107390 THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED BY JAMES LOEB, LL.D. EDITED BY fT. E. PAGE, C.H., LITT.D. LL.D. H. D. LITT.D. j-E. CAPPS, PH.D., fW. KOUSE, L. A. POST, M.A. E. H. WARMINGTON, M.A.. F.E.HIST.SOC. VITRUVIUS ON ARCHITECTURE I uzaJt yiTKUVIUS ON ARCHITECTURE EDITED FROM THE HARLEIAN MANUSCRIPT 2767 AI TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY FRANK GRANGER, D.Lrr., AJLLB.A. PROFESSOR IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM IN TWO VOLUMES I CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD MCMLV First printed 1931 Reprinted 1944,1955 To JESSB LORD TRBXT Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS PAQK PREFACE vii INTRODUCTION : VITRUVIUS AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE WEST ...... ix HISTORY OF THE MSS. OF VITRUVIUS . X\'i THE EARLIEST EDITIONS OF VITRUVIUS . XXi THE SCHOLIA OF THE MSS. XXV - THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE MSS. XXVli THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS . XXViii BIBLIOGRAPHY: THE MSS. XXXli EDITIONS ...... xxxiii TRANSLATIONS XXXiii THE CHIEF CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF VITRUVIUS ..... xxxiv BOOKS OF GENERAL REFERENCE . XXXVi TEXT AND ENGLISH TRANSLATION: BOOK I. ARCHITECTURAL PRINCIPLES . 1 BOOK II. EVOLUTION OF BUILDING : USE OF MATERIALS . 71 BOOK III. IONIC TEMPLES . 151 BOOK IV. DORIC AND CORINTHIAN TEMPLES 199 BOOK V. PUBLIC BUILDINGS I THEATRES (AND MUSIC), BATHS, HARBOURS . 249 INDEX OF ARCHITECTURAL TERMS 319 CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS: THE CAPITOL DOUGGA . (Frontispiece) PLATE A. WINDS AND DIRECTION OF STREETS (at end) PLATE B. PLANS OF TEMPLES . PLATE C. IONIC ORDER . PLATE 0. CORINTHIAN ORDER (see Frontispiece) PLATE E. DORIC ORDER . (at end] PLATE F. MUSICAL SCALES . , . , PLATE O. THEATRE . PLATE H. PLAN OF STABIAN BATHS, POMPEII . vi PREFACE THIS edition has been based upon the oldest MS. of Vitruvius, the Harleian 2767 of the British Museum, probably of the eighth century, and from the Saxon scriptorium of Northumbria in which the Codex Amiatinus was written. The Latin closely resembles that of the workshop and the street. In my translation I have sought to retain the vividness and accuracy of the original, and have not sought a smoothness of rendering which would become a more polished style. The reader, it is possible, may discern the genial figure of Vitruvius through his utterances. In a technical treatise the risks of the translator are many. The help of Dr. House has rendered them less formidable, but he is not responsible for the errors which have survived revision. The introduction has been limited to such con- siderations as may enable the layman to enter into the mysteries of the craft, and the general reader to follow the stages by which the successive accretions to the text have been removed. The section upon language indicates some of the relations of Vitruvius to Old Latin generally. My examination of fourteen MSS. has been rendered possible by the courtesy of the Directors of the MSS. Libraries at the British Museum, the Vatican, the Escorial, the Bibliotheque Nationale vii PREFACE at Paris, the Bodleian, St. John's College, Oxford, an'd Eton College. A word of special thanks is due to his Excellency the Spanish Ambassador to London, his Eminence the Cardinal Merry del Val and the Secretary of the British Embassy at Paris, for their assistance. Mr. Paul Gray, M.A., of this College, has given me valuable help in preparing the MS. for the press. FRANK GRANGER. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM, September, 1929. viii INTRODUCTION VlTRUVIUS AND THE ARCHITECTURE OP THE WEST THE history of architectural literature is taken by Vitruvius to begin with the theatre of Dionysus at 1 Athens. In earlier times the spectators were accommodated upon wooden benches. According 2 to one account, in the year 500 B.C. or thereabouts, the scaffolding collapsed, and in consequence a beginning was made towards a permanent stone structure. The elaborate stage settings of Aeschylus reached their culmination at the performance of the Agamemnon and its associated plays in 458. 3 According to Suidas, the collapse of the scaffolding, which occurred at a performance of one of Aeschylus' dramas, led to the exile of the poet in Sicily, where he died in 456. In that case the permanent con- struction of the theatre would begin in the Periclean age some time between 458 and 456. The performance of the Oresteia probably coin- cided with the first use of scene-painting. Agathar- 4 chus, an artist of Samos, who was employed upon this, introduced the method of perspective as a practical expedient, not only in scene-painting but elsewhere. His elder contemporary, Polygnotus, 1 * Vitr. VH., pref. 11. Suidas, s.v. Pratinas. * * a.v. Aeschylus. Vitr. VII., pref. 11. INTRODUCTION painted the figure without any light and shade and