Dictionary
ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF	100.00%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 In Greek architecture there were three orders of columns: the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. (I) Doric: Figures 1 and 2 give instances of the Doric style from the temple at Paestum and the Parthenon at Athens. The Doric column consists (a) of the shaft, which increases in diameter almost invisibly up to about one-quarter of its height, and diminishes slightly after that point. It has no base, but rests immediately on the stylobate. It is surrounded with semi-circular flutings, meeting each other at a sharp angle. These were chiselled with a cedar-wood tool after the separate drums had been put together. (b) The capital (Lat. capitulum). This consists of three parts, (a) the hypotrachelion, or neck of the column, a continuation of the shaft, but separated by an indentation from the other drums. It is wider at the top than at the bottom, and is generally ornamented with several parallel and horizontal rings. (b) The echinus, a circular moulding or cushion, which widens greatly towards the top. (c) The abax or abacus, a square slab supporting the architrave or episylion. The height of the shaft is usually 5 1/2 times, the distance between the columns 1 1/2 times the diameter of the base of the column. The architrave is a quadrangular beam of stone, reaching from pillar to pillar. On this again rests the frieze, zophoros, so called from the metopes which are adorned with sculptures in relief. These metopes are square spaces between the triglyphs: the triglyphs are surfaces out into three concave grooves, two whole grooves in the centre, and two half grooves at the sides. One is placed over each pillar, and one between each pair of pillars. The entablature is completed by a projecting cornice, a slab crowned with a simple heading-course, the lower surface of which is ornamented with sloping corbels (Gk. stagones, Lat. mutuli). (II) Ionic Columns. An instance is given in fig. 3 from the temple on the Ilissus at Athens. These are loftier than the Doric, their height being 8 1/2-9 1/2 times the diameter of the, lower part. The enlargement of the lower part is also less than in the Doric columns, the distance between each column greater (two diameters), the flutings (generally 24 in number) deeper, and separated by small flat surfaces. The Ionic column has a base consisting of a square slab (plinthos), and several cushion like supports separated by grooves. The capital, again, is more artistically developed. The neck, instead of fluting, has five leaves worked in relief. The echinus is very small and ornamented with an egg pattern. Over it, instead of the abacus, is a Four-cornered cushion ending before and behind in spiral volutes, supporting a narrow square slab, which is also adorned with an egg pattern. The architrave is divided into three bands, projecting one above the other, and upon it rises, in an uninterrupted surface, the frieze, adorned with reliefs, continuously along its whole length. Finally, the cornice is composed of different parts. (III) The Corinthian column (fig. 4, from the monument of Lysicrates, at Athens). The base and shaft are identical with the Ionic, but the capital takes the form of an open calix formed of acanthus leaves. Above this is another set of leaves, from between which grow stalks with small leaves, rounded into the form of volutes. On this rests a small abacus widening towards the top, and on this again the entablature, which is borrowed from the Ionic order. On the human figures employed instead of columns to support the entablature, see ATLAS, CANEPHORI, CARYATIDES. The Romans adopted the Greek styles of column, but not always in their pure form. They were fondest of the Corinthian, which they laboured to enrich with new and often excessive ornamentation. For instance, they crowned the Corinthian capital with the Ionic, thus forming what is called the Roman or composite capital. The style known as Tuscan is a degenerate form of the Doric. The Tuscan column has a smooth shaft, in height=7 diameters of the lower part, and tapering up to three-quarters of its lower dimensions. Its base consists of two parts, a circular plinth, and a cushion of equal height. The capital is formed of three parts of equal height. In other styles, too, the Romans sometimes adopted the smooth instead of the fluted shaft, as for instance in the Pantheon (fig. 5). Single columns were sometimes erected by the Greeks, and in imitation of them by the Romans, as memorials to distinguished persons. A good example is the Columna Rostrata, or column with its shaft adorned with the beaks of ships, in the Roman Forum. This was set up in commemoration of the naval victory of Duilius over the Carthaginians (261 B.C.). Among the columns which survive, the most magnificent is that of Trajan, erected in the Forum of Trajan 113 A.D. It rises on a quadrangular pediment to the height of 124 feet; its diameter below is about 10 feet, and a little less in the upper part. An interior spiral staircase of 185 steps leads to the summit. The shaft, formed of twenty-three drums of marble, is adorned with a series of reliefs, 3 feet 3 inches high and 200 feet long, in a series of twenty-two spirals. They represent scenes in Trajan's Dacian campaigns, and contain 2,500 human figures, with animals, engines, etc. On a cylindrical pedestal at the summit there once stood a gilded statue of the emperor, which, since the year 1587, has made way for a bronze figure of St. Peter. A similar column is that of Marcus Aurelius, 122 feet high, on the Piazza Colonna. Since 1589 the statue of St. Paul has been substituted for that of the emperor. The reliefs, in twenty spirals, represent events in the emperor's war with the Marcomanni.
