On Architecture

3. Furthermore, since I have observed that our citizens are distracted with public affairs and private business, I have thought

it best to write briefly, so that my readers, whose intervals of leisure are small, may be able to comprehend in a short time. Then again, Pythagoras and those who came after him in his school thought it proper to employ the principles of the cube in composing books on their doctrines, and, having determined that the cube consisted of 216 [*](Codd. CC & L.) lines, held that there should be no more than three cubes in any one treatise.