1. The frontage towards north and south was 63 feet: the frontage (in a stricter sense the fronts) towards east and west was shorter. But the circuit was 411 feet. This latter dimension seems inconsistent with the former. How could a building which was 411 feet in circuit have no side longer than 63 feet? Impressed by this difficulty, some writers supposed the true dimensions to be 163 feet (adding to the text centenos) for the frontage to north and south. Colonel Leake, followed by Newton and Pullan, regarded the dimension of 63 feet as really the length of the cella, not of any frontage. This, however, is doing clear violence to the text of Pliny. But by a most ingenious adaptation, Mr. Oldfield has succeeded in reconciling the numbers of Pliny as they stand. He has, in fact, substituted for a square or oblong groundplan of the building ☐, a cruciform plan [** symbol]; and so makes it possible for any given front to be less than a fourth of the circuit of the building. Here Mr. Oldfield has certainly won a great advantage over rival constructions: he has kept to the text of Pliny, and at the same time greatly improved the form of the building. It is true that it would not be easy to find other Greek buildings of cruciform plan, but the Erechtheium at Athens gives us a hint that such a plan, produced by the intersection of two ordinary temples, would not be impossible. And the Mausoleum was a building in which originality of design was to be expected. 2. The number of columns of the pteron was thirty-six. The pteron is the temple-like building erected on the base, a construction of which, in any possible view, columns were the principal feature. Now the writers who supposed the pteron to be a huge square edifice were compelled to place the columns all round the edge of it: and to fill up the midst with a vast and solid construction of hewn stone (Fig. 78). But Mr. Oldfield is enabled, by greatly reducing the superficial area covered by the pteron, to make the columns by far its most conspicuous feature. Within them there is room only for a small building; or the space may even be filled by a few solid piers, which is the plan he adopts. He can thus far more nearly conform to the ‘aere pendentia Mausolea’ of Martial.