From Ian Hamilton Finlay SELECTIONS
What cannot be said with a Doric, an Ionic, or a Corinthian column, is perhaps not worth saying.
Even real stone columns are now the idea of columns.
The three orders of architecture – the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian – originated in Greece. The architectural order of a classical building is akin to the mode or key of classical music, the grammar or rhetoric of a written composition. It is established by certain modules like the intervals of music, and it raises certain expectations in an audience attuned to its language.