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Smyrna. Whichever of these circumstances occurred he
richly deserved it, for that person does not seem to have
merited a better fate, who reflects on those that are
beyond the reach of hearing and explaining what is said
of their writings. I, therefore, O Cæsar, do not publish
this work, merely prefixing my name to a treatise which
of right belongs to others, nor think of acquiring repu-
tation by finding fault with the works of any one. On
the contrary, 1 own myself under the highest obligations
to all those authors, who by their great ingenuity have
at various times on different subjects, furnished us with
copious materials; from which, as from a fountain, con-
verting them to our own use, we are enabled to write
more fully and expediently, and, trusting to whom we are
prépared to strike out something new. Thus adhering
to the principles which I found in those of their works
adapted to my purpose, I have endeavoured to advance
fürther. Agatharcus, at the time when Eschylus taught
at Athens the rules of tragic poetry, was the first who
contrived scenery, upon which subject he left a treatise.
This led Democritus and Anaxagorus, who wrote thereon.
to explain how the points of sight and distance ought
to guide the lines, as in nature, to a centre; so that by
means of pictorial deception, the real appearances of
buildings appear on the scene, which, painted on a flat
vertical surface, seem, nevertheless, to advance and
recede. Silenus afterwards produced a treatise on the
symmetry of Doric buildings; Theodorus, on the Doric
temple of Jupiter in Samos; Ctesiphon and Metagenes,
on that of the lonic order in the temple of Diana at
Ephesus. Phileos wrote a volume on the lonic temple
of Minerva at Priene, and Ictinus and Carpion on the
Doric temple of Minerva at Athens, on the Acropolis;
Theodorus Phoceus on the vaulted temple at Delphi;
Philo on the symmetry of temples, and on the arsenal at
the Piræus; Hermogenes on the Lonic pseudodipteral
temple at Magnesia, and the monopteral one of Father
