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How did the ancient Greek golden section influence ideas about proportion?

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The Great Court at the British Museum in London features a large central rotunda surrounded by wide steps and a glass and steel lattice roof, with visitors walking throughout the space. — Architecture The Great Court, designed by Foster and Partners, 2000; in the British Museum, London.

The ancient Greek mathematician Euclid first described the division of a line into an "extreme and mean ratio" in his work Elements (c. 300 bce), which is the mathematical foundation for what is now known as the golden ratio or golden section.12

While the golden section is a significant mathematical concept, it is important to clarify that ancient Greek architectural proportion was primarily driven by the use of a human-scaled module rather than the systematic application of the golden ratio. In Greek architecture, architects achieved harmonious proportions by employing a specific unit—often the base of a column—as a module to relate the parts of a building to the whole. This approach allowed for a scale that was comprehensible to the human observer, balancing aesthetic principles with subjective judgment.3

The idea that the golden ratio was a foundational "law" of ancient Greek architecture is a later interpretation; it was not until the Renaissance that interest in the ratio as a symbol of divine harmony was fully revived and popularized.2