without a pictorial background. Agatharchus not only transformed the background of the stage, but changed the whole method of painting. He was followed by Zeuxis and Parrhasius. He left a note- book of a practical character, apparently a series of workshop recipes, with special reference to per- spective. An illuminating anecdote recorded by 1 Plutarch connects the painter with the extra- ordinary speed with which the architectural schemes of Pericles were completed. Even the more simple applications of perspective would enable an artist to carry out designs with a rapidity, and on a scale, hitherto unknown. The practical treatise of Agatharchus suggested to Anaxagoras and Democritus a theoretic treat- 2 ment of perspective. Since Anaxagoras belonged 3 to the circle of Pericles, he forms one contact between the discoveries of Agatharchus and their application to the Parthenon. How far the subtle variations of the stonework in that building, from the horizontal and the vertical, are to be deduced 4 from a system of perspective is a matter in dispute. We probably err in limiting ourselves to geometrical projection; the logos opticos or theory of vision including other considerations. At any rate, the authorities upon whom Vitruvius chiefly drew, Pythius and Hermogenes, often appeal to aesthetic principles, such as symmetry and congruity, which go beyond perspective. If we take the Parthenon as furnishing a type of the Doric Order, Pythius in the fourth century at the Mausoleum and Priene, and Hermogenes in the 1 * Pericles, xiii. Vitr. VII., pref. 11. 8 * Plut. Pericles. Lethaby, Greek Buildings, p. 80. INTRODUCTION third century at Magnesia, supply guidance for the Ionic Order not only in the extant remains of their buildings but in the formal treatises upon which Vitruvius drew. Surprise has sometimes been expressed at the long list of authorities quoted by Vitruvius in the preface to his seventh book. There is, however, good reason to accept his statement that he selected from them what was suitable to the plan of his work. Some of his material may have of come by way Varro ; the greater part seems to have been taken at first hand. The descriptions left by architects of their build- ings seem rather to have been in the form of specifi- cations than like the formal treatises of Pythius and Hermogenes. We have not indeed the specification of the arsenal which Philo built in the Piraeus ; but we have a recital of the works to be undertaken by 1 the contractors, which is a form of contract also, including something like a specification. To this were added the architect's drawings to scale. The general method of contracting with specification and drawings went back to what in Vitruvius' time was already antiquity. When the temple of Apollo at Delphi was burnt down in 548 B.C., it was rebuilt to the designs of a Corinthian architect, Spintharos, 2 and with the funds of the Amphictionic League. The contract was undertaken by the noble Athenian of the Alcmaeonids. In order to the family " gain favour of the Delphic oracle, they executed the work more splendidly than the plans of the architect showed, and in particular, whereas the building was to be of local stone, they carried out the front eleva- tion in Parian marble." 3 The contract was let to 1 * Dittenberger, Sylloge IG, 352. Paus. X. v. 13. 8 Herod. V. 62. Xi INTRODUCTION the Alcmaeonids for 300 talents (72,000), and the Amphictionic Council demanded from the city of Delphi a contribution of one quarter the amount. The citizens sent missionaries throughout the Greek world to aid in collecting the amount. They were especially successful in Egypt, where the native monarch gave a thousand talents of rock-alum (per- haps for use in making stucco), and the Greek settlers gave 20 minae (80).x I have dealt at some length with the Delphic temple because it furnishes us with some notion of the earlier stages of Greek architectural practice. It also indicates the continuity of this tradition down to the point at 2 which it is taken up by Vitruvius. We next turn to town-planning, which for Vitru- 3 vius begins with Alexandria and the architect Dinocrates. And yet Vitruvius might have found in Italy itself an older precedent. The export trade in pottery from Athens gave employment to a whole quarter of the city, the Ceramicus. A century before the sculpture of Athens became supreme in Greece, her pottery by its fine quality had gained a market in Etruria, Italy and Sicily. In order to secure her trade in the West, Athens determined to form an emporium in Southern Italy and employed the architect Hippodamus of Miletus to lay out the new city of Thurii. When the colonists arrived, they found their new home already partly built. In the time of Vitruvius, four centuries later, it was a cheerful watering-place. To Vitruvius the main consideration in town- planning was to guard the thoroughfares against the prevailing winds.