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chapter:
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I: ON SYMMETRY: IN TEMPLES AND IN THE HUMAN BODY
CHAPTER II: CLASSIFICATION OF TEMPLES
CHAPTER 3: THE PROPORTIONS OF INTERCOLUMNIATIONS AND OF COLUMNS
CHAPTER IV: THE FOUNDATIONS AND SUBSTRUCTURES OF TEMPLES
CHAPTER V: PROPORTIONS OF THE BASE, CAPITALS, AND ENTABLATURE IN THE IONIC ORDER
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BOOK I
BOOK II
BOOK III
BOOK IV
BOOK V
BOOK VI
BOOK VII
BOOK IX
5. Further, it was from the members of the body that they derived the fundamental ideas of the measures which are obviously necessary in all works, as the finger, palm, foot, and cubit. These they apportioned so as to form the “perfect number,” called in Greek τέλειον, and as the perfect number the ancients fixed upon ten. For it is from the number of the fingers of the hand that the palm is found, and the foot from the palm. Again, while ten is naturally perfect, as being made up by the fingers of the two palms, Plato also held that this number was perfect because ten is composed of the individual units, called by the Greeks But as soon as eleven or twelve is reached, the numbers, being excessive, cannot be perfect until they come to ten for the second time; for the component parts of that number are the individual units.
Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture. Vitruvius. Morris Hicky Morgan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. London: Humphrey Milford. Oxford University Press. 1914.
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- Lewis & Short, palmus
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