Robert Burns - "The Letters of Robert Burns"

G. A. Henty - "Saint Bartholomew's Eve"

Frederick S. Dellenbaugh - "A Canyon Voyage"

A. A. Milne - "First Plays"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Ten Books on Architecture

V >> Vitruvius >> Ten Books on Architecture







CHAPTER V

LEVELLING AND LEVELLING INSTRUMENTS


1. I shall now treat of the ways in which water should be conducted to
dwellings and cities. First comes the method of taking the level.
Levelling is done either with dioptrae, or with water levels, or with
the chorobates, but it is done with greater accuracy by means of the
chorobates, because dioptrae and levels are deceptive. The chorobates is
a straightedge about twenty feet long. At the extremities it has legs,
made exactly alike and jointed on perpendicularly to the extremities of
the straightedge, and also crosspieces, fastened by tenons, connecting
the straightedge and the legs. These crosspieces have vertical lines
drawn upon them, and there are plumblines hanging from the straightedge
over each of the lines. When the straightedge is in position, and the
plumblines strike both the lines alike and at the same time, they show
that the instrument stands level.

2. But if the wind interposes, and constant motion prevents any definite
indication by the lines, then have a groove on the upper side, five feet
long, one digit wide, and a digit and a half deep, and pour water into
it. If the water comes up uniformly to the rims of the groove, it will
be known that the instrument is level. When the level is thus found by
means of the chorobates, the amount of fall will also be known.

3. Perhaps some reader of the works of Archimedes will say that there
can be no true levelling by means of water, because he holds that water
has not a level surface, but is of a spherical form, having its centre
at the centre of the earth. Still, whether water is plane or spherical,
it necessarily follows that when the straightedge is level, it will
support the water evenly at its extremities on the right and left, but
that if it slopes down at one end, the water at the higher end will not
reach the rim of the groove in the straightedge. For though the water,
wherever poured in, must have a swelling and curvature in the centre,
yet the extremities on the right and left must be on a level with each
other. A picture of the chorobates will be found drawn at the end of the
book. If there is to be a considerable fall, the conducting of the water
will be comparatively easy. But if the course is broken by depressions,
we must have recourse to substructures.




CHAPTER VI

AQUEDUCTS, WELLS, AND CISTERNS


1. There are three methods of conducting water, in channels through
masonry conduits, or in lead pipes, or in pipes of baked clay. If in
conduits, let the masonry be as solid as possible, and let the bed of
the channel have a gradient of not less than a quarter of an inch for
every hundred feet, and let the masonry structure be arched over, so
that the sun may not strike the water at all. When it has reached the
city, build a reservoir with a distribution tank in three compartments
connected with the reservoir to receive the water, and let the reservoir
have three pipes, one for each of the connecting tanks, so that when the
water runs over from the tanks at the ends, it may run into the one
between them.

2. From this central tank, pipes will be laid to all the basins and
fountains; from the second tank, to baths, so that they may yield an
annual income to the state; and from the third, to private houses, so
that water for public use will not run short; for people will be unable
to divert it if they have only their own supplies from headquarters.
This is the reason why I have made these divisions, and also in order
that individuals who take water into their houses may by their taxes
help to maintain the conducting of the water by the contractors.

3. If, however, there are hills between the city and the source of
supply, subterranean channels must be dug, and brought to a level at the
gradient mentioned above. If the bed is of tufa or other stone, let the
channel be cut in it; but if it is of earth or sand, there must be
vaulted masonry walls for the channel, and the water should thus be
conducted, with shafts built at every two hundred and forty feet.

4. But if the water is to be conducted in lead pipes, first build a
reservoir at the source; then, let the pipes have an interior area
corresponding to the amount of water, and lay these pipes from this
reservoir to the reservoir which is inside the city walls. The pipes
should be cast in lengths of at least ten feet. If they are hundreds,
they should weigh 1200 pounds each length; if eighties, 960 pounds; if
fifties, 600 pounds; forties, 480 pounds; thirties, 360 pounds;
twenties, 240 pounds; fifteens, 180 pounds; tens, 120 pounds; eights,
100 pounds; fives, 60 pounds. The pipes get the names of their sizes
from the width of the plates, taken in digits, before they are rolled
into tubes. Thus, when a pipe is made from a plate fifty digits in
width, it will be called a "fifty," and so on with the rest.

