More interesting than the question of origin is the question of aesthetic effect.  Was the Greek use of color in good taste?  It is not easy to answer with a simple yes or no.  Many of the attempts to represent the facts by restorations on paper have been crude and vulgar enough.  On the other hand, some experiments in decorating modern buildings with color, in a fashion, to be sure, much less liberal than that of ancient Greece, have produced pleasing results.  At present the question is rather one of faith than of sight; and most students of the subject have faith to believe that the appearance of a Greek temple in all its pomp of color was not only sumptuous, but harmonious and appropriate.

When we compare the architecture of Greece with that of other countries, we must be struck with the remarkable degree in which the former adhered to established usage, both in the general plan of a building and in the forms and proportions of each feature.  Some measure of adherence to precedent is indeed implied in the very existence of an architectural style.  What is meant is that the Greek measure was unusual, perhaps unparalleled.  Yet the following of established canons was not pushed to a slavish extreme.  A fine Greek temple could not be built according to a hard and fast rule.  While the architect refrained from bold and lawless innovations, he yet had scope to exercise his genius.  The differences between the Parthenon and any other contemporary Doric temple would seem slight, when regarded singly; but the preeminent perfection of the Parthenon lay in just those skilfully calculated differences

A Greek columnar building is extremely simple in form.[Footnote:  The substance of this paragraph and the following is borrowed from Boutmy, “Philosophie de l’Architecture en Grece” (Paris, 1870)] The outlines of an ordinary temple are those of an oblong rectangular block surmounted by a triangular roof.  With a qualification to be explained presently, all the lines of the building, except those of the roof, are either horizontal or perpendicular.  The most complicated Greek columnar buildings known, the Erechtheum and the Propylaea of the Athenian Acropolis, are simplicity itself when compared to a Gothic cathedral, with its irregular plan, its towers, its wheel windows, its multitudinous diagonal lines.

The extreme simplicity which characterizes the general form of a Greek building extends also to its sculptured and painted ornaments.  In the Doric style these are very sparingly used; and even the Ionic style, though more luxuriant, seems reserved in comparison with the wealth of ornamental detail in a Gothic cathedral.  Moreover, the Greek ornaments are simple in character.  Examine again the hawk’s-beak, the egg-and-dart, the leaf-and-dart, the astragal, the guilloche, the honeysuckle, the meander or fret.  These are almost the only continuous patterns in use in Greek architecture.  Each consists of a small number of elements recurring in unvarying order; a short section is enough to give the entire pattern.  Contrast this with the string-course in the nave of the Cathedral of Amiens, where the motive of the design undergoes constant variation, no piece exactly duplicating its neighbor, or with the intricate interlacing patterns of Arabic decoration, and you will have a striking illustration of the Greek love for the finite and comprehensible.