Delos, a peristyle in a private house. If you are building a perfectly square peristyle with a regular outlook, then every column should precisely stand in the right place, of course, and, ideally, the cannelures should be in line as well. But how can you be sure? Well, actually it is really easy: you carve a large cross on the place where the column is going to stand, and carve four lines in the lowest part of the column, and when you place the column, you make sure that the lines on the ground match with those on the column, as you see happening here. Actually, you can find these lines everywhere – I know examples at Rome and Pompeii as well. But it is one of those funny details that you may easily overlook in the field (as most people are not inclined to pay much attention to the real archaeology at the level of their feet anyway and tend to look to the reconstructions made by modern archaeologists instead). As of now, you won’t have any excuse for not doing so.
Miko Flohr, 09/03/2011