temples, the forum, and all
other public places, with a view to general convenience and utility. If
the city is on the sea, we should choose ground close to the harbour as
the place where the forum is to be built; but if inland, in the middle
of the town. For the temples, the sites for those of the gods under
whose particular protection the state is thought to rest and for
Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, should be on the very highest point
commanding a view of the greater part of the city. Mercury should be in
the forum, or, like Isis and Serapis, in the emporium: Apollo and Father
Bacchus near the theatre: Hercules at the circus in communities which
have no gymnasia nor amphitheatres; Mars outside the city but at the
training ground, and so Venus, but at the harbour. It is moreover shown
by the Etruscan diviners in treatises on their science that the fanes of
Venus, Vulcan, and Mars should be situated outside the walls, in order
that the young men and married women may not become habituated in the
city to the temptations incident to the worship of Venus, and that
buildings may be free from the terror of fires through the religious
rites and sacrifices which call the power of Vulcan beyond the walls.
As for Mars, when that divinity is enshrined outside the walls, the
citizens will never take up arms against each other, and he will defend
the city from its enemies and save it from danger in war.
2. Ceres also should be outside the city in a place to which people need
never go except for the purpose of sacrifice. That place should be under
the protection of religion, purity, and good morals. Proper sites should
be set apart for the precincts of the other gods according to the nature
of the sacrifices offered to them.
The principle governing the actual construction of temples and their
symmetry I shall explain in my third and fourth books. In the second I
have thought it best to give an account of the materials used in
buildings with their good qualities and advantages, and then in the
succeeding books to describe and explain the proportions of buildings,
their arrangements, and the different forms of symmetry.
BOOK II
INTRODUCTION
1. Dinocrates, an architect who was full of confidence in his own ideas
and skill, set out from Macedonia, in the reign of Alexander, to go to
the army, being eager to win the approbation of the king. He took with
him from his country letters from relatives and friends to the
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