It is simpler, however, to remember that while the Doric column represents the treatment of a stone form or pier, the Ionic, a lighter development, was more directly inspired by the trees and early round wooden shafts, and was first reproduced in stone at a period when the workmen had acquired sufficient skill in working harder materials to preserve something of the grace and lightness of the original.
Description of the Ionic Order, and Various Examples. The Greek Ionic Order is supposed by some to have come from the East, in the vicinity of Assyria and Persia. Some authorities claim that it was used in its present form first in the island of Ionia, whence its name. The column has a base, and a cap with characteristic spiral shaped ornaments. The column is eight or nine times its diameter, in height, with, as a rule, 24 flutings. The entablature consists of the architrave, which has three fascias and a crowning member; the frieze, plain or sometimes decorated with a continuous sculptured bas-relief; and the cornice, having an overhanging corona and bed-mouldings, with sometimes a dentil course or egg-and-tongue mouldings.
The Erechtheum at Athens is the best known example of this Order, others being the interior columns of the Prupylæa, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.
The Ionic Order was apparently used for the first time on the Artemisian Temple of Diana (or Artemis) at Ephesus, constructed about 580 B. C. In the fifth century this brilliant Order was used with much success in the Propylaea at Athens, where it is employed along with the Doric, in the small Temple of the Nike Apteros, or Wing less Victory; and in the Erechtheum.
The fourth century B. C. is, for the Ionic style, also a brilliant period, though it is no longer in Greece but in Asia Minor that we shall find the best material for study. There is the superb Tomb and the Temple at Priene, and the Temple of Apollo Didymæus; while Polonios of Ephesus and Daphnis of Miletus often employed the Ionic Order with the most consummate art.
In most of the temples of Asia Minor, there exists between the corona and the frieze a row of dentils used in much the same manner as on the Porch of the Caryatides on the Acropolis at Athens.
, Height of Shaft. In the Greek Ionic buildings of which we possess definite remains, the columns vary in height between a little more than eight and a little less than nine diameters. The measure ment of eight diameters and one-half, which Vitruvius gives to the Ionic column, may be considered as coming in the exact middle between these two extremes; although later authorities —for the same reason as already given regarding the Doric column—prefer to take the highest dimension as a standard for modern purposes. The diameter of the column at the top of the shaft varies from eight to eight and one-half tenths of its diameter at the base. Thus we see that this column has at once a higher, more slender, and more graceful shaft than the Doric, and that there is also less difference between the diameter at the base and neck than in the shorter and stumpier Doric shaft. On the Erechtheum, of which we have given a drawing in Plate XLIV, the height is a little less than nine diameters. The columns of the Temple of Apollo Didymæus are a little more than ten; but those of Athena at Priene are approximately nine diameters, and the Temple of Hera at Samos eight diameters and one-half; while on the little Temple of Artemis near the bank of the Ilissus, the column—according to Stewart, who has reconstructed it—has a height of eight diameters and one-fourth.
The Greek Ionic column has also much less taper than any of the Greek Doric shafts, while it is notable in at least one instance—that of the North Porch of the Erechtheum, or, more properly, the Portico to the Temple of Minerva Polias—that the Ionic columns have a swell or belly of their diameter. • Entasis. The taper on these columns is much less accentuated than on the Doric Order. We find that the larger diameter, in the middle, is one-seventh more than the smaller diameter. On the Erechtheum this diminution is of one-twelfth; on the Temple of Apollo Didynnieus, it is one-eighth; and on the little Templeon the Ilissus, it is one-seventh. An entasis or curving contour of the shaft exists in a very delicate and subtle form in the Ionic Order.