ABACUS	34.35%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A square plate, especially the stone slab that covers the capital of a column (see ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF, figs. 1 and 5).
ART	31.94%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 See ARCHITECTURE, ARCHITECTURE (ORDERS OF), PAINTING, and SCULPTURE; and comp. COINAGE and GEMS.
MOERIS	23.64%
Known as the Atticist. A Greek grammarian of the 2nd century after Christ. He was the author of an Attic Lexicon, a list, in alphabetical order, of a number of expressions and forms used by Attic writers, with the parallel expressions used in his own time.
THEMIS	21.75%
One of the Titanides; daughter of Uranus and Gaea, and Jupiter's second wife after Metis; mother of the Horae and Moerae (Lat. Parcoe). She is the goddess who, with Jupiter, presides over law and order. She also reigns with him in Olympus as his trusted assessor and no longer as his wife; she represents divine justice in all its relations to man. The rights of hospitality are especially under her protection; hence she is protector of the oppressed, and honoured in many towns as the saving goddess (Soteira). She also had the power of foretelling the future, and for this reason the Delphic oracle was in her possession for some time before it came into that of Apollo. She was especially honoured in Athens, Delphi, Thebes, Olympia, and Troezen. In works of art, she is represented as a woman of commanding and awe-inspiring presence, holding a pair of scales and a cornucopia, the symbol of the blessings of order.
AELIANUS	21.24%
The Tactician, a Greek writer on war, about 100 A.D., composed a work dedicated to Trajan on the Greek order of battle, with special reference to Macedonian tactics (Taktike Theoria), which is extant both in its original and in an enlarged form. The original used falsely to be attributed to Arrian.
HORAE	21.23%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The goddesses of order in nature, who cause the seasons to change in their regular course, and all things to come into being, blossom and ripen at the appointed time. In Homer, who gives them neither genealogy nor names, they are mentioned as handmaidens of Zeus, entrusted with the guarding of the gates of heaven and Olympus; in other words, with watching the clouds. Hesiod calls them the daughters of Zeus and Themis, who watch over the field operations of mankind; their names are Eunomia (Good Order), Dike (Justice), and Eirine (Peace), names which show that the divinities of the three ordinary seasons of the world of nature, Spring, Summer, and Winter, are also, as daughters of Themis, appointed to superintend the moral world of human life. This is especially the case with Dike, who is the goddess who presides over legal order, and, like Themis, is enthroned by the side of Zeus. According to Hesiod, she immediately acquaints him with all unjust judicial decisions, so that he may punish them. In the tragic poets she is mentioned with the Erinyes and as a divinity who is relentless and stern in exacting punishment. (See ASTRAeA.) At Athens, two Horoe were honoured: Thallo, the goddess of the flowers of spring; and Carpo, the goddess of the fruits of summer. Nevertheless the Horae were also recognised as four in number, distinguished by the attributes of the seasons. They were represented as delicate, joyous, lightly moving creatures, adorned with flowers and fruits, and, like the Graces, often associated with other divinities, such as Aphrodite, Apollo, and He1ios. As the Hora specially representing spring, we have Chloris, the wife of Zephyrus, and goddess of flowers, identified by the Romans with Flora (q.v.).
