atticurges

ATTICURGES(Ἀττικουργές, in the Attic style) is an architectural term, which only occurs in Vitruvius (Vitr. 3.5.2; 4.6-Z2, § § 1, 6, Schn.: as a common adjective, the word only occurs in a fragment of Menander, No. 628, Meineke). The word is evidently used not to describe a distinct order of architecture, but any of those variations which the genius of the Athenian architects made upon the established forms. In the former passage, Vitruvius applies it to a sort of base of a column, which he describes as consisting of two tori divided by a scotia or trochilus with a fillet above and below, and beneath all a plinth; but in several of the best examples the plinth is wanting. (For the exact proportions, see Vitruvius.) This form of base seems to have been originally an Athenian simplification of the Ionic base; but it was afterwards used in the other orders, especially the Corinthian and the Roman Doric; and it is usually regarded as being, from its simple elegance, the most generally applicable of all the bases [SPIRA].

In the second of the passages above referred to, Vitruvius applies the term Atticurges to a particular form of doorway, but it differed very little from that which he designates as the Doric: in fact, though Vitruvius enumerates three kinds of doorways to temples--the Doric, Ionic, and Attic--we only find in the existing building two really distinct forms (Mauch, Die Griech. u. Röm. Bau-Ordnungen, p. 97). According to Pliny (Plin. Nat.36.179), square pillars were called Atticae columnae.