Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/72

The General Principles of Form. 57 buildings he had heard eulogized by the companions of the Mace- donian, of which drawings, mayhap^ existed and were handed about in the days of the Ptolemies and Seleucidx.* This is not all ; the Persian entablature, too, has nothing in common with the Grecian, save the architrave, which of necessity must exist everywhere, and the dentels furnished here by the actual disposition of the carpentry, which in the Hellenic work are reminiscent of this same arrangement Again, there is nothing in the uniform resaults of Persian lofts that in any way recalls the canonical marks of distinction, architrave, frieze, and . cornice, with the high relief of the drip, which suffice to endow the Grecian members with a special cut, and an altogether different accent The shaft of the Persian column is everywhere fluted, except at Pasaigadse and in the rock-cut tombs. The section of these flutes is unlike that which appears in Greece. The fillets or intervals separating them are by no means as distinct as in the Ionic order (with which alone the Persian can be compared) ; indeed they are barely perceptible (Fig. 12), That which, however, distinguishes N the Persian column from among her sisters is the number of her channellings. Supports in Egypt have never more than sixteen > faces or flutes, and the embellishment, moreover, is found about archaic buildings, such as the Beni Hassan Under the second Theban empire the fluting is sometimes replaced by a stout cable ornament; sometimes it disappears altogether without leaving a sign. These are facts that tend to strengthen the notion that no filiation or correspondence of origins exist between the Egyptian and the Persian column. On the contrary, though the Greek column sprang into being ready fluted, if the expression be allowed, and will never be other than fluted, yet the number of its grooves which varies according to the order and date, averages from sixteen to twenty-two, and never exceeds twenty-four. Tliese figures should be doubled in regard to Persia. Thus the number of ' With regard to the monument referred to above, see more particularly l)e HomoUe's paper in BuJMh it Corraponitmte MUiuquet 1884, pp. 417-438; rAutd des Corttfs a Delos, and accompanying drawingi by M. N^not, Plates XVII.- XIX. The pillars forming the avenue to the temple are sunnounted by a semi-bull kneeling. The bulls at Delos are not postured, as at Persepolis, in pairs, back to back and in pro61e. Judging from the style of tbe Delian edifice and the place it occapies in a block of structures of more or less certain date, M. HomoUe looks upon it as belonging to the third century of our era. Digitized by Google