SCIRON	21.16%
A robber who lived on the boundary between Megara and Attica, and compelled the travellers, whose goods he had seized, to wash his feet, only in order to kick them into the sea, where an immense tortoise devoured their dead bodies. He was slain by the youthful Theseus (q.v.).
TERPANDER	20.12%
A Greek poet and musician, a native of Antissa in Lesbos. He is the true founder of Greek classical music, and also of lyric poetry, both Aeolian and Dorian. He was the first to clothe in artistic form the kind of choral song, called nomos, used at the festivals of Apollo; he also introduced other important innovations into music. He is sometimes erroneously described as having added three strings to the original lyre of four strings [Strabo, p. 618]; but it is more probable that the lyre of seven strings was already in existence in his own time [Aristotle, Probl., xix 32]. The principal scene of his labours was Sparta, whither he had been summoned by order of the Delphic oracle to quell a disturbance amongst the people. It was at Sparta that he reduced to order the music of the Dorians. It was here too that he won the prize at the musical competition at the Carneia. Between 672 and 648 B.C. he carried off the prize four times in succession at the Pythian games in Delphi. Only a few verses of his own poems are extant.
CONUBLUM	20.07%
The contracting of a matrimonium iustum, or valid marriage, with all its legal consequences. As such a marriage could only take place between persons of equal status, the Patricians and Plebeians had each for a long time a separate conubium, until 445 B.C., when the two orders were equalised in this respect.
TRIGLYPHS	19.18%
A name given in the Doric frieze to surfaces which, projecting over every column and between every two columns, are ornamented with three parallel channels, two complete ones in the middle and two halves at the corners. Between the triglyphs are the metopes(q.v.). (Cp. ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF; and PARTHENON, fig. 2.)
AMBURBIUM	18.80%
The Latin name for a solemn procession of the people, with the various orders of priesthood led by the pontifex three times round the boundaries of Rome. It was only resorted to at a time of great distress, and the animals destined to make atonement, viz. a hog, a ram, and a bull (the so called suovetaurilia, see AMBARVALIA), were sacrificed with special prayers outside the city.
HARPOCRATION	18.66%
A Greek scholar of Alexandria, who lived probably in the 2nd century A.D.. He was the author of a lexicon to the ten great Attic orators, which has survived, though in a very fragmentary form. It contains, in alphabetical order, notes on the matters and persons mentioned by the orators, with explanations of the technical expressions; thus forming a rich store of valuable information on matters of history, literature, and the constitution and judicial system of Athens.
PRYTANEIA	18.04%
The period of thirty-five or thirty-six days, i.e. about one-tenth of the year, during which each of the ten phyloe presided in turn over the Council and ecclesia. The order was determined by lot. The presiding tribe was represented by its epistates, who was appointed by lot to preside for the day, and could not hold this office more than once in each year (Aristotle, On Constitution of Athens, 44).]
DEMIURGI	17.88%
A general term among the Greeks or tradesmen, among whom they included artists and physicians. In old times they formed, at Athens, the third order, the other two being the Eupatridae and Geomori (see these names). In some states demiurgi was the name of the public officials; in the Achaean League, for instance, the ten demiurgi were among the highest officers of the confederacy.
PHORONEUS	17.00%
Son of Inachus and the Oceanymph Melia, founder of the state of Argos. The origin of all culture, civil order, and religious rites in the Peloponnesus was ascribed to him. In particular, he was reputed as the originator of the worship of Hera at Argos, and, like Prometheus elsewhere, as the man who first brought fire from heaven down to earth. Hence he was regarded as a national hero, and offerings were laid on his tomb. His daughter Niobe was said to be the first mortal whom Zeus honoured with his love.
