another on the Temple of Bacchus at Teos. Pausanias was scanty in his details of the Parthenon, because Ictinus, the architect, had himself written a treatise upon its construction. Four books are said to have been writ- ten by Polemo, and fifteen by Heliodorus upon the Acropolis of Athens. The plan of the generality of the temples of Greece and her colonies was that of a simple parallelogram. In some of the smaller structures a row of columns was placed only in front; but in most cases there was a row both in front and ...« less