proportions, detail and meaning
The universal function:
“from the absolute unities, whether endued with a masculine, or a feminine form, various orders of beings flow into the universe”
Proclus
The orders, and their universal function, according to Proclus:
“Since the cause of stable power and identity, and the leader [choregos] of being, and that which invests all things with the first principle of conversion, is comprehended in the masculine [Doric] order…
But that which generates from itself, all various progressions and partitions, measures of life and prolific powers, is contained in the female division [Ionic]…
Since the motion of the heavens imparts particular properties and powers, to particular things. But on the other hand earth receiving the celestial defluxions, becomes pregnant, and produces plants and animals of every kind…
[Thus] from the absolute unities, whether endued with a masculine, or a feminine form, various orders of beings flow into the universe.”
Orpheus, Thomas Taylor
“Other orders have elegance, have magnificence, but sublimity is the characteristic of the Doric alone.”
—E. Aikin Modern Architecture
Origins of the Corinthian capital, as relayed by Vitruvius:
“A Corinthian virgin of marriageable years, fell a victim to a violent disorder; after her interment, her nurse, collecting in a basket those articles to which she had shown a partiality when alive, carried them to her tomb, and placed a tile on the basket for the longer preservation of its contents. The basket was accidentally placed on the root of an acanthus plant, which, pressed by the weight, shot forth towards spring its stems and large foliage, and in the course of its growth reached the angles of the tile, and thus formed volutes at the extremities. Callimachus, …happening at this time to pass by the tomb, observed the basket, and the delicacy of the foliage that surrounded it.
Pleased with the form and novelty of the combination, he constructed, from the hint thus afforded, columns with capitals of this species about Corinth, and arranged their proportions, determining their proper measures by perfect rules.”