![]() The basilica planning process uses an easily measured variable (the column drum diameter) to establish the dimensions of the entire building. Walthew titled Roman Basilicas: a Progress Report ( available at JStor) demonstrates that Roman engineers used some rather simple rules of thumb to determine the size of a basilica based on the diameter of the column drum. Corroborative evidence of the use of rules of thumb exists in other disciplines. Rules of thumb were probably an important aspect of Roman engineering. The result is a rather elegant rule of thumb that can be used to work out just how big the marching camp needed to be for any given army. He worked from ancient descriptions and from modern archaeological studies of camp sites. Alan Richardson has written a series of articles in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology in which he develops the mathematical basis for determining the size of the Roman camp.
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