About thirty or forty years ago the Greek and Roman Orders were thought of entirely as a thing of the past. And yet, in the last few years, interest in them has revived. I think the reason for this is partly that the architects' situation is so confused that anything which seems to offer the security and inflexibility of the Orders represents a point of appeal for those who wish to make their way out of the confusion. By tradition, there were five of these Orders, three Greek ones - Doric, Ionic and Corinthian - and two which were added later, the first by the Romans - the Etruscan - and the Composite which was added by sixteenth century theorists. What seemed now to be mere formulae, did in fact have an elaborate and fascinating background of speculation and ideas which are quite often forgotten in the present scramble for a secure formula.

The columns of the Orders were traditionally related to the human body: the Doric to the male body, the Ionic to the female and, by a curious lapse, the Corinthian to a maidenly. This is the Doric Order according to the first English book on architecture which was called 'The First and Chief Groundes of Architecture' by a painter of the sixteenth century called John Shute. And, in it, the Doric Order is compared, not just to any human body, but to the figure of Hercules, a powerful figure dressed in a lion mane and holding a huge club to indicate the nakedness, the strength and the enormous power of the Order as a carrier of huge weights.