‹‹‹ Vitr. 4.3.2 | Table of Contents | Vitr. 4.3.4 ›››
3I will, however, proceed to explain the method of using it, as instructed therein by my masters; so that if any one desire it, he will here find the proportions detailed, and so amended, that he may, without a defect, be able to design a sacred building of the Doric order. The front of a Doric temple, when columns are to be used, must if tetrastylos, be divided into twenty-eight parts; if hexastylos, into forty-four parts; one of which parts is called a module, by the Greeks ἐμβάτης: from the module so found the distribution of all the parts is regulated.
3However, since our plan calls for it, we set it forth as we have received it from our teachers, so that if anybody cares to set to work with attention to these laws, he may find the proportions stated by which he can construct correct and faultless examples of temples in the Doric fashion.
Let the front of a Doric temple, at the place where the columns are put up, be divided, if it is to be tetrastyle, into twenty-seven parts; if hexastyle, into forty-two. One of these parts will be the module (in Greek ἑμβἁτϛ); and this module once fixed, all the parts of the work are adjusted by means of calculations based upon it.