by an Ionic colonnade. Still other types of building afforded
opportunity enough for the employment of this style.

After what has been said of the gradual changes in the Doric
order, it will be understood that the Ionic order was not the same
in the sixth century as in the fifth, nor in the fifth the same as
in the third. The most striking change concerns the spiral roll of
the capital. In the good period the portion of this member which
connects the volutes is bounded below by a depressed curve,
graceful and vigorous. With the gradual degradation of taste this
curve tended to become a straight line, the result being the
unlovely, mechanical form shown in Fig. 71 (from a building of
Ptolemy Philadelphus, who reigned from 283 to 246 B.C.). Better
formed capitals than this continued for some time to be made in
Greek lands; but the type just shown, or rather something
resembling it in the disagreeable feature noted, became canonical
with Roman architects.

The Corinthian order, as it is commonly called, hardly deserves to
be called a distinct order. Its only peculiar feature is the
capital; otherwise it agrees with the Ionic order. The Corinthian
capital is said to have been invented in the fifth century; and a
solitary specimen, of a meager and rudimentary type, found in 1812
in the Temple of Apollo at Bassae, but since lost, was perhaps an
original part of that building (about 430 B. C). At present the
earliest extant specimens are from the interior of a round
building of the fourth century near Epidaurus in Argolis (Fig.
72). [Footnote: For some reason or other the particular capital
shown in our illustration was not used in the building, but it is
of the same model as those actually used, except that the edge of