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Updated: June 8, 2025
Upon a Portuguese arm-chair, decorated with an escutcheon, lay a copy of the "Heures" of Simon Vostre, open at the page which has an astrological figure on it; and an old Vitruvius, placed upon a quaint chest, displayed its masterly engravings of caryatides and telamones.
The details employed to compose this curious illusion are painfully dry and sterile; partly owing to the scholastic enthusiasm for Vitruvius, partly to the decline of mediaeval delight in naturalistic decoration, but, what seems to me still more apparent, through Michelangelo's own passionate preoccupation with the human figure.
But his most important work was the famous Parthenon at Athens, erected within the citadel, by Ictinus and Callicrates, by order of Pericles. According to Vitruvius, the two artists exerted all their powers to make this temple worthy the goddess who presided over the arts.
I started up, fled through a dark arcade, where water falls drop by drop, and arrived, panting, in the great square before the ruins. Directing my steps across it, I reached an ancient castle, once inhabited by the Scaligeri, sovereigns of Verona. Hard by appeared the ruins of a triumphal arch, which most antiquarians ascribe to Vitruvius, enriched with delicate scrolls and flowery ornaments.
A superstition which seems to have originated in a curious statement made by Vitruvius, that in certain localities in the island of Crete the flocks and herds were found without spleen from their browsing on this plant, whereas in those districts in which it did not grow the reverse was the case.
Almost daily, since then, Heraklas had sought some Christian who taught him more perfectly the way of the Lord. "He hath assuredly come!" affirmed the woman. "Vitruvius saw him carried to the ship with other Christians!" The before eagerly-read papyrus dropped from Heraklas' hand. He grew weak and faint. The woman looked at him pityingly. A wild impulse seized Heraklas.
In the two first books, we have consulted those whose writings contain the sentiments of the antient philosophers, as Apuleius, Albericus and others, too tedious to name; on grammar, we have compared, Capella with the antient grammarians; in what he has said on rhetoric, with Cicero and Aquila; on logic, with Porphyry, Aristotle, Cassiodorus and Apuleius; on geography, with Strabo, Mela, Solinus, and Ptolemy, but chiefly Pliny; on arithmetic, with Euclid; on astronomy, with Hyginus, and others, who have treated on that subject; on music, with Cleonides, Vitruvius and Boethius."
And here, too, we may note the admirable nature of the Roman system of heating, where the floors radiated the majority of the heat, and the walls a slightly less amount. The fresh air under the ancient system must have entered through the cooler rooms, and being drawn towards the calidarium found its exit through the ceilings, at times by way of the regulating device mentioned by Vitruvius.
Vitruvius, who, at the beginning of our Era, wrote his thesis on Tectonic art, which is still the text-book of Architecture for Ancient buildings, says Pythagoras taught his followers to form a gnomon, or square, as follows: "Take three rods, of three lengths, four lengths, and five lengths long; with these form a triangle, and, if each rod be squared, you have 9, 16, and 25, and the areas of the two former will be equal to the latter."
This chamber did not possess the numerous and spacious windows which Vitruvius attributes to his more magnificent frigidarium. The Pompeians, as all the southern Italians, were fond of banishing the light of their sultry skies, and combined in their voluptuous associations the idea of luxury with darkness.
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