adornment of the temple was the colossal statue of Minerva in the eastern apartment of the cella, forty feet in height, composed of gold and ivory; the inner walls of the chamber were decorated with paintings, and the whole temple was a repository of countless treasure.  But the Parthenon, so regular to the eye with its vertical, oblique, and horizontal lines, was curved in every line, with the exception of the gable,—­with its entablature, architrave, frieze, and cornice, together with the basement, all arched upwards; and even the columns had a slight convexity of vertical line, amounting to 1/550 of the entire height of shaft, though so slightly as not to be perceptible.  These curved lines gave to the structure a peculiar grace which cannot be imitated, as well as an effect of solidity.

Nearly coeval with the Doric was the Ionic order, invented by the Asiatic Greeks, still more graceful, though not so imposing.  The Acropolis is a perfect example of this order.  The column is nine diameters in height, with a base, while the capital is more ornamented than the Doric.  The shaft is fluted with twenty-four flutes and alternate fillets (flat longitudinal ridges), and the fillet is about a quarter the width of the flute.  The pediment is flatter than that of the Doric order, and more elaborate.  The great distinction of the Ionic column is a base, and a capital formed with volutes (spiral scrolls), the shaft also being more slender.  Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients in architecture, says that “the Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the naked simplicity and dignity of man, and in the other the delicacy and ornaments of woman; the base of the Ionic was the imitation of sandals, and the volutes of ringlets.”  The discoveries of many of the Ionic ornamentations among the remains of Assyrian architecture indicate the Oriental source of the Ionic ideas, just as the Doric style seems to have originated in Egypt.  The artistic Greeks, however, always simplified and refined upon their masters.

The Corinthian order exhibits a still greater refinement and elegance than the other two, and was introduced toward the end of the Peloponnesian War.  Its peculiarity consists in columns with foliated capitals modelled after the acanthus leaf, and still greater height, about ten diameters, surmounted with a more ornamented entablature.  Of this order the most famous temple in Greece was that of Minerva at Tegea, built by Scopas of Paros, but destroyed by fire four hundred years before Christ.

Nothing more distinguished Greek architecture than the variety, the grace, and the beauty of the mouldings, generally in eccentric curves.  The general outline of the moulding is a gracefully flowing cyma, or wave, concave at one end and convex at the other, like an Italic f, the concavity and convexity being exactly in the same curve, according to the line of beauty which Hogarth describes.