PREFACE.

Philander, Barbaro, Baldus, Budé, Turnèbe, Lipsius, Saumaise, and several other celebrated authors These men were famous Renaissance and 17th-century scholars—such as Guillaume Philandrier and Daniele Barbaro—who wrote exhaustive commentaries on Vitruvius, often filling volumes with classical trivia. have researched and reported at great length in their commentaries, even adding many other topics; because the subject, in the manner that Vitruvius treats it, is so vast that it is easy to find room for everything one knows, especially when one has no other design than to show the reader that one is highly learned. However, it has been considered that modern taste has long since moved away from these massive commentaries, and they are now tolerated only by the most learned scholars who are accustomed to reading these collections of curious research in ancient texts—which are certainly appropriate, but most often unnecessary or of little use in clarifying the Author’s original thought.

It has also been considered that the greatest part of the subjects Vitruvius treats, and upon which one could conduct curious research, do not belong to the Architecture of today. This includes everything he reports regarding the musical systems of the Ancients Vitruvius believed architects needed to understand music to properly tune the tension of catapult strings and to design the acoustics of theaters. for the bronze vases used for echoes in theaters, machines of war, the layouts of Greek and Roman houses, or their gymnasiums and baths. Even if these subjects fall under a branch of science that might serve our Architecture as well as that of the Ancients, the knowledge and exact discussion of the particulars he reports is of no utility. Examples of this include the long history of the stratagems of Queen Artemisia and the story of the Fountain of Salmacis, used merely to show that great palaces were once built only of brick; the enumeration of the properties of all the waters in the world to explain the structure of aqueducts and fountain pipes; or the reasons for the courses of the planets and the description of all the fixed stars to serve in making sundials. For this great mass of diverse things with which Vitruvius wished to adorn his book has more ostentation and flair to amuse the reader than light to guide the mind of an Architect—even assuming he were capable of all this fine knowledge. These things dazzle those who are not capable of them and make them despair of ever understanding the useful and essential things they could understand, because they find them mixed among a hundred others about which they know nothing.

The importance of the remarks that can be made on Vitruvius and placed in the Notes seems to consist of two things: for they either belong to the explanation of famous passages remarkable only for their obscurity and the trouble scholars have taken to explain them—such as the "uneven pedestals" original: "scamilli impares." These are small architectural adjustments or "leveling blocks" mentioned by Vitruvius that have puzzled scholars for centuries regarding their exact shape and purpose. of columns, the music of the Ancients, water clocks, hydraulic machines, catapults, and battering rams—or they concern other matters that are also obscure and difficult but contain necessary and useful precepts for Architecture. These include the swelling of columns Known as "entasis," this is the slight curve applied to a column to prevent it from looking thin in the middle due to optical illusion., the arrangement of points or centers taken in the eye of the Ionic volute to trace its curve, the manner of building on the seabed for jetties and for the moles of ports, and several other remarks of this kind. Now, we have treated all of these as succinctly and clearly as possible.

If we have paused in passing on a few other less famous things—such as the explanation of the structure of the huts made in the land of Colchis, or things little necessary to know even though they belong to every kind of Architecture, such as the reason for the hardening of lime in the composition of mortar and other similar matters—it is not because they were chosen for any particular reason among a hundred others of a similar nature; but...