Ten Books on Architecture

neither with the duties I have undertaken, nor with my fortune. And so I might be judged a defendant, as much for having put my sickle into another man’s harvest, as also for being indecorous. To the first I reply: although by the kindness and indulgence of my most gracious and favored Prince, I have exercised some part of civil service abroad, yet after I returned home, I resolved to return to my own simplicity, deeming it more decent to exercise my pen (especially in this first attempt) upon these simple commentaries and a tractable subject than in the labyrinth and mysteries of the court and politics; and it seemed to me that I would be held the less unworthy—that I, who have long contemplated the illustrious Republic, should write of Architecture—than Hippodamus of Miletus was judged in antiquity, Aristot. Politic. lib. 2. cap. 6. who wrote of the Republic though he was merely an Architect. To the second, I am forced to shrug my shoulders, as I learned to do abroad, and to confess that it is not in my fortune to provide an example through the practice of the Art which I contemplate: yet that very thing, even from my own inability, gave me hope that this labor would be all the more welcome, because it was undertaken for the sake of no one less than myself. And with this confidence I approached these endeavors, for which two paths offered themselves: one historical, in the description of the principal works, for the most part completed by Giorgio Vasari in his lives of the Architects; the other Logical, by reducing the rules and cautions of this Art into a convenient Method; and this I have taken for myself, not only as being the most brief and most Elementary, but as being in the reality of the matter the most certain. For although in practical sciences, any single perfect example can stand in the place of a rule: yet it seems that rules ought to precede, so that by them we may be rendered fit to judge of examples.