Non habet Latinum nomen symmetria (“Latin does
not have a word for 'symmetry'”). This eye-opening
remark occurs in the midst of Pliny's Natural History
(Book 34, Ch. 65; Loeb edition, Vol. 9, 174/76). Having
made this remark Pliny uses the word several times
as if it were a well-established loan-word (from the
Greek). There is corroborating evidence that indeed
it was. Vitruvius, a near contemporary of Pliny, also
uses the word several times in his
De architectura, and
its connotations indicate more or less the meaning
which it may have in a textbook on architecture of
today.
