The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus Restored in Conformity With the Recently Discovered Remains

Of all the examples of the wonderful arts of the Greeks, the remains or the memories of which have come down to us, no one has excited such curiosity as the far-famed Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, or such regret that no fragments of it should have existed in our own days. All we knew of it, till very recently, was that the ancients themselves were inclined to look upon it as the very best specimen of architectural art which they possessed. For not only did they rank it as among the seven wonders of the world, but assigned it that pre-eminence—not because of its size or durability, but because of the intrinsic beauty of its design, and the mode in which it was ornamented.

The Pyramids of Egypt and Walls of Babylon were wonders only because of their mass or their durability. The Palace of Cyrus or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may have been rich in colour and barbaric splendour, but we know enough of Assyrian and of Persian art to feel convinced that the taste in which they were designed must at least have been very questionable. The Colossus at Rhodes, and the Statue of Jupiter at Elis, whatever their merits,—and of one, at least, of them we can believe anything,—did not belong to architectural art. The Temple of Ephesus may have been beautiful in itself, but it became a wonder only from its size, as the largest of Greek temples. But the Mausoleum, which covered not more than one-sixth or one-seventh of its area, could have been remarkable only because it was beautiful, or in consequence of the elaboration and taste displayed in its ornamentation.

All that was known of this once celebrated building, till the recent explorations, was to be gathered from a few laudatory paragraphs in Pausanias, Strabo, Vitruvius, and other authors of that age; and a description in Pliny’s Natural History, which we are now justified in assuming to have been abstracted from a work written by the architects who originally designed the Mausoleum itself. Probably there were no diagrams or illustrations with their book, and we may suspect that Pliny himself did not understand the building he undertook to describe. At all events, it is certain that he stated its peculiarities in such a manner as to be utterly unintelligible to future generations.

Still there were so many facts in his statements, and the building was so celebrated, that few architects have escaped the temptation of trying to restore it. What the squaring of the circle is to the young mathematician, or the perpetual motion to the young mechanician, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was to the young architect; and with the data at his disposal this problem seemed as insoluble as the other two.