The Ten Books on Architecture
according to the usage of the Ionic order, one of the three which
exhibit the greatest delicacy of proportion in their symmetrical
measurements. In the present book I shall speak of the established rules
for the Doric and Corinthian orders, and shall explain their differences
and peculiarities.
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGINS OF THE THREE ORDERS, AND THE PROPORTIONS OF THE CORINTHIAN
CAPITAL
1. Corinthian columns are, excepting in their capitals, of the same
proportions in all respects as Ionic; but the height of their capitals
gives them proportionately a taller and more slender effect. This is
because the height of the Ionic capital is only one third of the
thickness of the column, while that of the Corinthian is the entire
thickness of the shaft. Hence, as two thirds are added in Corinthian
capitals, their tallness gives a more slender appearance to the columns
themselves.
2. The other members which are placed above the columns, are, for
Corinthian columns, composed either of the Doric proportions or
according to the Ionic usages; for the Corinthian order never had any
scheme peculiar to itself for its cornices or other ornaments, but may
have mutules in the coronae and guttae on the architraves according to
the triglyph system of the Doric style, or, according to Ionic
practices, it may be arranged with a frieze adorned with sculptures and
accompanied with dentils and coronae.
3. Thus a third architectural order, distinguished by its capital, was
produced out of the two other orders. To the forms of their columns are
due the names of the three orders, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, of
which the Doric was the first to arise, and in early times. For Dorus,
the son of Hellen and the nymph Phthia, was king of Achaea and all the
Peloponnesus, and he built a fane, which chanced to be of this order, in
the precinct of Juno at Argolis, a very ancient city, and subsequently
others of the same order in the other cities of Achaea, although the
rules of symmetry were not yet in existence.
4. Later, the Athenians, in obedience to oracles of the Delphic Apollo,
and with the general agreement of all Hellas, despatched thirteen
colonies at one time to Asia Minor, appointing leaders for each colony
and giving the command-in-chief to Ion, son of Xuthus and Creusa (whom
further Apollo at Delphi in the oracles had acknowledged as his son).
Ion conducted those colonies to Asia Minor, took possession of the land
of Caria, and there founded the grand cities of Ephesus, Miletus, Myus
(long ago engulfed by the water, and its sacred rites and suffrage
handed over by the Ionians to the Milesians), Priene, Samos, Teos,
Colophon, Chius, Erythrae, Phocaea, Clazomenae, Lebedos, and Melite.
This Melite, on account of the arrogance of its citizens, was destroyed
by the other cities in a war declared by general agreement, and in its
place, through the kindness of King Attalus and Arsinoe, the city of the
Smyrnaeans was admitted among the Ionians.
5. Now these cities, after driving out the Carians and Lelegans, called
that part of the world Ionia from their leader Ion, and there they set
off precincts for the immortal gods and began to build fanes: first of
all, a temple to Panionion Apollo such as they had seen in Achaea,
calling it Doric because they had first seen that kind of temple built
in the states of the Dorians.
6. Wishing to set up columns in that temple, but not having rules for
their symmetry, and being in search of some way by which they could
render them fit to bear a load and also of a satisfactory beauty of
appearance, they measured the imprint of a man's foot and compared this
with his height. On finding that, in a man, the foot was one sixth of
the height, they applied the same principle to the column, and reared
the shaft, including the capital, to a height six times its thickness at
its base. Thus the Doric column, as used in buildings, began to exhibit
the proportions, strength, and beauty of the body of a man.
7. Just so afterwards, when they desired to construct a temple to Diana
in a new style of beauty, they translated these footprints into terms
characteristic of the slenderness of women, and thus first made a column
the thickness of which was only one eighth of its height, so that it
might have a taller look. At the foot they substituted the base in
place of a shoe; in the capital they placed the volutes, hanging down at
the right and left like curly ringlets, and ornamented its front with
cymatia and with festoons of fruit arranged in place of hair, while they
brought the flutes down the whole shaft, falling like the folds in the
robes worn by matrons. Thus in the invention of the two different kinds
of columns, they borrowed manly beauty, naked and unadorned, for the
one, and for the other the delicacy, adornment, and proportions
characteristic of women.
8. It is true that posterity, having made progress in refinement and
delicacy of feeling, and finding pleasure in more slender proportions,
has established seven diameters of the thickness as the height of the
Doric column, and nine as that of the Ionic. The Ionians, however,
originated the order which is therefore named Ionic.
The third order, called Corinthian, is an imitation of the slenderness
of a maiden; for the outlines and limbs of maidens, being more slender
on account of their tender years, admit of prettier effects in the way
of adornment.
