Columns Of The Olympieum In Athens. Begun by Pisistratus in the sixth century B.C. probably as an Ionic temple, this most
ambitious of all religious buildings in European Greece was resumed by the Seleucid King Antiochus IV (176-165 B.C.) in the
Corinthian order. It was not completed until the time of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-38).
This new flexibility is symbolized by the progress of the Corinthian order. Used in the fourth century for interior columns in such
buildings as the temple of Athena at Tegea and the tholoi (rotundas) at Delphi and Epidaurus, this ornate subform of Ionic had
hitherto seemed too avant-garde for exteriors except those of baroque follies such as the monument of Lysicrates in Athens. But the
rich taste of Hellenistic times and the greater adaptability of the Corinthian capital, which, unlike the Ionic, can be viewed to good
effect from all angles, led to increasing popularity during the third and second centuries, culminating in the adoption of Corinthian
capitals for the main order of one of the most prestigious of all building projects, Antiochus IV's revival of work on the temple of
Olympian Zeus in Athens.
The Corinthian style may have enjoyed particular favour in the Seleucid area, but florid decoration, in which relatively naturalistic
vegetal forms played an important role, occurs widely in the Hellenistic world. Good examples can be seen in the massive new
temple of Apollo at Didyma, begun about 300 B.C. and still incomplete 700 years later; a beautiful frieze of foliate scrolls and
heraldic pairs of griffins which ran round the interior court is dated to the first half of the second century B.C. Foliate decoration was
especially popular in Pergamum, from where it was carried to Rome during the late second and first centuries.
This sort of surface decoration fits within the confines of columnar construction, but another Hellenistic trend sees the columnar
orders themselves used increasingly in a decorative fashion, applied in a non-structural role to walls and facades. The exterior wall
of the bouleuterion (council-house) at Miletus, built between 175 and 164 B.C., was divided into two storeys, of which the lower
was treated as a plain podium, while the upper was decorated with engaged columns. Here at least the horizontal moulding dividing
the two storeys corresponded to a structural division in the interior, namely the top of the semicircular auditorium; but elsewhere the
articulation of exterior walls responded to no internal logic. For example, the facade of the Great Tomb at Levkadia (c. 3 00 B.C.) is
decorated with an engaged Doric order surmounted by a continuous frieze of stucco reliefs, surmounted in turn by a small Ionic
order carrying a pediment; but behind this pseudo-structural screen is a plain vaulted antechamber rising to full height: apart from