Chapter One
1. Corinthian columns are, excepting in their capitals, of the same
proportions in all respects as Ionic; but the height of their capitals gives
them proportionately a taller and more slender effect. This is because the
height of the Ionic capital is only one third of the thickness of the column,
while that of the Corinthian is the entire thickness of the shaft. Hence, as two
thirds are added in Corinthian capitals, their tallness gives a more slender
appearance to the columns themselves.
2. The other members which are placed above the columns, are, for Corinthian
columns, composed either of the Doric proportions or according to the Ionic
usages; for the Corinthian order never had any scheme peculiar to itself for its
cornices or other ornaments, but may have mutules in the coronae and guttae on
the architraves according to the triglyph system of the Doric style, or,
according to Ionic practices, it may be arranged with a frieze adorned with
sculptures and accompanied with dentils and coronae.
3. Thus a third architectural order, distinguished by its capital, was
produced out of the two other orders. To the forms of their columns are due the
names of the three orders, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, of which the Doric was
the first to arise, and in early times. For Dorus, the son of Hellen and the
nymph Phthia, was king of Achaea and all the Peloponnesus, and he built a fane,
which chanced to be of this order, in the precinct of Juno at Argolis, a very
ancient city, and subsequently others of the same order in the other cities of
Achaea, although the rules of symmetry were not yet in existence.
4. Later, the Athenians, in obedience to oracles of the Delphic Apollo, and
with the general agreement of all Hellas, despatched thirteen colonies at one time to Asia
Minor, appointing leaders for each colony and giving the command-in-chief to
Ion, son of Xuthus and Creusa (whom further Apollo at Delphi in the oracles had
acknowledged as his son). Ion conducted those colonies to Asia Minor, took
possession of the land of Caria, and there founded the grand cities of Ephesus,
Miletus, Myus (long ago engulfed by the water, and its sacred rites and suffrage
handed over by the Ionians to the Milesians), Priene, Samos, Teos, Colophon,
Chius, Erythrae, Phocaea, Clazomenae, Lebedos, and Melite. This Melite, on
account of the arrogance of its citizens, was destroyed by the other cities in a
war declared by general agreement, and in its place, through the kindness of
King Attalus and Arsinoe, the city of the Smyrnaeans was admitted among the
Ionians.
5. Now these cities, after driving out the Carians and Lelegans, called that
part of the world Ionia from their leader Ion, and there they set off precincts
for the immortal gods and began to build fanes: first of all, a temple to
Panionion Apollo such as they had seen in Achaea, calling it Doric because they
had first seen that kind of temple built in the states of the Dorians.
6. Wishing to set up columns in that temple, but not having rules for their
symmetry, and being in search of some way by which they could render them fit to
bear a load and also of a satisfactory beauty of appearance, they measured the
imprint of a man's foot and compared this with his height. On finding that, in a
man, the foot was one sixth of the height, they applied the same principle to
the column, and reared the shaft, including the capital, to a height six times
its thickness at its base. Thus the Doric column, as used in buildings, began to
exhibit the proportions, strength, and beauty of the body of a man.
7. Just so afterwards, when they desired to construct a temple to Diana in a
new style of beauty, they translated these footprints into terms characteristic
of the slenderness of women, and thus first made a column the thickness of which
was only one eighth of its height, so that it might have a taller look. At
the foot they
substituted the base in place of a shoe; in the capital they placed the volutes,
hanging down at the right and left like curly ringlets, and ornamented its front
with cymatia and with festoons of fruit arranged in place of hair, while they
brought the flutes down the whole shaft, falling like the folds in the robes
worn by matrons. Thus in the invention of the two different kinds of columns,
they borrowed manly beauty, naked and unadorned, for the one, and for the other
the delicacy, adornment, and proportions characteristic of women.
8. It is true that posterity, having made progress in refinement and delicacy
of feeling, and finding pleasure in more slender proportions, has established
seven diameters of the thickness as the height of the Doric column, and nine as
that of the Ionic. The Ionians, however, originated the order which is therefore
named Ionic.