The Periclean entrance court of the Acropolis of Athens

The important buildings of the ancient Greeks were usually designed with the utmost simplicity. The builders aimed at rigid symmetry, sunny beauty through the use of exterior colonnades, and perfection in proportion, execution and detail. These features, however, did not entirely satisfy the sensitive taste of the Greeks. Color, discreetly used, added life to their architecture. And the seemingly straight lines of their buildings were often slightly curved and the vertical faces inclined, to correct certain optical illusions which their acute observation had detected. As a result, their noblest buildings display a perfection which has never been surpassed. The same praise, however, cannot be accorded before Hellenistic times to the manner in which their ensembles were designed. Today even the casual visitor in Greece finds those sites which have been occupied from a remote antiquity-Olympia and Delphi, for example-a jumble of buildings. The trained architect admires the beauty of the individual buildings of early date, but he calls the grouping of the buildings by its real namea mess. And he wonders how the ancient Greeks, who were famous for their keeln artistic appreciations of all kinds, tolerated such unsightly group planning. Early Greek indifference to formality in group compositions is undotibtedly due to the gradual growth of the sacred enclosures and to the deep respect for the holy shrines; the former permitted no well conceived plan of expansion, while the latter forbade radical changes. In the case of early Greek civic architecture the lack of funds, without which no extensive building