Note 142 — Chapter II · HELLENIC GREECE.

[The reasons which induced the late Mr. Fergusson to suggest an “opaion,” or clerestory, were fully set forth in the ‘True Principles of Beauty in Art,’ in 1849. A paper on the same subject was communicated by him to the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1861, and published in their “Transactions” for that year. Since his death, however, Mr. Penrose’s discovery that the Temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens was really octastyle has thrown a new light on the question of hypæthral temples; and, as Dr. Dorpfield remarks in his essay on the “Hypæthral Temple” (communicated to the R. I. B. A. on Dec. 19): “The words of Vitruvius have now received quite another interpretation, through the excavation of the Olympieion at Athens, to that which they have had up to the present. The most important proof of the hypæthral lighting of the temples of antiquity has now turned into a proof against the same;” and he concludes his arguments by stating: “After it has been shown by the excavations that the Olympieion at Athens is the sole example of a great hypæthral temple mentioned by Vitruvius, we can answer this much-vexed question of the lighting of the temples of antiquity in this way—that a few great dipteral hypæthral temples existed, but that the Greek and Roman temples had as a rule no light from above, and were only lighted from the door.”—Ed.]