Terms to Know About the Greek Architectural Orders

By N.S. Gill, About.com Guide

In ancient history, one society builds upon the ideas and structures of another. Sometimes, determining the legacy takes detective (= historian/archaeologist) work, but in the case of Roman architecture, particularly in temples, the debt owed to the Greeks is obvious. Here you will learn some of the basic terms that are applied to both Greek and Roman temple structures and tested on in classes. My descriptions are an attempt to help you understand the technical. They are most definitely not a suitably jargon-filled bit to put on flashcards and memorize for looming examinations. If you do want those, try Art history flashcard sets.

The caption and accompanying picture illustrate important items connected with the temple column. If you are taking a Roman history or art history exam that covers this topic, you will probably be asked to point to the location of such elements or the ones I define below. N.B.: This temple column is Ionic, not Doric or Corinthian, let alone the Romans' addition of the composite or the Tuscan.

• Also note the About.com Guide to Architecture's article on the Orders.

• Doric: The earliest and plainest column, fluting (see below) is shallow and comes to points. The base is generally said to be missing in the Doric order because it isn't special to the individual column, but you might say the floor (or, technically, the "stylobate") is the Doric order's base. The part of the Doric temple over the columns contains an often sculptural "frieze" with "metopes" and "triglyphs". This is the form familiar from the Greek Parthenon.

• Ionic: The Ionic is more graceful than the Doric with a visible base and more elaborate (volute) capital. The Ionic (as also the Corinthian) column consists of the base, shaft (the vertical stack of fluted drums), and capital.

• Corinthian: The fanciest of the three orders. The capital is decorated with floral designs (acanthus leaves, flowers). The Romans' composite combines elements of the Ionic and Corinthian resulting in an even more ornate capital.

• Base: What it sounds like. The bottom portion of the structure -- the piece under the column.

• Capital: Capital has to do with a head. It's the head of the column that comes beneath the burden the column is carrying in tandem with its sister columns. Sometimes, instead of columns, female sculpted figures support the horizontal material as if they were carrying something on their heads. [See Caryatids.] So much is non-technical. The capital is at the top of the column and beneath the horizontal beam. It is the part that spreads out.

  The capital of the Doric column consists of the abacus, echinus, and necking.

• Volute: The volute is the ornamental curve that appears in pairs on the capital of the Ionic order. The inner circle of the volutes is known as the "oculus," Latin for 'eye'.

• Fluting: Fluting refers to the vertical ridges that span the length of the column and go completely around its circumference. Since a column is built of multiple pieces (stacked drums), the fluting matches up from one section of the column to the one on top of it. The style of fluting is one way to distinguish the Doric column. In the Doric the hill comes to a point and the valley is shallow. Others describe fluting as a vertical channel between flat edges in the Ionic and Corinthian. Here's a section from the Roman architect Vitruvius (our main authority on the ancient classical architectural orders) on fluting in the Ionic column:

  14. The flutes of the columns are to be twenty four, hollowed out in such a way that if a set square is placed into the hollow of a flute and moved round its ends, it will touch the fillets on the right and left, and the point of the square will touch the curve as it moves round. The width of the flutes is to be altered so as to suit the addition produced by the swelling of the column.

  In the Doric:

  9. The columns ought to be fluted with 20 flutes. If the flutes are flat, the columns must have 20 vertical edges marked. But if the flutes are hollow, we must fix their form in this way: draw a square with equal sides as great as is the width of the fluting. Now in the middle of the square the centre of a circle is to be placed, and let a circle be described which touches the angles of the square; and the curve which comes between the circumference and the side of the square, will give the hollow of the flutes. Thus the Doric column will have the fluting proper to its order.
  Source: 3.5 and 4.3 Vitruvius

• Frieze: A horizontal space above the capitals that is often decorated with sculpture.

• Triglyph: Alternating triglyphs and metopes divide up the frieze in the Doric order. Triglyph has a three in it for the three vertical bars surrounding two "canals".

• Metope: This is the name of the space between the triglyphs on the frieze in the Doric order.

• Entablature: This is the horizontal material the column heads (remember? the capitals) hold up. This area includes architrave, frieze, and cornice, items shown on the illustration above.

• Pediment: Just as capital has to do with a head, pediment would appear to have to do with a foot, but hold on. The pediment is a vertical triangle high up on the temple. Where one might expect to see some form of "pediment" in the Latin, Vitruvius employs the term fastigia. By this term, he refers to the top of a gable. The online etymology dictionary says the modern word pediment may be connected with a malformation of the word pyramid, which gets at the triangular shape of the pediment.

  The pediment is made up of two inclined ("raking") cornices (= decorative molding) and a flat one that create a triangular surface called a tympanum. The word tympanum can refer to a type of percussion instrument, an idea that may seem irrelevant unless you think about the fact that the stacking segments of the column are known as drums.