[Footnote:  No explanation can be offered of the meaning of the letter B, which precedes each name.  It may be meant for basa (base).  Perhaps it refers to some author on architecture or an architect (Bramante?) who employed the designations, thus marked for the mouldings. 3. troclea. Philander:  Trochlea sive trochalia aut rechanum. 6. Laterculus or latastrum is the Latin name for Plinthus (pi lambda Xiv) but Vitruvius adopted this Greek name and “latastro” seems to have been little in use.  It is to be found besides the text given above, as far as I am aware, only two drawings of the Uffizi Collection, where in one instance, it indicates the abacus of a Doric capital.]

765.

STEPS OF URRBINO.

The plinth must be as broad as the thickness of the wall against which the plinth is built. [Footnote:  See Pl.  CX No. 3.  The hasty sketch on the right hand side illustrates the unsatisfactory effect produced when the plinth is narrower than the wall.]

766.

The ancient architects ...... beginning with the Egyptians (?) who,
as Diodorus Siculus writes, were the first to build and construct
large cities and castles, public and private buildings of fine form,
large and well proportioned .....

The column, which has its thickness at the third part ....  The one which would be thinnest in the middle, would break ...; the one which is of equal thickness and of equal strength, is better for the edifice.  The second best as to the usefulness will be the one whose greatest thickness is where it joins with the base.

[Footnote:  See Pl.  CIII, No. 3, where the sketches belonging to lines 10—­16 are reproduced, but reversed.  The sketch of columns, here reproduced by a wood cut, stands in the original close to lines 5—­8.]

The capital must be formed in this way.  Divide its thickness at the top into 8; at the foot make it 5/7, and let it be 5/7 high and you will have a square; afterwards divide the height into 8 parts as you did for the column, and then take 1/8 for the echinus and another eighth for the thickness of the abacus on the top of the capital.  The horns of the abacus of the capital have to project beyond the greatest width of the bell 2/7, i. e. sevenths of the top of the bell, so 1/7 falls to the projection of each horn.  The truncated part of the horns must be as broad as it is high.  I leave the rest, that is the ornaments, to the taste of the sculptors.  But to return to the columns and in order to prove the reason of their strength or weakness according to their shape, I say that when the lines starting from the summit of the column and ending at its base and their direction and length ..., their distance apart or width may be equal; I say that this column ...

767.

The cylinder of a body columnar in shape and its two opposite ends are two circles enclosed between parallel lines, and through the centre of the cylinder is a straight line, ending at the centre of these circles, and called by the ancients the axis.