LIBER PRIMVS

[Music] and the naming of every complex and proportionable number, and subtracting the lesser from the greater quantities, as you may obtain from Euclid. Also, what the venerable Franchinus Gaffurius a noted Italian music theorist of the Renaissance has said in his musical commentary regarding the Euclidical and other readings. And there, from the simple proportions of greater and lesser, of equality and inequality, precisely composed of one quantity and decomposed by another, then the production: also how one would make a triple or quadruple, and so on for all simple proportions. When they have arrived at a great multiplication, doubled or sesquialterately a ratio of 3:2, one can also arrive at other greater submultiples, over the particularities of their species. There are so many varieties in their compositions that they can not only arrive from the production of multiple proportions—as are the roots of the roots of numbers—but also above the particulars of the proportions, ad infinitum to infinity. Just as the [number] 9 would extend the normal surfaces of the Pythagorean and Platonic considerations: which distances from angle to angle, si concluse fuerint lineae quae inter quadraturas: ea trigona si componuntur if the lines are enclosed between the squares; if those triangles are composed, they can produce their sides almost ad infinitum to infinity. Thus, knowing these musical eurythmic proportions, the architect will know how to place not only the structure of every great edifice but every one of its parts—particular, principal, and subsequent. Afterwards, he will also know how to place in them every other smaller member made by that distributed and communicating symmetry, and also how to ornament them. Because when a space is small, it is not permitted to place a large object that occupies and obstructs it. But you must know that it is no lesser a proportion to know how to occupy the air and the terrestrial surface, for health and comfortable expedition and utility, than are the proportionable distances of one voice to another, harmonically placed and annotated. For if those minimal and feminine voices, which seem like fragments of proportions, were not well complexed in a song, one could not well have the harmonic and pleasing concinnity. Thus, our tools and furniture placed in a house for human use, if they are not proportioned with harmonic symmetry to our mutual effect, would provide little or no beauty. You see, therefore, how it is good in every respect for the architect to know music, which we will treat by other means in the fifth book.

¶ And of medicine, let him not be ignorant. This precept is also very opportune, because although it is necessary for the architect to know how to recognize the celestial aspects and their regions, as we shall have from Vitruvius, nevertheless, physical doctrine demonstrates how to temper not only the contrariety of the elements but also that of the celestial influxes. This artistic science is said to have been found by Apollo, according to the Greek writers, then succeeded by his son Aesculapius. He amplified it with laudable and practiced experiences and later held it in such great estimation that he was called the God of Medicine. He was later killed—not by a thunderbolt as some have fabulously written, but by his natural death. It is said that this art of healing remained interdicted and as if forgotten by the world for about five hundred years, so that it seemed the art perished along with its author. Later, Artaxerxes seems to have brought it to light for Hippocrates, son of Asclepius. But see Pliny in book seven, chapter 56: "The Egyptians claim medicine was discovered among themselves. Others say by the Arabs of Babylon, and the son of Apollo. Herbal and medicinal arts [were discovered] by Chiron, son of Saturn and Philyra; but he spoke more broadly below. Gold metals and smelting [by] Cadmus the Phoenician at Mount Pangaeus. As others [say] Thoas and Eaclis. In Panchaia, [by] Sol, son of Oceanus, to whom Gelius also assigns the invention of medicine from honey." Therefore, it will be a great benefit to the architect, for himself and for others, when he knows how to recognize the quality of the terrestrial situation, the species of the air and of the water, and the celestial climates, similarly to what Vitruvius will tell you. [He must know] the properties of the grazing animals and the fruits that the earth and waters create there, and by what causes they conceive sickness and health through natural temperament, and so of many other things which we leave out to avoid being too prolix, since they are explained in the Vitruvian readings.

