Vitruvius ( ; ; –70 BC – after ) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work titled . As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture.Kruft, Hanno-Walter. A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the Present (New York, Princeton Architectural Press: 1994). It is not clear to what extent his contemporaries regarded his book as original or important.
He states that all buildings should have three attributes: , , and ("strength", "utility", and "beauty"), principles reflected in much Ancient Roman architecture. His discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body led to the famous Renaissance drawing of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci.
Little is known about Vitruvius' life, but by his own descriptionDe Arch. Book 1, preface. section 2. he served as an artilleryman, the third class of arms in the Roman military offices. He probably served as a senior officer of artillery in charge of doctores ballistarum (artillery experts) and libratores who actually operated the machines.Yann Le Bohec, "The Imperial Roman Army", Routledge, p. 49, 2000, . As an army engineer he specialized in the construction of ballista and scorpio artillery war machines for sieges. It is possible that Vitruvius served with Julius Caesar's chief engineer Lucius Cornelius Balbus.
Vitruvius' was well-known and widely copied in the Middle Ages and survives in many dozens of manuscripts, though in 1414 it was "rediscovered" by the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini in the library of Saint Gall Abbey. Leon Battista Alberti published it in his seminal treatise on architecture, (). The first known Latin printed edition was by Fra Giovanni Sulpitius in Rome in 1486. Translations followed in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish, and several other languages. Though any original illustrations have been lost, the first illustrated edition was published in Venice in 1511 by Fra Giovanni Giocondo, with woodcut illustrations based on descriptions in the text. Bramante, Michelangelo, Palladio, Vignola and earlier architects are known to have studied the work of Vitruvius, and consequently it has had a significant impact on the architecture of many European countries.
Life and career
Little is known about Vitruvius' life. Most inferences about him are extracted from his only surviving work, . His full name is sometimes given as "Marcus Vitruvius Pollio", but both the first and last names are uncertain.John Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome under Construction, Oxford UP (2019), p. 33 Marcus Cetius Faventinus writes of "Vitruvius Polio aliique auctores"; this can be read as "Vitruvius Polio, and others" or, less likely, as "Vitruvius, Polio, and others". An inscription in Verona, which names a Lucius Vitruvius Cordo, and an inscription from Thilbilis in North Africa, which names a Marcus Vitruvius Mamurra have been suggested as evidence that Vitruvius and Mamurra (who was a military praefectus fabrum under Julius Caesar) were from the same family;Pais, E. Ricerche sulla storia e sul diritto publico di Roma (Rome, 1916). or were even the same individual. Neither association, however, is borne out by (which Vitruvius dedicated to Augustus), nor by the little that is known of Mamurra.
Vitruvius was a military engineer (praefectus fabrum), or a praefect architectus armamentarius of the apparitor status group (a branch of the Roman civil service). He is mentioned in Pliny the Elder's table of contents for (Natural History), in the heading for mosaic techniques. Frontinus refers to "Vitruvius the architect" in his late 1st-century work De aquaeductu.
Likely born a free Roman citizen, by his own account Vitruvius served in the Roman army under Caesar with the otherwise poorly identified Marcus Aurelius, Publius Minidius, and Gnaeus Cornelius. These names vary depending on the edition of . Publius Minidius is also written as Publius Numidicus and Publius Numidius, speculated as the same Publius Numisius inscribed on the Roman Theatre at Heraclea.Niccolò Marcello Venuti Description of the First Discoveries of the Ancient City of Heraclea, Found Near Portici A Country Palace Belonging to the King of the Two Sicilies published by R. Baldwin, translated by Wickes Skurray, 1750. p62
As an army engineer he specialized in the construction of ballista and scorpio artillery war machines for sieges. It is speculated that Vitruvius served with Caesar's chief engineer Lucius Cornelius Balbus.
The locations where he served can be reconstructed from, for example, descriptions of the building methods of various "foreign tribes". Although he describes places throughout , he does not say he was present. His service likely included north Africa, Hispania, Gaul (including Aquitaine), and Pontus.
To place the role of Vitruvius the military engineer in context, a description of "The Prefect of the camp" or army engineer is quoted here as given by Flavius Vegetius Renatus in The Military Institutions of the Romans:
At various locations described by Vitruvius, battles and sieges occurred. He is the only source for the siege of Larignum in 56 BC. Of the battlegrounds of the Gallic War there are references to: The siege and massacre of the 40,000 residents at Avaricum in 52 BC. Vercingetorix commented that "the Romans did not conquer by valour nor in the field, but by a kind of art and skill in assault, with which they [Gauls] themselves were unacquainted."Julius Caesar, De bello Gallico 7.29 The broken siege at Gergovia in 52 BC. The circumvallation and Battle of Alesia in 52 BC. The women and children of the encircled city were evicted to conserve food, and then starved to death between the opposing walls of the defenders and besiegers. The siege of Uxellodunum in 51 BC. These are all sieges of large Gallic oppida. Of the sites involved in Caesar's civil war, we find the Siege of Massilia in 49 BC (modern France),Vitruvius mentions Massilia several times, and the siege itself in Book X. the Battle of Dyrrhachium of 48 BC (modern Albania), the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC (Hellas – Greece), the Battle of Zela of 47 BC (modern Turkey), and the Battle of Thapsus in 46 BC in Caesar's African campaign. A legion that fits the same sequence of locations is the Legio VI Ferrata, of which ballista would be an auxiliary unit.