ARCHITECTURE:	16.75%
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Gradually they begin to show an approximation to buildings with rectangular blocks. The gates let into these walls are closed at the top either by the courses of stone jutting over from each side till they touch, or by a long straight block laid over the two leaning side-posts. Of the latter kind is the famous Lion-gate at Mycenae, so-called from the group of two lions standing with their forefeet on the broad pedestal of a pillar that tapers rapidly downwards, and remarkable as the oldest specimen of Greek sculpture. The sculpture is carved on a large triangular slab that fills an opening left in the wall to lighten the weight on the lintel (fig. 2). Among the most striking relies of this primitive age are the so-called Thesauroi, or treasuries (now regarded as tombs) of ancient dynasties the most considerable being the Treasure-house of Atreus at Mycenae. Theusual form of these buildings is that of a circular chamber vaulted over by the horizontal courses approaching from all sides till they meet. Thus the vault is not a true arch (fig. 3). The interior seems originally to have been covered with metal plates, thus agreeing with Homer's descriptions of metal as a favourite ornament of princely houses. An open-air building preserved from that age is the supposed Temple of Hera on Mount Ocha (now Hagios Elias) in Euboea, a rectangle built of regular square blocks, with walls more than a yard thick, two small windows, and a door with leaning posts and a huge lintel in the southern side-wall. The sloping roof is of hewn flagstones resting on the thickness of the wall and overlapping each other; but the centre is left open as in the hypaethral temples of a later time. From the simple shape of a rectangular house shut in by blank walls we gradually advance to finer and richer forms, formed especially by the introduction of columns detached from the wall and serving to support the roof and ceiling. Even in Homer we find columns in the palaces to support the halls that surround the courtyard, and the ceiling of the banqueting-room. The construction of columns (see ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF) received its artistic development first from the Dorians after their migration into the Peloponnesus about 1000 B.C., next from the Ionians, and from each in a form suitable to their several characters. If the simple serious character of the Dorians speaks in the Doric Order, no less does the lighter, nimbler, and more showy genius of the Ionian race come out in the Order named after them. By about 650 B.C. the Ionic style was flourishing aide by side with the Doric. As it was in the construction of Temples (q.v.) that architecture had developed her favourite forms, all other public buildings borrowed their artistic character from the temple. The structure and furniture of private houses (see HOUSE), were, during the best days of Greece, kept down to the simplest forms. About 600 B.C., in the Greek islands and on the coast of Asia Minor, we come across the first architects known to us by name. It was then that Rhaecus and Theodorus of Samos, celebrated likewise as inventors of casting in bronze, built the great temple of Hera in that island, while Chersiphron of Cnosus in Crete, with his son Metagenes, began the temple of Artemis (Diana) at Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the world, which was not finished till 120 years after. In Greece Proper a vast temple to Zeus was begun at Athens in the 6th century B.C. (see OLYMPIEUM), and two more at Delphi and Olympia, one by the Corinthian Spintharus, the other by the Elean Libon. Here, and in the Western colonies the Doric style still predominated everywhere. Among the chief remains of this period, in addition to many ruined temples in Sicily (especially at Selinus and Agrigentum), should be mentioned the Temple of Poseidon. at Paestum (Poseidonia) in South Italy, one of the best preserved and most beautiful relies of antiquity (figs. 4, 5). The patriotic fervour of the Persian Wars created a general expansion of Greek life, in which Architecture and the sister art of Sculpture were not slow to take a part. In these departments, as in the whole onward movement, a central position was taken by Athens, whose leading statesmen, Cimon and Pericles, lavished the great resources of the State at once in strengthening and beautifying the city. During this period arose a group of masterpieces that still astonish us in their ruins, some in the forms of a softened