COLUMN (Latin, columna), in architec ture, a supporting pillar, usually round. In the earliest times the column was merely a tree trunk, or its imitation in stone, used to sup port the roof. The original sense of the word is something that is high or rises in height. The root of the word survives in °Colonel* and the French 0colline,° hill. The gods of nature were originally worshipped in certain places they were supposed to haunt, in the woods. The first temples were rude shelters in which the trunks of the trees of the forest, the °high things) were imitated. Hence, tIke first columns were of wood, being merely trunks of trees, and nearly all the existing primitive columns are round. The parts of a complete column are its base, on which it rests; its body, called the shaft; and its head, called the capital. Columns are used to support the entablature of an order, which has also its proper division. In countries like Egypt, where timber fit for construction is scarce and stone abundant, the latter became the principal material for columns, and those of Egypt are remarkable for the beauty of their workmanship and the durability of their materials. The Egyptian columns were numerous, close, short and very large. They were generally without bases, and had a great variety of capitals, from a simple square block ornamented with hieroglyphics, or faces, to an elaborate composition of palm not ot unlike the Corinthian capital. The Greeks, for their columns, used marble of the finest kind, with which their country abounded; and other nations the stone or material of their country. The Greeks considered the column as an essential part of the architecture of their temples, and never used it as a mere decoration. In fact the primitive Greek temples were little else than roofed columns, thus showing clearly their origin.
The manner of constructing the columns of all the orders rests on similar principles. They are all divided into three primary parts or divisions, the base, the shaft and the capital, except the Doric order, which has no base. The lowest or thickest part of the shaft is used by architects as the universal scale or standard whence all the measures which regulate and de termine heights and projections are taken; and this standard or scale must be understood be fore any architectural design can be com menced. The universal architectural scale is
called a diameter, and is the diameter of the lowest or the largest part of the column; and, unlike the foot, inch or yard, is as various as the size of columns. By the diameter, of course, is meant that of the circle which forms the bottom of the column. Half of this diameter, or the length of the radius which forms the circle, is called a module, and is used as well as the diameter as a primary stand ard of mensuration by some writers upon architecture. These measures of length are subdivided as follows, namely: the diameter into 60 parts, and the module into 30 parts, called a minute. The Ionic column has a base peculiar to itself called the Attic, which, with that of the Corinthian order, is described under ARCHITECTURE The shafts of the orders differ in height and even in various examples of the same order. The capitals also are as various. Columns are either plain or fluted, and the flutes and manner of dividing them are different in the Doric and Corinthian orders. The Ionic flutes much resemble the Corinthian, and in many instances are exactly similar. Columns of all the orders taper gradually toward the top, but in the middle there is sometimes a slight swelling called an entasis. Roman architecture being derived from the Greek, Roman columns were either exactly similar to Greek or modifica tions of the latter. The principal modifications of the column made by the Romans were that form of the Ionic capital in which there were four pairs of diagonal volutes instead of two pairs of parallel ones, and that peculiar to the Composite order, in which the capital of the Corinthian column was combined with that of the diagonal or modern Ionic.
Columns are also often used for corn memorative purposes as well as for architec tural supports; and such are the Trajan and Antonine columns in Rome, and the Monument in London, erected in commemoration of the great conflagration of 1666, one of the loftiest, best constructed and most beautiful in exist ence. It is a Doric fluted column, 202 feet high from the bottom of the pedestal, which is ornamented with bas-reliefs of Charles II and his court giving protection to the fallen city, and various inscriptions, to the top of the vase of flames, by which it is surmounted.