Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/223

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

APPENDIX. 207 Delphi pillar are also of an elaborate section. (Fig. 216, A.)' This section may be compared with that of the curved frag- ments assigned to the acroterion of the Parthenon. (Fig. 216, B.) Architects in Antiquity. Large collections of material are available from which to draw an account of ancient architects.* But I can only here deal broadly with the general facts of their training and standing. The Greek master may seem to have approximated more to the modern idea of an architect than did a master-mason of the Middle Ages in being a man of science and culture. It is all the more necessary to distinguish and ask what are the essential qualities of an architect ? The training of the Greek must have been practical, and the architect must have begun as a mechanician, a mason, or a sculptor. The foundation craft was most generally, I believe, the last, although it is significant that in the list of the seven great architects is included Archimedes, the mathematician and military engineer. The modern conditions which make the modern architect are unique. Before the invention of penny posts, telegraphs, telephones, and copying presses, he could not be trained to their use, that is, to office-work ; but it is evident that he must have had a training. The Greek architect could not have been what we call a professional man. Phidias, the sculptor, was, according to Plutarch, " director of all the public buildings, although the Athenians had other excellent architects. . . . He had the superintendence of everything, and all the artists received his orders." That is, as has been suggested, and as will appear more likely by what we shall see below, he was the city architect of Athens. Theodorus of Samos, the most famous sculptor of the archaic period, was architect of the Skias at Sparta and other works. His contemporary, Rhoecus, was architect of the temple of Hera at Samos. Bupalus of Chios, c. 500, was also a sculptor and architect. According to Furtwangler, Kallemachos was probably at once the architect and the sculptor of the Erechtheum. Polycleitos the younger

  • See Brunn, " Gesch. d. Griech. Kiinstler"; Choisy's Essays on Greek

Building Accounts ; Daremberg and Saglio, vol. i. ; Durm, vol. i. ; the American Architectural Record, 1908.