, will lead to the belief that
this can easily be realized. For a liberal education forms, as it were,
a single body made up of these members. Those, therefore, who from
tender years receive instruction in the various forms of learning,
recognize the same stamp on all the arts, and an intercourse between all
studies, and so they more readily comprehend them all. This is what led
one of the ancient architects, Pytheos, the celebrated builder of the
temple of Minerva at Priene, to say in his Commentaries that an
architect ought to be able to accomplish much more in all the arts and
sciences than the men who, by their own particular kinds of work and the
practice of it, have brought each a single subject to the highest
perfection. But this is in point of fact not realized.

13. For an architect ought not to be and cannot be such a philologian as
was Aristarchus, although not illiterate; nor a musician like
Aristoxenus, though not absolutely ignorant of music; nor a painter like
Apelles, though not unskilful in drawing; nor a sculptor such as was
Myron or Polyclitus, though not unacquainted with the plastic art; nor
again a physician like Hippocrates, though not ignorant of medicine; nor
in the other sciences need he excel in each, though he should not be
unskilful in them. For, in the midst of all this great variety of
subjects, an individual cannot attain to perfection in each, because it
is scarcely in his power to take in and comprehend the general theories
of them.

14. Still, it is not architects alone that cannot in all matters reach
perfection, but even men who individually practise specialties in the
arts do not all attain to the highest point of merit. Therefore, if
among artists working each in a single field not all, but only a few in
an entire generation acquire fame, and that with difficulty, how can an
architect, who has to be skilful in many arts, accomplish not merely the
feat--in itself a great marvel--of being deficient in none of them, but
also that of surpassing all those artists who have devoted themselves
with unremitting industry to single fields?

15. It appears, then, that Pytheos made a mistake by not observing that
the arts are each composed of two things, the actual work and the theory
of it. One of these, the doing of the work, is proper to men trained in
the individual subject, while the other, the theory, is common to all
scholars: for example, to physicians and musicians the rhythmical bea