Ntcblatgicat lastitute of mrastica THE CORNICE OF THE TEMPLE OF ATHENA NIKE MONSIEUR H. DAUMET, in _Fragments d'Architecture Antique, Plates 5, 7, and 8, assigns to the temple of Athena Nike at Athens a cornice which I believe I have identified as the raking cornice of the north portico of the Erechtheum..
A glance at M. Daumet's wonderful drawings gives one an impression that the cornice (excluding the cyma), both in its height and in the scale of its mouldings, overpowers the members below; and it will also be noted that the mouldings of this cornice are the only carved members on the whole temple,1 an incongruity hardly admissible in good Greek work. Now it would be difficult to find a more popular book in architectural offices than this volume of restorations by the Pensionnaires of the Academy of France in Rome, and it was therefore largely in defence of the delicate feeling for proportions and for harmonious combination of mouldings displayed by the Greek architects at the time of the erection of the temple of Athena Nike that I looked over the various publications of the temple2 to see if authorities agreed in the matter of the cornice. I found that they did agree, but I did not find any proofs that the original cornice had been identified. Then I made a careful examination of the frieze blocks of the temple itself and of the various cornices still extant on the Acropolis, with the result that a heavy inharmonious cornice can surely no longer be assigned to a temple perfected in all other details with so much care. 1 Except the customary egg-and-dart moulding between the shaft and the capital. 2 The chief ones are those of Le Bas, BBtticher, and Durm. See Frazer's Pausanias's Description of Greece, Vol. II, p. 261, for a comprehensive set of references.