‹‹‹ Vitr. 7.0.14 | Table of Contents | Vitr. 7.0.16 ›››
15Besides these, I do not recollect any one that up to this time has written, though we have formerly produced great architects, and such as were well qualified to have written with elegance. In fact the foundations of the temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens were prepared by Antistates, Callæschrus, Antimachides and Porinus, architects employed by Pisistratus, after whose death, on account of the troubles which affected the republic, the work was abandoned. About two hundred years afterwards, king Antiochus, having agreed to supply the money for the work, a Roman citizen, named Cossutius, designed with great skill and taste the cell, the dipteral arrangement of the columns, the cornices, and other ornaments. This work is not only universally esteemed, but is accounted one of the rarest specimens of magnificence.
15But to this day nobody else seems to have bent his energies to this branch of literature, although there have been, even among our fellow-citizens in old times, great architects who could also have written with elegance. For instance, in Athens, the architects Antistates, Callaeschrus, Antimachides, and Pormus laid the foundations when Peisistratus began the temple of Olympian Jove, but after his death they abandoned the undertaking, on account of political troubles. Hence it was that when, about four hundred years later, King Antiochus promised to pay the expenses of that work, the huge cella, the surrounding columns in dipteral arrangement, and the architraves and other ornaments, adjusted according to the laws of symmetry, were nobly constructed with great skill and supreme knowledge by Cossutius, a citizen of Rome. Moreover, this work has a name for its grandeur, not only in general, but also among the select few.