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ROBIN F. RHODES

University of Notre Dame

When Herodotus wrote his Histories the Ionic and Doric orders had only been established a few generations before. The Temple of ARTEMIS at EPHESUS (1.92) and the Temple of APOLLO at DELPHI (5.62), respectively, well epitomize the distinct natures of the two orders as they established themselves in the first century of their existence. Scholars have traditionally viewed Ionic and Doric TEMPLES as variations on a theme, the differences lying mainly in decorative details of their façades, and it is true that the essential purpose of both was to house a cult image. But, in fact, in their origins Ionic and Doric represent different conceptions of temple architecture, different design solutions for different conceptions of divinity and the RITUALS surrounding it. Indeed, their molded bases, spirally‐voluted capitals, and continuously carved friezes immediately distinguish Ionic from Doric, whose columns have no base, whose capitals are simple bowls, and whose frieze is broken into an alternating pattern of triglyphs and metopes. But much more significant and essential, the early temples of IONIA were colossal in scale (4–5 times larger in plan than contemporary Doric ones), and the siting of the temples and the overall visual organizations of the façades of the two orders accomplished completely different things (Rhodes 1995, 54–60).

Figure 3a Reconstructed view of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, mid‐sixth century BCE. From A. E. Henderson, “The Croesus (VIth Century BC) Temple of Artemis (Diana) at Ephesus,” Journal R.I.B.A. 16.3 (1909), 77–96, fig. on p. 77 (reproduced in R. F. Rhodes, Architecture and Meaning on the Athenian Acropolis, 59, fig. 33b). Public domain.

In Doric the geometry of the façade becomes increasingly elaborate from bottom to top, from temple platform to roof, and, in many cases, leads to the temple’s most elaborate visual display, the carved and painted pediments at each end. Everything about the elevation of the Doric temple emphasizes the vertical, leads the eye up, and, in those temples where it exists, it focuses the worshipper’s attention on the most elaborate conditioner of temple approach, the temple pediment, the emblem of divinity (see SCULPTURE). It was here, outside, under the gaze of the east pediment that Doric divinity was confronted, that SACRIFICES were made, that communication between human and divine took place.

Figure 3b Temple of Apollo at Delphi, reconstructed E façade; late sixth century BCE. From M. Courby, La Terrasse du Temple, Fouilles de Delphes II: Topographie et Architecture (Paris: de Boccard, 1915–27), pl. XII (Relevés et Restaurations par H. Lacoste, 1920) (reproduced in R. F. Rhodes, Architecture and Meaning on the Athenian Acropolis, 96, fig. 51b). Public domain.

In direct contrast to the vertical emphasis of Doric, the effect of the early Ionic temple is emphatically horizontal. The decorative elaboration of its façade is not graduated from bottom to top; it is confined to the colonnade and equally distributed within it. The colossal colonnade is the temple’s decorative elaboration, a band whose horizontal impact is magnified by its immense length and by the strong horizontal lines of the three‐stepped lintel (epistyle) that bounds it on top and that emphatically separates the colonnade from the completely unadorned and immense pediment above.

The horizontal emphasis of Ionic responded to and interacted directly with its surroundings: the colossal temples of Ionia were sited in flat coastal plains, and the boundaries between temple and LANDSCAPE and within the temple itself were intentionally blurred. The proportionately insignificant steps (of similar height to those of Doric temples despite the greater scale of the Ionic structure) barely broke the horizontal continuity of temple and landscape, and instead of clean separations between inside and outside, the temple presented itself in gradients of exterior and gradually increasing interior: from the outer edge of the temple’s top step to the outer colonnade, set well back from the step; to a second row of columns that also surrounds the temple; to pairs of columns that exactly repeat the wide central intercolumniation on the front of the temple and carry it back into and through the front room (the pronaos) to the wall of the cella proper, the main and innermost room. Lacking any clear and definitive boundaries between landscape and temple and between successive elements of plan, the spaces of the temple bled into each other and thus encouraged the passage from one to another. In the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus the transitions were even more ambiguous, as the temple was approached through a sacred grove, which became a forest of columns that led, deeper and darker within the temple to the final temple ambiguity and monumental confounder of expectation: the cella was unroofed, a blaze of light at the end of the religious procession. The continuity of the flat landscape and forest with the temple plan and horizontal emphasis of the elevation reflected and encouraged religious procession that began in the landscape and made its way through the ambiguous boundaries of nature and temple to the heart of the temple itself.

This was in direct contrast to Doric temples, whose vertical emphasis interacted with and complemented their siting on eminences in the landscape: lifted above the realm of everyday experience, they were approached from below and afar, eyes raised at a distance, eyes raised upon arrival by the geometry of the façade and by the significant proportional height of the temple steps. Unlike Ionic, Doric columns clearly marked the boundary of the temple, raised as they were above their immediate surroundings and set exactly at the edge of the top step. Here there was no ambiguity about where the temple began and where the realm of humans ended. Nor was there any architectural compulsion to enter: no horizontal continuity with the surrounding landscape, no processional spacing of the façade columns, no continuity of column spacing, scale, and alignment from exterior to interior; and, finally, there was the pediment which, until the construction of the east pediment of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in the later sixth century BCE, confronted the viewer with terrifying images of monstrous creatures looking directly into the eyes of anyone approaching and wreaking bloody havoc.

SEE ALSO: Acropolis; Art; Dorians; Dialects, Greek; Ethnicity; Monumentality; Religion, Greek