Those Clever Greeks by Arlo Bates

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 10, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 47.

Those Clever Greeks.

By Arlo Bates

If you turn a book upside down and look at the letters, every s will seem much smaller at the bottom than at the top, although when the book is properly held, both halves appear the same size to the eye.

The upper part of the type that prints the letter s is made smaller than the lower half to correct the fault of the eye, which always slightly exaggerates the former. When the letter is turned over, this same trick of the sight makes the difference seem greater than it really is; and of course, were it of the same width all the way, it would still look uneven.

In great matters, the false report of the eye is greater. If a tapering monument, like that on Bunker Hill or like the obelisk in Central Park, were made with perfectly straight sides, it would look to us—for, you see, we really cannot trust our own eyes—as if it were hollowed in a little; or, as we should say in more scientific language, its sides would appear concave.

Those clever Greeks, who did so many marvelous things in art, thought all this out, and made their architecture upon principles so subtle and so comprehensive that we have never been able to improve on them since. They found that their beautiful Doric columns, if made with straight sides, had the concave effect of which I have spoken; and so, with the most delicate art in the world, they made the pillar swell a little at the middle, and then it appeared exactly right.

This swelling of the column at its middle was called entasis. Of course it had to be calculated with the greatest nicety, and was actually so very slight that it can only be detected by delicate measurements; but it added greatly to the beauty of the columns and to their effectiveness.

Then the lines which were to look horizontal had to receive attention. If you look at a long, perfectly level line, as the edge of a roof, for instance, it has the appearance of sagging toward the middle. The Greek architect corrected this fault by making his lines rise a little. The front of the Parthenon, at Athens, is one hundred and one feet three and a half inches long, and, in this, the rise from the horizontal is about two and one-eighth inches. In other words, there is a curvature upward that makes it a little more than two inches higher in the center than at the ends, and the effect of this swelling upward is to make the lines appear perfectly level. Indeed, this same Parthenon—the most beautiful building in the world—when delicately and carefully measured, was found to be everywhere made a little incorrect, so that it may appear right, which is certainly what may be called an architectural paradox. The graceful columns, which seem to stand so straight, are made to lean inward a little, since, if they were perfectly true and plumb, they would have the effect of leaning outward. The pillars at the corners slant inward more than the others, and everywhere the corners are made to look square by being, in truth, a little broader angled, and lines are curved in order that they shall appear straight to the eye.—Arlo Bates, in St. Nicholas for October.