Corinthian order simply an example of a votive column. A few examples of Corinthian columns in Greece during the next century are all used "inside" temples. A more famous example, and the first documented use of the Corinthian order on the exterior of a structure, is the circular Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, erected c. 334 BC. A Corinthian capital carefully buried in antiquity in the foundations of the circular "tholos" at Epidaurus was recovered during modern archaeological campaigns. Its enigmatic presence and preservation have been explained as a sculptor's model for stonemasons to follow in erecting the temple dedicated to
Doric order three orders are used one above the other, it is usual for the Doric to be at the bottom, with the Ionic and then the Corinthian above, and the Doric, as "strongest", is often used on the ground floor below another order in the storey above. In their original Greek version, Doric columns stood directly on the flat pavement (the "stylobate") of a temple without a base. With a height only four to eight times their diameter, the columns were the most squat of all the classical orders; their vertical shafts were fluted with 20 parallel concave grooves; and they