United States or Tuvalu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
What more beautiful than one of those grand temples which the cultivated heathen Greeks erected to the worship of their unknown gods! the graduated and receding stylobate as a base for the fluted columns, rising at regular distances in all their severe proportion and matchless harmony, with their richly carved capitals supporting an entablature of heavy stones, most elaborately moulded and ornamented with the figures of plants and animals; and rising above this, on the ends of the temple, or over a portico several columns deep, the pediment, covered with chiselled cornices, with still richer ornaments rising from the apices and at the feet, all carved in white marble, and then spread over an area larger than any modern churches, making a forest of columns to bear aloft those ponderous beams of stone, without anything tending to break the continuity of horizontal lines, by which the harmony and simplicity of the whole are regulated!
They are clad after the manner of their time, and lying at length on a stylobate, strewn with flower-de-luces. Twenty-two knights, each mounted on lions, armed cap-a-pie, represented of the natural size, and coloured, fill ogive niches ornamented with Mosaic designs, relieved with gold, red, and blue.
It represents a circular temple, formed by thirty-four pillars, like those of the interior, of the Corinthian order, and each, base and capital included, thirty-four feet in height by three feet and one third in diameter. This colonnade is supported by a circular stylobate, which rests on an octagon base, and is surrounded by a gallery, bordered by an iron balustrade.
The other temple is of a later date. They both stood upon a platform twelve steps above the forum, themselves raised further by seven steps and a stylobate. The rostra were on the forum side of the comitium. It was then railed round, and since that time systematic excavations have disclosed the plan of the sub-structures.
Obnubile was thrown down several times, but soon succeeded in learning how to demean himself better; after an hour's walking he himself knocked down an Atlantan. Having reached a great square he saw the portico of a palace in the Classic style, whose Corinthian columns reared their capitals of arborescent acanthus seventy metres above the stylobate.
The stylobate, or general base upon which the columnar story stood, from two thirds to a whole diameter of a column in height, was built in three equal courses, which gradually receded upward and formed steps, as it were, of a grand platform.
The two forces come to rest in the abaci, which, as the crowning members of the columns, directly carry the weight of the entire entablature. The equilibrium between the horizontal and the vertical tendencies is, however, not a static but a moving one; for the two opposing forces are present in every part of the building from the stylobate to the ridge of the triangular pediment.
The stylobate or pedestal, from two thirds to a whole diameter of a column in height, was built in three equal courses, which gradually receded from the one below, and formed steps, as it were, of a grand platform on which the pillars rested. The column was from four to six diameters in height, with twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter supporting the entablature.
But this structure, if it existed, has entirely disappeared. The order of the Parthenon was Doric, and the leading proportions were as follows: The column was 5·56 diameters high; the whole height, including the stylobate or steps, might be divided into nine parts, of which two go to the stylobate, six to the column, and one to the entablature.
Above it is a kind of stylobate with pilasters supporting the columns of the next stage, the spaces between them decorated with reliefs of torch-bearing putti, who are represented as issuing from partly open double doors, some of which are very pretty.
Word Of The Day