Full text: Vitruvius: The architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in ten books

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changed his mind, and, with the materials collected, 
made it of the Ionic order, in honor of Bacchus. It is 
not because this order wants beauty, antiquity (genus), 
or dignity of form, but because its detail is shackled and 
inconvenient, from the arrangement of the triglyphs, and 
the formation of the sofite of the corona (lacunaria). It 
is necessary that the triglyphs stand centrally over the 
columns, and that the metopæ which are between the 
triglyphs should be as broad as high. Over the columns, 
at the angles of the building, the triglyphs are set at 
the extremity of the frieze, and not over the centre of the 
columns. In this case the metopæ adjoining the angular 
triglyphs are not square, but wider than the others by 
half the width of the triglyph. Those who resolve to 
make the metopæ equal, contract the extreme interco- 
lumniation half a triglyph's width. It is, however, a 
false method, either to lengthen the metopæ or to con- 
tract the intercolumniations ; and the ancients, on this 
account, appear to have avoided the use of the Doric 
order in their sacred buildings. I will, however, proceed 
to explain the method of using it, as instructed therein 
by my masters ; so that if any one desire it, he will here 
find the proportions detailed, and so amended, that he 
may, without a defect, be able to design a sacred build¬ 
ing of the Doric order. The front of a Doric temple, 
when columns are to be used, must, if tetrastylos, be 
divided into twenty-eight parts; if hexastylos, into forty- 
four parts; one of which parts is called a module, by the 
Greeks éußárys : from the module so found the distribu¬ 
tion of all the parts is regulated. The thickness of the 
columns is to be equal to two modules, their height 
equal to fourteen. The height of the capital one module, 
its breadth one module and a sixth. Let the height of 
the capital be divided into three parts; then one of those 
parts is to be assigned for the abacus and its cyma¬ 
tium, another for the echinus, with its fillets; the third 
for the hypotrachelium. The diminution of the column
	        
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