BOOK XXXV. xLix. 170-172 



is in spring, as at midsummer they tend to crack. 

 For buildings, only bricks two years okl are recom- 

 mended ; moreo\ er the material for them when it 

 has been pounded should be well soaked before they 

 are moulded. 



Three kinds of bricks are made : the ' didoron,' 

 the one employed by us, eighteen inches long and 

 a foot wide, second the ' tetradoron ' and third the 

 ' pentadoron,' doro?i being an okl Greek word meaning 

 the palm of the hand ° — from which comes doron, 

 meaning a gift, because a gift was given by the 

 hand. Consequently the bricks get their names 

 from four or five palms' length as the case may be. 

 Their breadth is in all cases the same. In Greece 

 the smaller kind is used for private structures and 

 the larger in public buildings. At Pitana in Asia 

 Minor as also in the city states of Maxilua and 

 Callet in Further Spain bricks are made which when 

 dried will not sink in water, being made of pumice- 

 Hke earth, which is an extremely useful material 

 when it is capable of being worked. The Greeks 

 preferred brick walls except in places permitting 

 of a limestone ^ structure, as brick walls last for ever 

 if built exactly perpendicular. Consequently that 

 was how they built both pubHc works and kings' 

 palaces — the wall at Athens that faces towards 

 Mount Hymettus, at Patrae the Shrines of Zeus 

 and of Heracles (although the columns and archi- 

 traves with which they surrounded these were of 

 stone), and the royal palace of Attalus '^ at Tralles 

 and likewise the palace of Croesus at Sardis, which 5Go-5-i6 b.c 

 they converted into a house of elders,<^ and that of 



" Pliny's source Vitruvius II. 8. 10 takes yepovaia here as a 

 home for the aged, but it must mean couneil-house. 



387 