5. The conducting of the water through lead pipes is to be managed as
follows. If there is a regular fall from the source to the city, without
any intervening hills that are high enough to interrupt it, but with
depressions in it, then we must build substructures to bring it up to
the level as in the case of channels and conduits. If the distance round
such depressions is not great, the water may be carried round
circuitously; but if the valleys are extensive, the course will be
directed down their slope. On reaching the bottom, a low substructure is
built so that the level there may continue as long as possible. This
will form the "venter," termed [Greek: Koilia] by the Greeks. Then, on
reaching the hill on the opposite side, the length of the venter makes
the water slow in swelling up to rise to the top of the hill.

6. But if there is no such venter made in the valleys, nor any
substructure built on a level, but merely an elbow, the water will break
out, and burst the joints of the pipes. And in the venter, water
cushions must be constructed to relieve the pressure of the air. Thus,
those who have to conduct water through lead pipes will do it most
successfully on these principles, because its descents, circuits,
venters, and risings can be managed in this way, when the level of the
fall from the sources to the city is once obtained.

7. It is also not ineffectual to build reservoirs at intervals of 24,000
feet, so that if a break occurs anywhere, it will not completely ruin
the whole work, and the place where it has occurred can easily be
found; but such reservoirs should not be built at a descent, nor in the
plane of a venter, nor at risings, nor anywhere in valleys, but only
where there is an unbroken level.

8. But if we wish to spend less money, we must proceed as follows. Clay
pipes with a skin at least two digits thick should be made, but these
pipes should be tongued at one end so that they can fit into and join
one another. Their joints must be coated with quicklime mixed with oil,
and at the angles of the level of the venter a piece of red tufa stone,
with a hole bored through it, must be placed right at the elbow, so that
the last length of pipe used in the descent is jointed into the stone,
and also the first length of the level of the venter; similarly at the
hill on the opposite side the last length of the level of the venter
should stick into the hole in the red tufa, and the first of the rise
should be similarly jointed into it.

9. The level of the pipes being thus adjusted, they will not be sprung
out of place by the force generated at the descent and at the rising.
For a strong current of air is generated in an aqueduct which bursts its
way even through stones unless the water is let in slowly and sparingly
from the source at first, and checked at the elbows or turns by bands,
or by the weight of sand ballast. All the other arrangements should be
made as in the case of lead pipes. And ashes are to be put in beforehand
when the water is let in from the source for the first time, so that if
any of the joints have not been sufficiently coated, they may be coated
with ashes.

10. Clay pipes for conducting water have the following advantages. In
the first place, in construction:--if anything happens to them, anybody
can repair the damage. Secondly, water from clay pipes is much more
wholesome than that which is conducted through lead pipes, because lead
is found to be harmful for the reason that white lead is derived from
it, and this is said to be hurtful to the human system. Hence, if what
is produced from it is harmful, no doubt the thing itself is not
wholesome.

11. This we can exemplify from plumbers, since in them the natural
colour of the body is replaced by a deep pallor. For when lead is
smelted in casting, the fumes from it settle upon their members, and day
after day burn out and take away all the virtues of the blood from their
limbs. Hence, water ought by no means to be conducted in lead pipes, if
we want to have it wholesome. That the taste is better when it comes
from clay pipes may be proved by everyday life, for though our tables
are loaded with silver vessels, yet everybody uses earthenware for the
sake of purity of taste.

12. But if there are no springs from which we can construct aqueducts,
it is necessary to dig wells. Now in the digging of wells we must not
disdain reflection, but must devote much acuteness and skill to the
consideration of the natural principles of things, because the earth
contains many various substances in itself; for like everything else, it
is composed of the four elements. In the first place, it is itself
earthy, and of moisture it contains springs of water, also heat, which
produces sulphur, alum, and asphalt; and finally, it contains great
currents of air, which, coming up in a pregnant state through the porous
fissures to the places where wells are being dug, and finding men
engaged in digging there, stop up the breath of life in their nostrils
by the natural strength of the exhalation. So those who do not quickly
escape from the spot, are killed there.

