Socrates Sun-Tempered House

2500 years ago, Aeschylus, the Greek playwright, in his play, PROMETHEUS (the mythological fire stealer), observed that ignorant primatives and barbarians "lacked knowledge of houses built of bricks and turned to face the winter sun, dwelling beneath the ground like swarming ants in sunless caves."

In Book III, Chapter VIII, of XENOPHON'S MEMORABILIA OF SOCRATES, written a few decades after Aeschylus, and in the midst of a Greek wood fuel shortage, the Greek philosopher, Socrates, observed:

"Now in houses with a south aspect, the sun's rays penetrate into the porticos in winter, but in the summer, the path of the sun is right over our heads and above the roof, so that there is shade. If then this is the best arrangement, we should build the south side loftier to get the winter sun and the north side lower to keep out the winter winds. To put it shortly, the house in which the owner can find a pleasant retreat at all seasons and can store his belongings safely is presumably at once the pleasantest and the most beautiful."