The Ten Books on Architecture, 4.2.2

Vitruvius  translated by Joseph Gwilt

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2Thus each piece has its proper place, origin, and purpose. Hence, following the arrangement of timber framing, workmen have imitated, both in stone and marble, the disposition of timbers in sacred edifices, thinking such a distribution ought to be attended to; because some antient artificers, having laid the beams so that they ran over from the inner face of the walls, and projected beyond their external face, filled up the spaces between the beams, and ornamented the cornices and upper parts with wood-work elegantly wrought. They then cut off the ends of the beams that projected over the external face of the wall, flush with its face; the appearance whereof being unpleasing, they fixed, on the end of each beam so cut, indented tablets, similar to the triglyphs now in use, and painted them with a waxen composition of a blue colour, so that the ends of the beams in question might not be unpleasant to the eye. Thus the ends of the timbers covered with tablets, indented as just mentioned, gave rise to the triglyph and metopa in the Doric order.

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