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Updated: May 13, 2025
The chief alteration from the Greek Doric, in addition to a general degradation of all the mouldings and proportions, was the addition of a base, which sometimes consists of a square plinth and large torus, sometimes is a slightly modified Attic base; the capital has a small moulding round the top of the abacus, and under the ovolo are two or three small fillets with a necking below; the shaft was from 6 to 7 diameters in height, and was not fluted; the frieze was ornamented with triglyphs, and the metopes between these were frequently enriched with sculptured heads of bulls: the metopes were exact squares, and the triglyphs at the angles of buildings were placed precisely over the centre of the column.
Set off on the under side of the corona, vertically over the triglyphs and over the middle of the metopes, are the viae in straight lines and the guttae arranged in rows, six guttae broad and three deep. Just at the edge of the corona a line should be cut in, called the scotia.
The erection of this temple probably falls in the years just preceding and following 460 B.C. A slight exploration carried on by the French in 1829 and the thorough excavation of the site by the Germans in 1875-81 brought to light extensive remains of its sculptured decoration. This consisted of two pediment groups and twelve sculptured metopes, besides the acroteria.
You must have seen the Parthenon and Athene Promachos which navigators distinguish far out at sea long before they can descry Athens; the wonderful procession of horses in the metopes; the prodigious works of Phidias. How I long to see all that! When a ship comes into port from Greece I run away from the pottery and spend whole days in the taverns with the mariners.
The sculptures with which the Parthenon was adorned by Phidias, and which were executed under his immediate superintendence, consisted of two great groups that filled the eastern and western pediments; of groups of two figures each in the ninety-two metopes or panels above the outer row of columns; and, finally, the famous frieze that ran completely round the temple itself, just below the ceiling of the colonnade, and at a height of about thirty-nine feet from the floor.
We had to have written permission, which we received through the American minister, to allow us to climb up on the scaffolding and get a near view of it. But we did it, and we were close enough to touch it, to lay our hands on it, and we waited hours for the sun to sink low enough to creep between the giant beams and touch the metopes so that we could photograph them.
These two metopes and two others, one representing a victorious Centaur prancing in savage glee over the body of his prostrate foe, the other showing a Lapith about to strike a Centaur already wounded in the back, are among the very best works of Greek sculpture preserved to us.
Copies of the metopes of the Pantheon and friezes from the temple of Theseus are set into its walls, and upon one of the landings stands the Pandrosion, with all the strong and tranquil beauty of its Caryatides. The effect of the whole is very grand. At the present day there is no longer any visible difference between the people of one country and of another.
The Parthenon, crowning like a perfect capital of human art the summit of Nature's rough workmanship in the Acropolis, was built of this marble; and the immortal sculpture of Pheidias on the metopes, the frieze of the cella, and the tympana of the pediments of the temple, known as the Elgin Marbles, were carved out of a material worthy of their incomparable beauty.
If we compare the Pergamene altar-frieze with scenes of combat from the best period of Greek art, say with the metopes of the Parthenon or the best preserved frieze of the Mausoleum, we see how much more complicated and confused in composition and how much more violent in spirit is this later work.
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