Doric, others in the Ionic style, which had now found its way into Attica, and was here fostered into nobler shapes. The Doric order is represented by the Temple of Theseus (fig. 6), the Propylaea built by Mnesicles, the Parthenon, a joint production of Ictinus and Callicrates; while the Erechtheum is the most brilliant creation of the Ionic order in Attica. Of the influence of Attic Architecture on the rest of Greece we have proof, especially in the Temple of Apollo at Bassae in South-Western Arcadia, built from the design of the above-mentioned Ictinus. The progress of the Drama to its perfection in this period led to a corresponding improvement in the building of Theatres (q.v.). A stone theatre was begun at Athens even before the Persian Wars; and the Odeum of Pericles served similar purposes. How soon the highest results were achieved in this department, when once the fundamental forms had thus been laid down in outline at Athens, is shown by the theatre at Epidaurus, a work of Polyclitus, unsurpassed, as the ancients testify, by any later theatres in harmony and beauty. Another was built at Syracuse, before B.C. 420. Nor is it only in the erection of single buildings that the great advance then made by architecture shows itself. In laying out new towns, or parts of towns, men began to proceed on artistic principles, an innovation due to the sophist Hippodamus of Miletus. In the 4th century B.C., owing to the change wrought in the Greek mind by the Peloponnesian War, in place of the pure and even tone of the preceding period, a desire for effect became more and more general, both in architecture and sculpture. The sober Doric style fell into abeyance and gave way to the Ionic, by the side of which a new Order, the Corinthian, said to have been invented by the sculptor Callimachus, with its more gorgeous decorations, became increasingly fashionable. In the first half of the 4th century arose what the ancients considered the largest and grandest temple in the Peloponnesus, that of Athena at Tegea, a work of the sculptor and architect Scopas. During the middle of the century, another of the "seven wonders," the splendid tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus was constructed (see MAUSOLEUM). Many magnificent temples arose in that time. In Asia Minor, the temple at Ephesus, burnt down by Herostratus, was rebuilt by Alexander's bold architect Deinocrates. In the islands the ruins of the temple of Athena at Priene, of Apollo at Miletus, of Dionysus at Teos, and others, even to this day offer a brilliant testimony to their former magnificence. Among Athenian buildings of that age the Monument of Lysicrates (q.v.) is conspicuous for its graceful elegance and elaborate development of the Corinthian style. In the succeeding age Greek architecture shows its finest achievements in the building of theatres, especially those of Asiatic towns, in the gorgeous palaces of newly-built royal capitals, and in general in the luxurious completeness of private buildings. As an important specimen of the last age of Attic architecture may also be mentioned the Tower of the Winds (q.v.) at Athens.
POLYNICES	16.30%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Son of (Epidus and Iocaste, was driven out of Thebes by his brother Eteocles (see CEDIPUS), and fled to Adrastus (q.v.) of Argos, who gave him his daughter Argia in marriage, and brought about the expedition of the Seven against Thebes in order to restore him. He fell in single combat with Eteocles. His body, which had been thrown to the birds, was buried by his sister Antigone (q.v.). His son was Thersander (q.v.).
CALLIMACHUS	16.12%
A Greek artist, who flourished in the second half of the 5th century B.C. He was the invento of the Corinthian order of pillar, and the art of boring marble is also attributed to him, though perhaps he did no more than bring it to perfection. The ancient critics represent him as unwearied in polishing and perfecting his work; indeed, they allege that his productions lost something through their excessive refinement and purity. One of his celebrated works was the golden chandelier in the Erechtheum at Athens.
MANTO	15.98%
Daughter of the seer Tireslas, was herself a prophetess, at first of the Ismenian Apollo at Thebes. After the capture of the town by the Epigoni she was presented to the oracle at Delphi as part of the booty, and sent by the god to Asia, in order to found the oracle of the Clarian Apollo in the neighbourhood of what was afterwards Colophon. Here she bore Mopsus (q.v., 2) to the Cretan seer Rhacius.