¶ And it is necessary to have known the responses of the Jurisconsults legal experts or counselors. This precept will be of great utility, because he will know not only the practice of the civil statutes and offices of those cities where the need arises, but the architect himself will be able to operate in the occurring terms of architecture, as much for buildings as for the limitations between neighbors—whether civil, rural, or agricultural—or aqueducts for the estates, or for the civic or town republics, or for particulars, or even the distances of houses near the fortifications of princes, or of the acquisitions of alluvium and islands given by rivers. Just as that most illustrious legal doctor, Bartholo de Saxo Ferrato, has also written about these occurring cases in the treatises De Fluminibus On Rivers, Tiberiadis On the Tiber, De Alluvione On Alluvium, ac de Insula and on the Island, and etiam de Alveo and also on the Riverbed, etc. These things happened to me in the year 1518, being in the city of Asti Pompeia in the company of the most illustrious doctors: Alberto Bruno, Hyeronimo Buzo, and the lieutenant of Messer Ioanne de Verasis, doctor. We divided the alluvium given by the river Tanaro, which had been in dispute for many years, and we opened those geometric readings and terminated that which the impressed terrestrial figure most demonstrated. It was almost circular, and had joined to the first fields of the hospital of that republic and of many other gentlemen; finally, that of the noble doctor Ioanne de Verasis. Through the geometric divisions made diligently between the plain and the woods and the meadows, we caused the stakes to be planted directed to the line of the amussia a leveling instrument of the brass box—inside which box, by inspecting the oblong and very subtle perforations, as I have demonstrated the figure in the eighth book with the chorobates a leveling device, the wood of which has the Greek letter Λ Lambda above—we did so. And thus, all those to whom the portions of said alluvium were given standing on the spot with the doctors, we took away the aforementioned questions and homicides that were unjustly divided for that alluvium by their own will and not by reason. Therefore, you see with what clarity and peace the architect acts who knows how to recognize the legal norms and the responses given to those who have proposed their causes to the Jurisconsults.

¶ Vitruvius has said "responses" and not "sentences," because it is better to stand by the arbitration of good men than to have a sentence. Quoniam habemus obsequium amicos veritas odium parit Since we have compliance, truth begets hatred. Nam Achilles vera dicendo offendit Agamemnonem For Achilles, by speaking the truth, offended Agamemnon, etc. And these who will therefore know honestly what pertains to deciding the controversies that can result in these matters of the architectural office, these will be the best at succoring and aiding both the litigants and the legal ignorance. Because even if laws are given so that one may live in peace, nevertheless, one law is better than another, which have been alleged—all opinions together are healthy because one jurisconsult will sometimes judge on alleged things, which through another opinion, whoever knows how to produce it, will make better and will overturn the others. These [overturned laws] will sometimes be granted and given for favor or the complaisance of some bad Arbitrator or Commissioner, for some things illicitly occupied and usurped, since there is nothing in the world that is possessed without reason. In which it is not forbidden that one may litigate. Regarding these things, Aristotle says in the second book of the Politics: "Dishonest laws, even if they are in great use, may be abolished." Nevertheless, he also said: "It is better to judge according to laws and letters than from one's own science."

¶ Also, let him have known astrology and the reasons of the heavens. The reader must know that Vitruvius has treated all these sciences necessary for the architect without doubt. This science also helps good architects a lot, which assistance and necessity Vitruvius will say expressly, not only in this first book but also through the other books, and especially in the ninth, diffusely. Vitruvius now explains and reasons the causes why it is convenient for the architect to have the predicted doctrines, and thus he says:

¶ "The Architect must know letters, etc." We have expanded on this enough above, and here the reading is clear enough. ¶ Commentarii commentaries, i.e., annotations made in short chapters of things of which one keeps written memory. Which, although it is like a shorthand of public notaries, these annotations can be extended diffusely, commemorating what was understood implicitly, as the grammatical expositors have annotated, or as we shall say in the seventh prologue.

¶ After having the scientia graphida the science of drafting, that is, of designing—we Milanese also call graphium some other stylus—this is used over little tablets smeared with white powder and spit; upon it we design. Thus, with a silver or bronze or leaden stylus, we design on parchment, or paper, or another thing. Similarly, upon lime mixed with charcoal, pulverized and whitened, while it is still wet and crusted over the wall, painters practically are accustomed to use a bronze or iron stylus to shape and decorate as if they were works of damask fabrics; and this we name Sgraphiare sgraffito/scratching. But if the lime plaster is not more than well-leveled on the surface of the wall, the superficial whiteness from the dusty matter surpasses the scratched decoration, like the leather of the furs that the young villagers use for their infancy and youth in the wintertime, but these things are soon ruined by time. And thus you see how γραφω grapho signifies to write, to design, and to paint.

¶ But geometry provides many presidii safeguards/aids, that is, auxiliary succors, to architecture. And primarily from the enthymgrammate geometrical diagrams of the circino dividers/compass: that is, from the good linear usage or walking of the circino, which many call a compasso compass. But we prefer to call it a festo a measuring tool than a circino, because this fragile tool knows that the circle of whatever quantity it may be, divides it most justly six times.