Mainly known for his writings, Vitruvius was himself an architect. In Roman times architecture was a broader subject than at present including the modern fields of architecture, construction management, construction engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, materials engineering, mechanical engineering, military engineering and urban planning;The "Vitruvius Project". Carnegie Mellon University, Computer Science Department. Retrieved 2008. architectural engineers consider him the first of their discipline, a specialization previously known as technical architecture.
In his work describing the construction of military installations, he also commented on the miasma theory – the idea that unhealthy air from wetlands was the cause of illness, saying:
Frontinus mentions Vitruvius in connection with the standard sizes of pipes:De Aquis, I.25 ebook of work also known as De aquaeductu, accessed August 2008 probably the role for which he was most widely respected in Roman times. He is often credited as father of architectural acoustics for describing the technique of echeas placement in theaters. The only building, however, that we know Vitruvius to have worked on is one he tells us about,De Arch., Book V.i.6) but with link to English translation, accessed August 2008 a basilica completed in 19 BC.Fausto Pugnaloni and Paolo Clini. "Vitruvius Basilica in Fano, Italy, journey through the virtual space of the reconstructed memory". GISdevelopment.net last accessed 3 August 2008 It was built at Fanum Fortunae, now the modern town of Fano. The basilica (Italian: "Basilica di Fano") had disappeared so completely that its very site was a matter of conjecture, although various attempts had been made to visualise it. It was ultimately identified and its foundations unearthed in Piazza Andrea Costa, Fano, in January 2026.
In later years the emperor Augustus, through his sister Octavia Minor, sponsored Vitruvius, entitling him with what may have been a pension to guarantee financial independence.
Gerolamo Cardano, in his 1552 book De subtilitate rerum, ranks Vitruvius as one of the 12 persons whom he supposes to have excelled all men in the force of genius and invention; and might have given him first place if it was clear that he had set down his own discoveries.Charles Hutton (1795), Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary
James Anderson's "The Constitutions of the Free-Masons" (1734), reprinted by Benjamin Franklin, describes Vitruvius as "the Father of all true Architects to this Day."
De architectura
Vitruvius is the author of De architectura, libri decem, known today as The Ten Books on Architecture,Vitruvius, Pollio (transl. Morris Hicky Morgan, 1960), The Ten Books on Architecture. Courier Dover Publications. . a treatise written in Latin on architecture, dedicated to the emperor Augustus. This work is the only surviving major book on architecture from classical antiquity. According to Petri Liukkonen, this text "influenced deeply from the Early Renaissance onwards artists, thinkers, and architects, among them Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), and Michelangelo (1475–1564)."
However, we know there was a significant body of writing about architecture in Greek, where "architects habitually wrote books about their work", including two we know of about the Parthenon alone. To A. W. Lawrence, Vitruvius "has recorded a most elaborate set of rules taken from Greek authors, who must have compiled them gradually in the course of the preceding centuries".Lawrence, A. W., Greek Architecture, p. 169, 1957, Penguin, Pelican history of art
Vitruvius asserts in that a structure must exhibit the three qualities of firmitatis, utilitatis, venustatis – that is, stability, utility, and beauty. These are sometimes termed the Vitruvian virtues or the Vitruvian Triad. According to Vitruvius, architecture is an imitation of nature: as birds and bees built their nests, so humans constructed housing from natural materials, that gave them shelter against the elements. Vitruvius also wrote about climate in relation to housing architecture and how to choose locations for cities.
The Greeks invented three architectural orders following distinct systems of proportion: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. These systems were related to their understanding of the proportions the human body. In De Architectura, Vitruvius explained these conventions, detailing the proper proportions of the architectural orders as well as of the ideal man. During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci created his famous drawing of the Vitruvian Man according to these rules, depicting a human body inscribed in a circle and a square (the fundamental geometric patterns of the cosmic order).
Scope
Vitruvius is the first Roman architect whose work has survived into modern times. He himself cites older but less complete works. De Architectura is more of a codification of existing architectural practice than an original work. Roman architects practised a wide variety of disciplines; in modern terms they would also be described as landscape architects, civil engineers, military engineers, structural engineers, surveyors, artists, and craftsmen combined.
In Book I, Chapter 1, titled "The Education of the Architect", Vitruvius instructs:
He goes on to write that the architect should be versed in drawing, geometry, optics (lighting), history, philosophy, music, theatre, medicine, and law.