The Ten Books on Architecture, 7.0.11

Vitruvius  translated by Joseph Gwilt

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11Thus adhering to the principles which I found in those of their works adapted to my purpose, I have endeavoured to advance further. Agatharcus, at the time when Æschylus taught at Athens the rules of tragic poetry, was the first who contrived scenery, upon which subject he left a treatise. This led Democritus and Anaxagoras, who wrote thereon, to explain how the points of sight and distance ought to guide the lines, as in nature, to a centre; so that by means of pictorial deception, the real appearances of buildings appear on the scene, which, painted on a flat vertical surface, seem, nevertheless, to advance and recede.

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