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5As in works of the Doric order triglyphs and mutuli were first used, so in Ionic works the use of dentils was first introduced; for as the mutuli bear a resemblance to the projecting feet of the principal rafters, so, in the Ionic order, the dentils imitate the projection of the common rafters. Hence the Greeks never placed dentils below the mutuli, because the feet of common rafters cannot be below those of principal rafters. For a design must be anomalous, when that which ought to be above the principal rafters is placed below them. The antients, therefore, neither approved nor used mutuli nor dentils in the cornices of their pediments, but coronæ simply; because neither principal nor common rafters tail on the front of a pediment, neither can they project beyond it, their direction being towards the eaves. Their opinion, therefore, evidently was, that a distribution would not be correct in a copy which could not exist in the prototype.
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