In the tombs have been found many
household belongings, beautiful gold and silver work, beside the
offerings put there to appease the gods. Chairs have been found, which,
humorous as it may sound, are certainly the ancestors of Empire chairs
made thousands of years later. This is explained by the influence of
Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, but there is something in common between
the two times so far apart, of ambition and pride, of grandeur and
colossal enterprise.
Greece may well be called the Mother of Beauty, for with the Greeks came
the dawn of a higher civilization, a striving for harmony of line and
proportion, an ideal clear, high and persistent. When the Dorians from
the northern part of Greece built their simple, beautiful temples to
their gods and goddesses they gave the impetus to the movement which
brought forth the highest art the world has known. Traces of Egyptian
influence are to be found in the earliest temples, but the Greeks soon
rose to their own great heights. The Doric column was thick, about six
diameters in height, fluted, growing smaller toward the top, with a
simple capital, and supported the entablature. The horizontal lines of
the architrave and cornice were more marked than the vertical lines of
the columns. The portico with its row of columns supported the pediment.
The Parthenon is the most perfect example of the Doric order, and
shattered as it is by time and man it is still one of the most beautiful
buildings in the world.
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