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Updated: June 26, 2025
The Pantheon is an exception, since the dome has an open eye; and one great ornament of this beautiful structure is in the arrangement of internal columns placed in the front of niches, composed with antae, or pier- formed ends of walls, to carry an entablature round under an attic on which the cupola rests.
The rudimentary type was a simple chamber or cella, with a loggia open to the air except for two columns standing between the two extremities of the side walls, which terminated in pilasters known as 'antae'. The next stage was to bring the colonnade forward, stage number three repeated the column at the other end of the building, stage number four continued the colonnade along the sides, stage number five doubled the colonnade on all four sides, and stage number six retained the outer rows of columns but omitted the inner row along the sides, leaving a wide passage-way all round the main building.
If the width is to be more than forty feet, let columns be placed inside and opposite to the columns between the antae.
Above them is placed the projecting cornice round about, made of two two-foot timbers. The tie-beams and struts, being placed above them, and directly over the shafts of the columns and the antae and walls of the pronaos, hold up one gable roof along the entire basilica, and another from the middle of it, over the pronaos of the temple.
The use of huge blocks of stone, not only in platforms, but in the buildings themselves, in the shafts of pillars, the antae of porticos, the jambs of doorways, occasionally in roofs, and perhaps in epistylia, produced the same impression of power, and the same feeling of personal insignificance in the beholder, which is commonly effected by great size in the edifice, and particularly by height.
If the temple is to be more than twenty feet in width, let two columns be placed between the two antae, to separate the pteroma from the pronaos. The three intercolumniations between the antae and the columns should be closed by low walls made of marble or of joiner's work, with doors in them to afford passages into the pronaos.
It will also do no harm to insert posts between lintels and sills where there are piers or antae; for where the lintels and beams have received the load of the walls, they may sag in the middle, and gradually undermine and destroy the walls. But when there are posts set up underneath and wedged in there, they prevent the beams from settling and injuring such walls.
These return from the columns which stand third on the inner side to the antae which project from the pronaos, and which touch the edges of the hemicycle at right and left. Above the architraves and regularly dispersed on supports directly over the capitals, piers are placed, three feet high and four feet broad each way.
Another characteristic feature of the early oratory is seen in the curious antae or prolongation of the side walls. Locally the little building is known as the "beannacan," in allusion, most likely, to its high gables or the finials which once, no doubt, in Irish fashion, adorned its roof. Though somewhat later than Declan's time this primitive building is very intimately connected with the Saint.
This peristyle has colonnades on three sides, and on the side facing the south it has two antae, a considerable distance apart, carrying an architrave, with a recess for a distance one third less than the space between the antae. This space is called by some writers "prostas," by others "pastas."
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