Thus the Egyptian are not like Corinthian dining
rooms, but obviously resemble basilicas.

10. There are also, though not customary in Italy, the oeci which the
Greeks call Cyzicene. These are built with a northern exposure and
generally command a view of gardens, and have folding doors in the
middle. They are also so long and so wide that two sets of dining
couches, facing each other, with room to pass round them, can be placed
therein. On the right and left they have windows which open like folding
doors, so that views of the garden may be had from the dining couches
through the opened windows. The height of such rooms is one and one half
times their width.

11. All the above-mentioned symmetrical relations should be observed, in
these kinds of buildings, that can be observed without embarrassment
caused by the situation. The windows will be an easy matter to arrange
if they are not darkened by high walls; but in cases of confined space,
or when there are other unavoidable obstructions, it will be permissible
to make diminutions or additions in the symmetrical relations,--with
ingenuity and acuteness, however, so that the result may be not unlike
the beauty which is due to true symmetry.

CHAPTER IV

THE PROPER EXPOSURES OF THE DIFFERENT ROOMS

1. We shall next explain how the special purposes of different rooms
require different exposures, suited to convenience and to the quarters
of the sky. Winter dining rooms and bathrooms should have a southwestern
exposure, for the reason that they need the evening light, and also
because the setting sun, facing them in all its splendour but with
abated heat, lends a gentler warmth to that quarter in the evening.
Bedrooms and libraries ought to have an eastern exposure, because their
purposes require the morning light, and also because books in such
libraries will not decay. In libraries with southern exposures the books
are ruined by worms and dampness, because damp winds come up, which
breed and nourish the worms, and destroy the books with mould, by
spreading their damp breath over them.

2. Dining rooms for Spring and Autumn to the east; for when the windows
face that quarter, the sun, as he goes on his career from over against
them to the west, leaves such rooms at the proper temperature at the
time when it is customary to use them. Summer dining rooms to the north,
because that quarter is not, like the others, burning with heat during
the solstice, for the