before Christ, as
seen in the massive walls of the Acropolis at Athens, constructed of
huge blocks of hewn stone, and in the palaces of the princes of the
heroic times. The lintel of the doorway of the Mycenaean treasury is
composed of a single stone twenty-seven feet long and sixteen broad. But
these edifices, which aimed at splendor and richness merely, were
deficient in that simplicity and harmony which have given immortality to
the temples of the Dorians. In this style of architecture everything was
suitable to its object, and was grand and noble. The great thickness of
the columns, the beautiful entablature, the ample proportion of the
capital, the great horizontal lines of the architrave and cornice
predominating over the vertical lines of the columns, the severity of
geometrical forms produced for the most part by straight lines, gave an
imposing simplicity to the Doric temple.

How far the Greek architects were indebted to the Egyptian we cannot
tell, for though columns are found amid the ruins of the Egyptian
temples, they are of different shape from any made by the Greeks. In the
structures of Thebes we find both the tumescent and the cylindrical
columns, from which amalgamation might have been produced the Doric
column. The Greeks seized on beauty wherever they found it, and improved
upon it. The Doric column was not probably an entirely new creation, but
shaped after models furnished by the most original of all the ancient
nations, even the Egyptians. The Doric temples were uniform in plan. The
columns were fluted, and were generally about six diameters in height;
they diminished gradually upward from the base, with a slightly con
vexed swelling; they were surmounted by capitals regularly proportioned
according to their height. The entablature which the column supported
was also of a certain number of diameters in height. So regular and
perfect was the plan of the temple, that "if the dimensions of a single
column and the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given
to two individuals acquainted with the style, with directions to compose
a temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size,
arrangement, and general proportions." The Doric order possessed a
peculiar harmony, but taste and skill were nevertheless necessary in
order to determine the number of diameters a column should have, and
also the height of the entablature.

The Doric was the favorite order of European Greece for one t