Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/44

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
28
DIANA'S TEMPLE AT EPHESUS.

spaced pretty regularly opposite the columns outside, it seems more likely that they were internal buttresses to stay the walls against the raised peristyle. The cella was about 70 feet wide; if it were roofed it must have been subdivided. Wood found a curious Corinthian capital "near the cella," and supposed that it represented internal rows of columns. It is described as elliptic on plan, but it is really made up of a pier and two attached half-rounds. (Fig. 25.) It is only 2.6 high, and is of An image should appear at this position in the text.Fig. 25. quite late Roman work. Such a capital might belong to an external stoa, or possibly to some small erection about the great image, but it can hardly have formed part of the structure of the cella. I am no believer in much which has been written on hypaethral lighting, but the evidence in this case seems to suggest that the cella was open as at Miletus. The lack of internal foundations, and the immense size of the great basis in the midst (20 feet square, which would well have supported a covered shrine as well as the statue), seem to support this view. Wood also found a drain in the foundations of this basis, which he called an altar—"probably for carrying away the water used in washing the surface after sacrifice." There would be plenty of room in the An image should appear at this position in the text.Fig. 26. pronaos, treasury, and other parts for the cedar roof mentioned by Vitruvius.[1] Save for the seeming need of having a treasury at one end or the other of the cella, I had come to think that columns would be disposed in the space between the antae walls as at Miletus, and I find that the Austrian plan has set forth this view. With the inscriptions at the Museum are Fig. 26. several walling stones.

We have seen that the temple court was surrounded by a colonnade; the plan of this is shown by Wood. Of the Doric building which stood beyond it on the south side there is

  1. In the MS. letters at the B.M., however, Wood speaks, in 1871, of finding parts of an "internal" column with flutings at upper diameter of 5½ inches. He thought that the lower diameter might be about 4 feet 10 inches. "This is the second fragment I have found of internal columns."Both were about 45 feet north of the column in situ on south side.