13. To guard against this, we must proceed as follows. Let down a
lighted lamp, and if it keeps on burning, a man may make the descent
without danger. But if the light is put out by the strength of the
exhalation, then dig air shafts beside the well on the right and left.
Thus the vapours will be carried off by the air shafts as if through
nostrils. When these are finished and we come to the water, then a wall
should be built round the well without stopping up the vein.

14. But if the ground is hard, or if the veins lie too deep, the water
supply must be obtained from roofs or higher ground, and collected in
cisterns of "signinum work." Signinum work is made as follows. In the
first place, procure the cleanest and sharpest sand, break up lava into
bits of not more than a pound in weight, and mix the sand in a mortar
trough with the strongest lime in the proportion of five parts of sand
to two of lime. The trench for the signinum work, down to the level of
the proposed depth of the cistern, should be beaten with wooden beetles
covered with iron.

15. Then after having beaten the walls, let all the earth between them
be cleared out to a level with the very bottom of the walls. Having
evened this off, let the ground be beaten to the proper density. If such
constructions are in two compartments or in three so as to insure
clearing by changing from one to another, they will make the water much
more wholesome and sweeter to use. For it will become more limpid, and
keep its taste without any smell, if the mud has somewhere to settle;
otherwise it will be necessary to clear it by adding salt.

In this book I have put what I could about the merits and varieties of
water, its usefulness, and the ways in which it should be conducted and
tested; in the next I shall write about the subject of dialling and the
principles of timepieces.




BOOK IX




INTRODUCTION


1. The ancestors of the Greeks have appointed such great honours for the
famous athletes who are victorious at the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian,
and Nemean games, that they are not only greeted with applause as they
stand with palm and crown at the meeting itself, but even on returning
to their several states in the triumph of victory, they ride into their
cities and to their fathers' houses in four-horse chariots, and enjoy
fixed revenues for life at the public expense. When I think of this, I
am amazed that the same honours and even greater are not bestowed upon
those authors whose boundless services are performed for all time and
for all nations. This would have been a practice all the more worth
establishing, because in the case of athletes it is merely their own
bodily frame that is strengthened by their training, whereas in the case
of authors it is the mind, and not only their own but also man's in
general, by the doctrines laid down in their books for the acquiring of
knowledge and the sharpening of the intellect.

2. What does it signify to mankind that Milo of Croton and other victors
of his class were invincible? Nothing, save that in their lifetime they
were famous among their countrymen. But the doctrines of Pythagoras,
Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, and the daily life of other learned
men, spent in constant industry, yield fresh and rich fruit, not only to
their own countrymen, but also to all nations. And they who from their
tender years are filled with the plenteous learning which this fruit
affords, attain to the highest capacity of knowledge, and can introduce
into their states civilized ways, impartial justice, and laws, things
without which no state can be sound.

3. Since, therefore, these great benefits to individuals and to
communities are due to the wisdom of authors, I think that not only
should palms and crowns be bestowed upon them, but that they should even
be granted triumphs, and judged worthy of being consecrated in the
dwellings of the gods.

Of their many discoveries which have been useful for the development of
human life, I will cite a few examples. On reviewing these, people will
admit that honours ought of necessity to be bestowed upon them.

4. First of all, among the many very useful theorems of Plato, I will
cite one as demonstrated by him. Suppose there is a place or a field in
the form of a square and we are required to double it. This has to be
effected by means of lines correctly drawn, for it will take a kind of
calculation not to be made by means of mere multiplication. The
following is the demonstration. A square place ten feet long and ten
feet wide gives an area of one hundred feet. Now if it is required to
double the square, and to make one of two hundred feet, we must ask how
long will be the side of that square so as to get from this the two
hundred feet corresponding to the doubling of the area. Nobody can find
this by means of arithmetic. For if we take fourteen, multiplication
will give one hundred and ninety-six feet; if fifteen, two hundred and
twenty-five feet.

