Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/49

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DIANA'S TEMPLE AT EPHESUS. 33 general. At the moment of setting, the faces were left rough {d'ebaucke), only the reliefs were fully sculptured in advance, the rest was finished in place. For a column they marked in the shops the extremity of the flutes at the top and bottom, and the remainder was wrought after fixing.* The most remarkable example of this procedure is the Temple of Miletus, where un- fluted columns, unmoulded bases, and half-finished carvings were found. There is considerable freedom in the Ephesus work. The large capital from the outer row is wrought together with the top of the shaft, the bed being just below the rounded termination of the flutes. The smaller shafts rose to the underside of the eggs and tongues of the capitals, includ- ing the astragalos moulding in the more usual way. Neither of these carved mouldings space equally with the flutes, and the latter varies in spacing from 5A to 6 centres under the same capital. The Lesbian leaf moulding on the pedestals varies in spacing from 4|- to 5^ inches, and is quite sketchy in parts. In the Old Temple intentional variation of parts is as marked as in a Gothic building. Dates and Architects. There are two records which bear on the date of the earlier temple. We are told that the famous artist Theodorus advised that a bed of charcoal should be laid over the site — a well- known and here very necessary precaution against damp — and that Croesus gave some columns to the structure. These facts would date the foundation as about 580, and the erection of the columns as about 560. The building of the New Temple is usually dated by the story given by Plutarch and others that the old one was burnt on the night in which Alexander was born in 356. This story, on its face, seems to bear the character of a myth. Falkener pointed out that another date, at the beginning of the fourth century, is given in the Chronography of Eusebius, which contains valuable old material. He accepted both burnings, but it seems more likely that the true date was 395, not 356.t The earlier year

  • " Hist. Arch.," vol. i., p. 276.

t See a long Appendix in the Austrian volume. C