BOOK X

INTRODUCTION

1. In the famous and important Greek city of Ephesus there is said to be
an ancient ancestral law, the terms of which are severe, but its justice
is not inequitable. When an architect accepts the charge of a public
work, he has to promise what the cost of it will be. His estimate is
handed to the magistrate, and his property is pledged as security until
the work is done. When it is finished, if the outlay agrees with his
statement, he is complimented by decrees and marks of honour. If no more
than a fourth has to be added to his estimate, it is furnished by the
treasury and no penalty is inflicted. But when more than one fourth has
to be spent in addition on the work, the money required to finish it is
taken from his property.

2. Would to God that this were also a law of the Roman people, not
merely for public, but also for private buildings. For the ignorant
would no longer run riot with impunity, but men who are well qualified
by an exact scientific training would unquestionably adopt the
profession of architecture. Gentlemen would not be misled into limitless
and prodigal expenditure, even to ejectments from their estates, and the
architects themselves could be forced, by fear of the penalty, to be
more careful in calculating and stating the limit of expense, so that
gentlemen would procure their buildings for that which they had
expected, or by adding only a little more. It is true that men who can
afford to devote four hundred thousand to a work may hold on, if they
have to add another hundred thousand, from the pleasure which the hope
of finishing it gives them; but if they are loaded with a fifty per cent
increase, or with an even greater expense, they lose hope, sacrifice
what they have already spent, and are compelled to leave off, broken in
fortune and in spirit.

3. This fault appears not only in the matter of buildings, but also in
the shows given by magistrates, whether of gladiators in the forum or of
plays on the stage. Here neither delay nor postponement is permissible,
but the necessities of the case require that everything should be ready
at a fixed time,--the seats for the audience, the awning drawn over
them, and whatever, in accordance with the customs of the stage, is
provided by machinery to please the eye of the people. These matters
require careful thought and planning by a well trained intellect; for
none of them can be accomplished without machinery, and wit