‹‹‹ Vitr. 6.0.6 | Table of Contents | Vitr. 6.1.1 ›››
7No one thinks of practising at home any art (as that of a shoemaker or fuller, for instance, or others yet easier) except that of an architect; and that because many who profess the art are not really skilled in it, but are falsely called architects. These things have induced me to compose a treatise on architecture and its principles, under an idea that it would be acceptable to all persons. As in the fifth book I treated on the construction of public works, I shall in this explain the arrangement and symmetry of private buildings.
7Nobody, therefore, attempts to practise any other art in his own home—as, for instance, the shoemaker’s, or the fuller’s, or any other of the easier kinds—but only architecture, and this is because the professionals do not possess the genuine art but term themselves architects falsely. For these reasons I have thought proper to compose most carefully a complete treatise on architecture and its principles, believing that it will be no unacceptable gift to all the world. In the fifth book I have said what I had to say about the convenient arrangement of public works; in this I shall set forth the theoretical principles and the symmetrical proportions of private houses.