Note 8 — Chapter I · EARLY GREEK DESIGN

Entablature: In a piece of classic architecture, the three horizontal members above the columns when these three are taken together as forming one part of the order. The entablature consists of architrave or epistyle, immediately above the columns, the frieze, and the cornice, each of which may have several decorative subdivisions. Thus in the Ionic Order the epistyle may be divided horizontally into three surfaces projecting slightly more and more from the bottom upward. The frieze in the Doric style (Roman or Greek) is divided by triglyphs into metopes; and in the other orders has often sculptured ornament. The varieties of form in the cornice are very considerable. A triglyph is one of those blocks cut with vertical channels, which seem to rest upon the epistyle and to support the cornice. The metopes are the spaces between; and also the non-structural slabs or blocks which fill those spaces. In a very few instances the entablature is irregular in some respect; thus the portico of Caryatides, Pl. VI, may be said to have no frieze, but epistyle and cornice only. In Roman work the whole entablature is occasionally arched up, bent to a curve, as in a temple at Baalbec, and as in a palace at Spalato.