Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/171

THESEUM, ERECHTHEUM, AND OTHER WORKS. 155 and of the temple of Bassse. This kind of doorway may be taken as a general rule to show that a building is earlier than the Erechtheum. The capitals of our two little temples and those of the interior order of the Propylaea are all similar, and must be practically contemporary, and this indicates a date round about 435. The Ilissus temple may be safely dated c. 440. It is described by Pococke as " built of very white marble, the walls one stone thick, the fluted roll of the base was con- tinued around the temple and inside the portico." He gives a view of the interior of the portico which shows the recessed band around the doorway, and he also shows remains of the stone ceiling of the portico, and a diagram of the entablature which indicates that the architrave was plain. In one of the views engraved in the "Antiquities of Athens" this temple appears in the foreground. Pars' ex- quisitely accurate draw- ing of this (1765) is in the Print Room of the Museum, and this too serves to confirm the entire accuracy of Stuart's drawings as to the form of the capitals, the plain architrave and frieze, the moulding along the wall of the cella in continuation of the anta^ capitals, the base moulding and steps, and the walls with the raised surface showing that they had never been cleaned off. I give here a sketch of the capital taken from one which appears lying in the foreground of Pars' drawing, and also a sketch showing the mitring of the inner angle volutes from a figure in Stuart's text. (Figs. 153, 154.) The capital of the Nike temple at the British Museum has only recently been identified by a German scholar. It is an angle capital. Here the inner volutes were not mitred through the centre, but they were thrown out far enough to clear the eyes. (Fig. 155.) In the external eyes of the volutes there are small holes. In the catalogue it is suggested that these are " perhaps intended Fig. 154. — Ilissus Temple : Intersecting Volutes.