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The progress of the Drama to its perfection in this period led to a corresponding improvement in the building of Theatres (q.v.). A stone theatre was begun at Athens even before the Persian Wars; and the Odēum of Pericles served similar purposes. How soon the highest results were achieved in this department, when once the fundamental forms had thus been laid down in outline at Athens, is shown by the theatre at Epidaurus, a work of Polyclītus, unsurpassed, as the ancients testify, by any later theatres in harmony and beauty. Another was built at Syracuse, before b.c. 420. Nor is it only in the erection of single buildings that the great advance then made by architecture shows itself. In laying out new towns, or parts of towns, men began to proceed on artistic principles, an innovation due to the sophist Hippodămus of Milētus.

In the 4th century b.c., owing to the change wrought in the Greek mind by the Peloponnesian War, in place of the pure and even tone of the preceding period, a desire for effect became more and more general, both in architecture and sculpture. The sober Doric style fell into abeyance and gave way to the Ionic, by the side of which a new Order, the Corinthian, said to have been invented by the sculptor Callimăchus, with its more gorgeous decorations, became increasingly fashionable. In the first half of the 4th century arose what the ancients considered the largest and grandest temple in the Peloponnesus, that of Athēna at Tĕgĕa, a work of the sculptor and architect Scŏpās. During the middle of the century, another of the "seven wonders," the splendid tomb of Mausōlus at Halicarnassus was constructed (see Mausoleum). Many magnificent temples arose in that time. In Asia Minor, the temple at Ephesus, burnt down by Herostrătus, was rebuilt by Alexander's bold architect Deinocrătes. In the islands the ruins of the temple of Athena at Priēnē, of Apollo at Milētus, of Dionȳsus at Teos, and others, even to this day offer a brilliant testimony to their former magnificence. Among Athenian buildings of that age the Monument of Lysicrătēs (q.v.) is conspicuous for its graceful elegance and elaborate development of the Corinthian style. In the succeeding age Greek architecture shows its finest achievements in the building of theatres, especially those of Asiatic towns, in the gorgeous palaces of newly-built royal capitals, and in general in the luxurious completeness of private buildings. As an important specimen of the last age of Attic architecture may also be mentioned the Tower of the Winds (q.v.) at Athens.

(2) Architecture of the Etruscans and