Edge the beds before the portico with box, clip box into figures of animals set facing one another, and in the garden beyond cut it into many shapes, even into the letters of the owner’s name.
Each god in its proper place
Put the temples of the city’s protecting gods (Jupiter, Juno and Minerva) on the highest ground; Mercury in the forum; Apollo and Bacchus by the theatre; Hercules by the circus; Mars and Venus outside the walls.
The siting of temples is a matter of decor, or propriety. Gods of the whole community command the whole town; gods of trade stand where trade is done; gods of spectacle beside the spectacles. Vitruvius adds, following the Etruscan diviners, that the shrines of Venus, Vulcan and Mars belong outside the walls: Venus to keep temptation from the young, Vulcan to keep fire away, and Mars so that citizens never take up arms against one another while he guards the city from outside.
Related rules
Lay out a city’s streets so that they do not line up with the directions of the principal winds, which otherwise rush down them cold, violent and unhealthy.
For a hall of assembly use the “D” or tribune plan, a half-circle closed by a straight side: it gives ample room to the audience, a central place to the speaker and scope for display in the architecture.
Make the sweating room of a bath circular, as high to the springing of its dome as it is wide, with an opening at the crown closed by a bronze disc that can be raised and lowered on chains to regulate the heat.
height to springing = width; oculus with a movable bronze shield
Lay the channel of an aqueduct with a steady fall of not less than a quarter of an inch in every hundred feet, cover it with a vault against the sun, and carry it through hills in tunnels and across valleys on arches.
minimum fall ≈ 1 : 4,800 (Morgan’s reading); Nîmes aqueduct: ≈ 12.6 m in ≈ 50 km ≈ 1 : 4,000
Draw the orchestra circle and inscribe in it four equilateral triangles at equal intervals; the side nearest the scene fixes the front of the scaena, a parallel through the centre fixes the front of the stage, and the angles on the auditorium side give the directions of the stairways.
12 vertices at 30°: 7 fix the stairs of the lower cavea, 5 fix the doors and passages of the scene; stage depth = r⁄2
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Each god in its proper place”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/vitruvius-temple-sites. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.