Page:Vitruvius the Ten Books on Architecture.djvu/146

114

1. length of a temple is adjusted so that its width may be half its length, and the actual cella one fourth greater in length than in width, including the wall in which the folding doors are placed. Let the remaining three parts, constituting the pronaos, extend to the antae terminating the walls, which antae ought to be of the same thickness as the columns. If the temple is to be more than twenty feet in width, let two columns be placed be­tween the two antae, to separate the pteroma from the pronaos. The three intercolumniations between the antae and the columns should be closed by low walls made of marble or of joiner's work, with doors in them to afford passages into the pronaos.

2. If the width is to be more than forty feet, let columns be placed inside and opposite to the columns between the antae. They should have the same height as the columns in front of them, but their thickness should be proportionately reduced: thus, if the columns in front are in thickness one eighth of their height, these should be one tenth; if the former are one ninth or one tenth, these should be reduced in the same proportion. For their reduction will not be discernible, as the air has not free play about them. Still, in case they look too slender, when the outer col­umns have twenty or twenty-four flutes, these may have twenty­eight or thirty-two. Thus the additional number of flutes will make up proportionately for the loss in the body of the shaft, preventing it from being seen, and so in a different way the col­umns will be made to look equally thick.

3. The reason for this result is that the eye, touching thus upon a greater number of points, set closer together, has a larger com­pass to cover with its range of vision. For if two columns, equally thick but one unfluted and the other fluted, are measured by drawing lines round them, one line touching the body of the col­umns in the hollows of the channels and on the edges of the flutes,