9. It is related that the original discovery of this form of capital was
as follows. A free-born maiden of Corinth, just of marriageable age, was
attacked by an illness and passed away. After her burial, her nurse,
collecting a few little things which used to give the girl pleasure
while she was alive, put them in a basket, carried it to the tomb, and
laid it on top thereof, covering it with a roof-tile so that the things
might last longer in the open air. This basket happened to be placed
just above the root of an acanthus. The acanthus root, pressed down
meanwhile though it was by the weight, when springtime came round put
forth leaves and stalks in the middle, and the stalks, growing up along
the sides of the basket, and pressed out by the corners of the tile
through the compulsion of its weight, were forced to bend into volutes
at the outer edges.
10. Just then Callimachus, whom the Athenians called [Greek:
katatêxitechnos] for the refinement and delicacy of his artistic
work, passed by this tomb and observed the basket with the tender
young leaves growing round it. Delighted with the novel style and form,
he built some columns after that pattern for the Corinthians, determined
their symmetrical proportions, and established from that time forth the
rules to be followed in finished works of the Corinthian order.
11. The proportions of this capital should be fixed as follows. Let the
height of the capital, including its abacus, be equivalent to the
thickness of the base of a column. Let the breadth of the abacus be
proportioned so that diagonals drawn from one corner of it to the other
shall be twice the height of the capitals, which will give the proper
breadth to each face of the abacus. The faces should curve inwards, by
one ninth of the breadth of the face, from the outside edge of the
corners of the abacus. At the bottom the capital should be of the
thickness of the top of the column omitting the congé and astragal. The
height of the abacus is one seventh of the height of the capital.
12. Omitting the height of the abacus, let the rest be divided into
three parts, of which one should be given to the lowest leaf. Let the
second leaf occupy the middle part of the height. Of the same height
should be the stalks, out of which grow leaves projected so as to
support the volutes which proceed from the stalks, and run out to the
utmost corners of the abacus; the smaller spirals between them should be
carved just under the flower which is on the abacus. The flowers on the
four sides are to be made as large as the height of the abacus. On these
principles of proportion, Corinthian capitals will be finished as they
ought to be.
There are other kinds of capitals set upon these same columns and called
by various names, but they have no peculiarities of proportion of which
we can speak, nor can we recognize from them another order of columns.
Even their very names are, as we can see, derived with some changes from
the Corinthian, the cushion-shaped, and the Doric, whose symmetrical
proportions have been thus transferred to delicate sculptures of novel
form.
CHAPTER II
THE ORNAMENTS OF THE ORDERS
1. Since the origin and invention of the orders of columns have been
described above, I think it not out of place to speak in the same way
about their ornaments, showing how these arose and from what original
elements they were devised. The upper parts of all buildings contain
timber work to which various terms are applied. And not only in its
terminology but actually in its uses it exhibits variety. The main beams
are those which are laid upon columns, pilasters, and antae; tie-beams
and rafters are found in the framing. Under the roof, if the span is
pretty large, are the crossbeams and struts; if it is of moderate
extent, only the ridgepole, with the principal rafters extending to the
outer edge of the eaves. Over the principal rafters are the purlines,
and then above these and under the roof-tiles come the common rafters,
extending so far that the walls are covered by their projection.
2. Thus each and every detail has a place, origin, and order of its own.
In accordance with these details, and starting from carpenter's work,
artists in building temples of stone and marble imitated those
arrangements in their sculptures, believing that they must follow those
inventions. So it was that some ancient carpenters, engaged in building
somewhere or other, after laying the tie-beams so that they projected
from the inside to the outside of the walls, closed up the space between
the beams, and above them ornamented the coronae and gables with
carpentry work of beauty greater than usual; then they cut off the
projecting ends of the beams, bringing them into line and flush with the
face of the walls; next, as this had an ugly look to them, they fastened
boards, shaped as triglyphs are now made, on the ends of the beams,
where they had been cut off in front, and painted them with blue wax so
that the cutting off of the ends of the beams, being concealed, would
not offend the eye. Hence it was in imitation of the arrangement of the
tie-beams that men began to employ, in Doric buildings, the device of
triglyphs and the metopes between the beams.
3. Later, others in other buildings allowed the projecting principal
rafters to run out till they were flush with the triglyphs, and then
formed their projections into simae. From that practice, like the
triglyphs from the arrangement of the tie-beams, the system of mutules
under the coronae was devised from the projections of the principal
rafters. Hence generally, in buildings of stone and marble, the mutules
are carved with a downward slant, in imitation of the principal rafters.
For these necessarily have a slanting and projecting position to let the
water drip down. The scheme of triglyphs and mutules in Doric buildings
was, therefore, the imitative device that I have described.
4. It cannot be that the triglyphs represent windows, as some have
erroneously said, since the triglyphs are placed at the corners and over
the middle of columns--places where, from the nature of the case, there
can be no windows at all. For buildings are wholly disconnected at the