5. Therefore, since this is inexplicable by arithmetic, let a diagonal
line be drawn from angle to angle of that square of ten feet in length
and width, dividing it into two triangles of equal size, each fifty feet
in area. Taking this diagonal line as the length, describe another
square. Thus we shall have in the larger square four triangles of the
same size and the same number of feet as the two of fifty feet each
which were formed by the diagonal line in the smaller square. In this
way Plato demonstrated the doubling by means of lines, as the figure
appended at the bottom of the page will show.

6. Then again, Pythagoras showed that a right angle can be formed
without the contrivances of the artisan. Thus, the result which
carpenters reach very laboriously, but scarcely to exactness, with their
squares, can be demonstrated to perfection from the reasoning and
methods of his teaching. If we take three rules, one three feet, the
second four feet, and the third five feet in length, and join these
rules together with their tips touching each other so as to make a
triangular figure, they will form a right angle. Now if a square be
described on the length of each one of these rules, the square on the
side of three feet in length will have an area of nine feet; of four
feet, sixteen; of five, twenty-five.

7. Thus the area in number of feet made up of the two squares on the
sides three and four feet in length is equalled by that of the one
square described on the side of five. When Pythagoras discovered this
fact, he had no doubt that the Muses had guided him in the discovery,
and it is said that he very gratefully offered sacrifice to them.

This theorem affords a useful means of measuring many things, and it is
particularly serviceable in the building of staircases in buildings, so
that the steps may be at the proper levels.

8. Suppose the height of the story, from the flooring above to the
ground below, to be divided into three parts. Five of these will give
the right length for the stringers of the stairway. Let four parts, each
equal to one of the three composing the height between the upper story
and the ground, be set off from the perpendicular, and there fix the
lower ends of the stringers. In this manner the steps and the stairway
itself will be properly placed. A figure of this also will be found
appended below.

9. In the case of Archimedes, although he made many wonderful
discoveries of diverse kinds, yet of them all, the following, which I
shall relate, seems to have been the result of a boundless ingenuity.
Hiero, after gaining the royal power in Syracuse, resolved, as a
consequence of his successful exploits, to place in a certain temple a
golden crown which he had vowed to the immortal gods. He contracted for
its making at a fixed price, and weighed out a precise amount of gold to
the contractor. At the appointed time the latter delivered to the king's
satisfaction an exquisitely finished piece of handiwork, and it appeared
that in weight the crown corresponded precisely to what the gold had
weighed.

10. But afterwards a charge was made that gold had been abstracted and
an equivalent weight of silver had been added in the manufacture of the
crown. Hiero, thinking it an outrage that he had been tricked, and yet
not knowing how to detect the theft, requested Archimedes to consider
the matter. The latter, while the case was still on his mind, happened
to go to the bath, and on getting into a tub observed that the more his
body sank into it the more water ran out over the tub. As this pointed
out the way to explain the case in question, without a moment's delay,
and transported with joy, he jumped out of the tub and rushed home
naked, crying with a loud voice that he had found what he was seeking;
for as he ran he shouted repeatedly in Greek, "[Greek: Eureka, eureka]."

11. Taking this as the beginning of his discovery, it is said that he
made two masses of the same weight as the crown, one of gold and the
other of silver. After making them, he filled a large vessel with water
to the very brim, and dropped the mass of silver into it. As much water
ran out as was equal in bulk to that of the silver sunk in the vessel.
Then, taking out the mass, he poured back the lost quantity of water,
using a pint measure, until it was level with the brim as it had been
before. Thus he found the weight of silver corresponding to a definite
quantity of water.

12. After this experiment, he likewise dropped the mass of gold into the
full vessel and, on taking it out and measuring as before, found that
not so much water was lost, but a smaller quantity: namely, as much less
as a mass of gold lacks in bulk compared to a mass of silver of the same
weight. Finally, filling the vessel again and dropping the crown itself
into the same quantity of water, he found that more water ran over for
the crown than for the mass of gold of the same weight. Hence, reasoning
from the fact that more water was lost in the case of the crown than in
that of the mass, he detected the mixing of silver with the gold, and
made the theft of the contractor perfectly clear.

13. Now let us turn our thoughts to the researches of Archytas of
Tarentum and Eratosthenes of Cyrene. They made many discoveries from
mathematics which are welcome to men, and so, though they deserve our
thanks for other discoveries, they are particularly worthy of admiration
for their ideas in that field. For example, each in a different way
solved the problem enjoined upon Delos by Apollo in an oracle, the
doubling of the number of cubic feet in his altars; this done, he said,
the inhabitants of the island would be delivered from an offence against
religion.

