Page:Vitruvius the Ten Books on Architecture.djvu/149

117 rivers, as in Egypt on both sides of the Nile, ought, as it seems, to face the river banks. Similarly, houses of the gods on the sides of public roads should be arranged so that the passers-by can have a view of them and pay their devotions face to face.

1. the doorways of temples and their casings the rules are as follows, first determining of what style they are to be. The styles of portals are Doric, Ionic, and Attic. In the Doric, the symmetrical proportions are distinguished by the following rules. Let the top of the corona, which is laid above the casing, be on a level with the tops of the capitals of the col­umns in the pronaos. The aperture of the doorway should be de­termined by dividing the height of the temple, from floor to cof­fered ceiling, into three and one half parts and letting two and one half thereof constitute the height of the aperture of the fold­ing doors. Let this in turn be divided into twelve parts, and let five and a half of these form the width of the bottom of the aper­ture. At the top, this width should be diminished, if the aperture is sixteen feet in height, by one third the width of the door-jamb; if the aperture is from sixteen to twenty-five feet, let the upper part of it be diminished by one quarter of the jamb; if from twenty-five to thirty feet, let the top be diminished by one eighth of the jamb. Other and higher apertures should, as it seems, have their sides perpendicular.

2. Further, the jambs themselves should be diminished at the top by one fourteenth of their width. The height of the lintel should be equivalent to the width of the jambs at the top. Its cymatium ought to be one sixth of the jamb, with a projection equivalent to its height. The style of carving of the cymatium with its astragal should be the Lesbian. Above the cymatium of