The Archetypal Doric Temple

Doric architecture seems to have arisen suddenly in Greece. Till the beginning of the seventh century, to judge by excavated remains and models, masonry was rough, roofs were either of thatch and high-pitched or of mud and flat, plans were imprecise, and style was nondescript or non-existent without any hint of the characteristic components of the Doric order. Yet by 630 in the artistically peripheral region of Aetolia the new temple of Apollo at Thermon shows carefully squared stonework (or so it may be inferred), a tiled and therefore low-pitched roof and exact planning; and there are remains of metopes, cornice, simas, and perhaps acroteria—the metopes at least being properly Doric. It is a fair conclusion that improved technique and materials and the consequent transformation of the aspect and proportions of the temple came in about the middle of the seventh century and that the Doric order was invented for this incipient architecture. Certainly there was little time for evolution.