14. Archytas solved it by his figure of the semi-cylinders;
Eratosthenes, by means of the instrument called the mesolabe.

Noting all these things with the great delight which learning gives, we
cannot but be stirred by these discoveries when we reflect upon the
influence of them one by one. I find also much for admiration in the
books of Democritus on nature, and in his commentary entitled [Greek:
Cheirokmeta], in which he made use of his ring to seal with soft wax the
principles which he had himself put to the test.

15. These, then, were men whose researches are an everlasting
possession, not only for the improvement of character but also for
general utility. The fame of athletes, however, soon declines with their
bodily powers. Neither when they are in the flower of their strength,
nor afterwards with posterity, can they do for human life what is done
by the researches of the learned.

16. But although honours are not bestowed upon authors for excellence of
character and teaching, yet as their minds, naturally looking up to the
higher regions of the air, are raised to the sky on the steps of
history, it must needs be, that not merely their doctrines, but even
their appearance, should be known to posterity through time eternal.
Hence, men whose souls are aroused by the delights of literature cannot
but carry enshrined in their hearts the likeness of the poet Ennius, as
they do those of the gods. Those who are devotedly attached to the poems
of Accius seem to have before them not merely his vigorous language but
even his very figure.

17. So, too, numbers born after our time will feel as if they were
discussing nature face to face with Lucretius, or the art of rhetoric
with Cicero; many of our posterity will confer with Varro on the Latin
language; likewise, there will be numerous scholars who, as they weigh
many points with the wise among the Greeks, will feel as if they were
carrying on private conversations with them. In a word, the opinions of
learned authors, though their bodily forms are absent, gain strength as
time goes on, and, when taking part in councils and discussions, have
greater weight than those of any living men.

18. Such, Caesar, are the authorities on whom I have depended, and
applying their views and opinions I have written the present books, in
the first seven treating of buildings and in the eighth of water. In
this I shall set forth the rules for dialling, showing how they are
found through the shadows cast by the gnomon from the sun's rays in the
firmament, and on what principles these shadows lengthen and shorten.




CHAPTER I

THE ZODIAC AND THE PLANETS


1. It is due to the divine intelligence and is a very great wonder to
all who reflect upon it, that the shadow of a gnomon at the equinox is
of one length in Athens, of another in Alexandria, of another in Rome,
and not the same at Piacenza, or at other places in the world. Hence
drawings for dials are very different from one another, corresponding to
differences of situation. This is because the length of the shadow at
the equinox is used in constructing the figure of the analemma, in
accordance with which the hours are marked to conform to the situation
and the shadow of the gnomon. The analemma is a basis for calculation
deduced from the course of the sun, and found by observation of the
shadow as it increases until the winter solstice. By means of this,
through architectural principles and the employment of the compasses, we
find out the operation of the sun in the universe.

2. The word "universe" means the general assemblage of all nature, and
it also means the heaven that is made up of the constellations and the
courses of the stars. The heaven revolves steadily round earth and sea
on the pivots at the ends of its axis. The architect at these points was
the power of Nature, and she put the pivots there, to be, as it were,
centres, one of them above the earth and sea at the very top of the
firmament and even beyond the stars composing the Great Bear, the other
on the opposite side under the earth in the regions of the south. Round
these pivots (termed in Greek [Greek: poloi]) as centres, like those of
a turning lathe, she formed the circles in which the heaven passes on
its everlasting way. In the midst thereof, the earth and sea naturally
occupy the central point.

3. It follows from this natural arrangement that the central point in
the north is high above the earth, while on the south, the region
below, it is beneath the earth and consequently hidden by it.
Furthermore, across the middle, and obliquely inclined to the south,
there is a broad circular belt composed of the twelve signs, whose
stars, arranged in twelve equivalent divisions, represent each a shape
which nature has depicted. And so with the firmament and the other
constellations, they move round the earth and sea in glittering array,
completing their orbits according to the spherical shape of the heaven.

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