To return now to the subject of the capital.7
The shapes and sizes for the setting out of columns, of which the ancients distinguished three kinds according to the variations of the human body, are well worth understanding. When they considered man's body, they decided to make columns after his image. Having taken the measurements of a man, they discovered that the width, from one side to the other, was a sixth of the height, while the depth, from the navel to the kidney, was a tenth. The commentators of our sacred writings also noted this and judged that the ark built for the Flood was based on the human figure.
The ancients may have built their columns to such dimensions, making some six times the base, others ten times. But the natural sense, innate in the spirit, which allows us, as we have mentioned, to detect concinnitas suggested to them that neither the thickness of the one nor the slenderness of the other was suitable, so that they rejected both. They concluded that what they sought lay between the two extremes. They therefore resorted first to arithmetic, added the two together, and divided the sum in half; by this they established that the number that lay midway between six and ten was eight. This pleased them, and they made a column eight times the width of the base, and called it Ionic.
The Doric style of column, which suited squatter buildings, they established in the same way as the Ionic. They took the lesser of the two previous terms, which was six, and added the intermediate term of the Ionic, which was eight; the sum of this addition was fourteen. This they divided in half, to produce seven. They used this number for Doric columns, to make the width of the base of the shaft one seventh of the length. And again they determined the still more slender variety, which was called the Corinthian, by adding the intermediate Ionic number to the uppermost extreme and dividing the sum in half: the ionic number being eight, and the uppermost extreme ten, the two together came to eighteen, half of which was nine. Thus they made the length of the Corinthian column nine times the diameter at the base of the shaft, the Ionic eight times, and the Doric seven.
Book 7, 6
....... It was Necessity who instructed that a capital should be on top of the column, to serve as a base for the joints of the beam timbers; originally it was a shapeless piece of roughly squared wood. The inhabitants of Doron (if the Greeks are to be believed in everything) were the first to put it to the lathe, and to make it look like a round dish set under a quadrangular lid; because this seemed too cramped, they reaised it on a slightly higher neck. The Ionians, on viewing the Doric work, found the dish on the capital to their liking, but not the bareness of the dish, nor the junction of the collar; they therefore added the bark of a tree, draping it on either side and spiraling in to hide the edge of the dish. The corinthians followed at Callimachus' instigation; he preferred a high vase covered with leaves to the square dish, one he had seen overgrown with acanthus by the grave of a young girl.
Book 7, 7
....... The Corinthians found both the Ionic and the Doric base to their liking, and used both throughout; in fact, they added nothing to the columnar system except their capital. ......
Book 7, 8
To return now to the subject of the capital.
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The height of the Corinthian capital is equal to the diameter at the base of the column and is divided into seven modules. The abacus takes up one module and the remainder is occupied by the vase, whose base has the same width as the top of the column, without its projection, and whose upper rim has the same width as the bottom of the column.
The abacus is ten modules wide, but half a module is clipped off at each corner. The abaci of all other capitals consist of straight lines; those of the Corintian curve inward until the distance between them is the same as the width at the bottom of the vase. The border of the abacus takes up a third of its height, and its lineaments are identical to those at the top of the shaft of the column.
The vase is girt with a fillet and an astragal, which cover it with two interlapping rows of leaves standing out in relief; each row contains eight leaves. The first row is two modules high, as is the second. The remaining space is taken up by the stalks sprouting out from the leaves to the full height of the vase.
These stalks are sixteeen in number; four of them unfold on each face of the capital, two from the same knot on the right, and two from the same knot on the left; the two end ones hang below the corners of the abacus in a form of spiral, while the middle ones also curl, so that their ends meet in the center. Between these middle two a flower sprouts prominently from a vase as far as the top of the abacus. The rim of the vase, where it is visible and not covered by stalks, is one module thick. Each leaf should be articulated into five or, possibly, seven lobes. The tips of the leaves hang forward half a module. As with all carving, deeply incised lineament will add great charm to the leaves of the capital. Such, then, is the Corinthian capital.