assment and inconvenience to the work.

2. For the triglyphs ought to be placed so as to correspond to the
centres of the columns, and the metopes between the triglyphs ought to
be as broad as they are high. But in violation of this rule, at the
corner columns triglyphs are placed at the outside edges and not
corresponding to the centre of the columns. Hence the metopes next to
the corner columns do not come out perfectly square, but are too broad
by half the width of a triglyph. Those who would make the metopes all
alike, make the outermost intercolumniations narrower by half the width
of a triglyph. But the result is faulty, whether it is attained by
broader metopes or narrower intercolumniations. For this reason, the
ancients appear to have avoided the scheme of the Doric order in their
temples.

3. However, since our plan calls for it, we set it forth as we have
received it from our teachers, so that if anybody cares to set to work
with attention to these laws, he may find the proportions stated by
which he can construct correct and faultless examples of temples in the
Doric fashion.

Let the front of a Doric temple, at the place where the columns are put
up, be divided, if it is to be tetrastyle, into twenty-seven parts; if
hexastyle, into forty-two. One of these parts will be the module (in
Greek [Greek: embates]); and this module once fixed, all the parts of
the work are adjusted by means of calculations based upon it.

4. The thickness of the columns will be two modules, and their height,
including the capitals, fourteen. The height of a capital will be one
module, and its breadth two and one sixth modules. Let the height of the
capital be divided into three parts, of which one will form the abacus
with its cymatium, the second the echinus with its annulets, and the
third the necking. The diminution of the column should be the same as
described for Ionic columns in the third book. The height of the
architrave, including taenia and guttae, is one module, and of the
taenia, one seventh of a module. The guttae, extending as wide as the
triglyphs and beneath the taenia, should hang down for one sixth of a
module, including their regula. The depth of the architrave on its under
side should answer to the necking at the top of the column. Above the
architrave, the triglyphs and metopes are to be placed: the triglyphs
one and one half modules high, and one module wide in front. They are to
be arranged so that one is