iment were
elaborately ornamented with reliefs and statues, and the cella, within
and without, was adorned with the choicest sculptures of Phidias, The
remains of the exquisite sculptures of the pediment and the frieze were
in the early part of this century brought from Greece by Lord Elgin,
purchased by the English government, and placed in the British Museum,
where, preserved from further dilapidation, they stand as indisputable
evidence of the perfection of Greek art. The grandest adornment of the
temple was the colossal statue of Minerva in the eastern apartment of
the cella, forty feet in height, composed of gold and ivory; the inner
walls of the chamber were decorated with paintings, and the whole temple
was a repository of countless treasure. But the Parthenon, so regular to
the eye with its vertical, oblique, and horizontal lines, was curved in
every line, with the exception of the gable,--with its entablature,
architrave, frieze, and cornice, together with the basement, all arched
upwards; and even the columns had a slight convexity of vertical line,
amounting to 1/550 of the entire height of shaft, though so slightly as
not to be perceptible. These curved lines gave to the structure a
peculiar grace which cannot be imitated, as well as an effect
of solidity.

Nearly coeval with the Doric was the Ionic order, invented by the
Asiatic Greeks, still more graceful, though not so imposing. The
Acropolis is a perfect example of this order. The column is nine
diameters in height, with a base, while the capital is more ornamented
than the Doric. The shaft is fluted with twenty-four flutes and
alternate fillets (flat longitudinal ridges), and the fillet is about a
quarter the width of the flute. The pediment is flatter than that of
the Doric order, and more elaborate. The great distinction of the Ionic
column is a base, and a capital formed with volutes (spiral scrolls),
the shaft also being more slender. Vitruvius, the greatest authority
among the ancients in architecture, says that "the Greeks, in inventing
these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the naked simplicity and
dignity of man, and in the other the delicacy and ornaments of woman;
the base of the Ionic was the imitation of sandals, and the volutes of
ringlets." The discoveries of many of the Ionic ornamentations among the
remains of Assyrian architecture indicate the Oriental source of the
Ionic ideas, just as the Doric style seems to have originated