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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Vitruvius Pollio's "The Ten Books on Architecture" stands as a seminal text in the canon of architectural literature, offering a comprehensive treatise that intricately weaves theory, philosophy, and practical guidance. Composed in the first century BC, this work reflects the literary style of classical rhetoric rife with detailed explanations and systematic organization. Vitruvius, addressing a Roman audience, elucidates design principles, the scientific foundations of architecture, and the essential relationship between human life and architectural forms, underscoring the importance of proportion and symmetry in the built environment. Vitruvius himself was an accomplished architect and engineer, likely influenced by the tumultuous political landscape of Ancient Rome and the intertwining of architecture with civic identity. His experiences in military engineering and observations of preceding Hellenistic styles informed his views on institutional and residential design, emphasizing functionality and aesthetic harmony. Vitruvius sought to codify architectural practices of his day, ensuring that knowledge would be preserved for future generations. Readers interested in architecture, engineering, or classical history will find "The Ten Books on Architecture" invaluable, as it not only serves as a manual for practitioners but also as a philosophical exploration of space-making. Its enduring principles resonate across the centuries, providing insights into the essential elements of design, thereby securing its place as a cornerstone text that remains relevant in contemporary discourse on architecture. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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The Ten Books on Architecture
Table of Contents
Introduction
At the hinge of Rome’s transformation, a practical engineer surveys stones, shadows, winds, and streams, and insists that a city must rise where geometry guides the hand, craft disciplines the materials, climate instructs the plan, and public purpose governs every decision from foundation to cornice, linking measured bodies to measured spaces so that what is built can endure, serve, and delight without waste.
The Ten Books on Architecture, composed by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in the late first century BCE and dedicated to Augustus, stands as the sole complete architectural treatise to survive from classical antiquity. Known in Latin as De architectura, it assembles a comprehensive program of theory and practice for designing, building, and maintaining the works of a civilized state. Its classic status rests on more than age; it offers an organized account of architecture’s aims and methods that later eras repeatedly rediscovered. While grounded in Roman experience and Greek learning, it frames problems—of proportion, durability, and usefulness—that continue to shape how we judge the built world.
Vitruvius was a Roman architect and engineer writing at the moment when republican institutions were giving way to imperial administration. He presents himself as a technician addressing an emperor, but his purpose stretches beyond patronage: to codify reliable principles from scattered craft traditions and learned sources. He draws on mathematical reasoning, practical observation, and examples from Greek predecessors to argue that architecture belongs among the liberal arts. The author’s vantage point is pragmatic yet humane. He is concerned with the education of the architect, with the ethics of professional duty, and with the idea that good building benefits civic life as a whole.
Arranged in ten books, the treatise proceeds from foundations to projections of machines. It describes the training an architect should receive; evaluates materials such as timber, stone, lime, and volcanic ash; sets out the classical orders and the planning of temples; discusses civic works including theaters and basilicas; examines private houses and urban settings; explains water supply and sanitation; treats the measurement of time and the design of sundials; and concludes with mechanics and machines. The result is neither a mere manual nor a philosophical tract, but a disciplined survey of the knowledge an architect must command to serve society.
Beyond its technical content, De architectura has a distinct literary character. Vitruvius writes in the tradition of Roman didactic prose, opening books with reflective prefaces, situating lessons within broader cultural narratives, and organizing material through definitions, categories, and carefully chosen examples. He aims to persuade as well as instruct, joining claims from geometry with appeals to experience. Stories and historical references are deployed to reinforce principles, not to decorate them. This rhetorical texture made the treatise legible to readers across disciplines, allowing it to function as a gateway between scholarship and craft and to claim architecture’s place among learned pursuits.
Several themes give the work its enduring profile. It links architectural proportion to mathematical harmony and to the perceived order of nature, casting design as an act of measured correspondence. It defines the architect’s task as balancing strength, utility, and beauty so that a building stands firmly, serves its purpose, and pleases the eye. It stresses the importance of site, climate, and orientation, urging adaptation rather than formula. And it insists that the architect be broadly educated, conversant with geometry, music, medicine, and law, because building touches human health, social life, and public rituals as much as technical execution.
After antiquity, the treatise persisted in manuscript circulation and was reanimated by humanist scholarship. Its rediscovery and translation helped to reframe architecture during the Renaissance as a discipline grounded in texts as well as buildings. Artists and architects consulted Vitruvius for guidance on proportion, orders, and the responsibilities of the profession. Leonardo da Vinci famously engaged with Vitruvius’s account of human proportions, integrating it into a drawing that became emblematic of measured harmony. The treatise informed the theoretical writings of figures such as Leon Battista Alberti and shaped the vocabulary that later makers used to interpret ancient remains and to design anew.
Through early modern Europe, Vitruvius served as a common reference for builders, engineers, and scholars. His classifications of building parts and types, his descriptions of temples and theaters, and his emphasis on rational planning influenced civic architecture as well as domestic design. Academies and guilds alike absorbed his precepts, and treatises repeatedly echoed his themes when setting standards for proportion and ornament. While later practitioners revised and sometimes contested his prescriptions, the dialogue ran through him: he provided a baseline against which innovations could be measured. Even where construction methods diverged, his arguments for disciplined reasoning retained authority.
One reason for the book’s longevity is the breadth of its intellectual map. Vitruvius treats architecture as a synthesis of arts and sciences, grounded in arithmetic and geometry, informed by music’s ratios in acoustics, and attentive to the body’s measure in space. He explains how to judge materials and how to inspect sites, but also how to coordinate specialists and assess risks. He values both rules and exceptions, allowing experience to refine precept. In this synthesis, the architect emerges as a mediator: able to translate abstract reasoning into construction, and to translate local conditions into clear, humane decisions.
De architectura also serves as a window onto Roman technologies and environmental knowledge. Vitruvius describes concrete made with volcanic ash, discusses timber species and stone selection, explains surveying and leveling instruments, and outlines water-supply systems from sources to distribution. He records methods for constructing theaters suited to acoustics and for designing harbors that withstand the sea. In his book on machines, he catalogs hoists, pumps, and defensive engines. Much of this information corroborates archaeological evidence and illustrates how Roman practice combined empirical testing with inherited theory, leaving a record not only of monuments but of the procedures that made them possible.
Reading Vitruvius today, one hears a voice that addresses an ancient ruler yet appeals to any careful reader who values rigor joined to public purpose. The style can be austere, the terminology specialized, and the examples drawn from a world whose materials and customs differ from ours. Nevertheless, the treatise rewards patience with clarity: categories sharpen perception; methods prompt verification; and digressions illuminate how knowledge travels between disciplines. As a document of technical culture, it invites comparison with modern codes and standards, while reminding us that such prescriptions arise from moral choices about safety, comfort, and collective life.
The Ten Books on Architecture endures because its central commitments remain urgent. It asks that buildings be strong without waste, useful without compromise, and beautiful without pretense; that they respond to climate and place; and that those who design them accept responsibilities to patrons, users, and the city. In an era concerned with resilience, public health, and sustainable resources, Vitruvius’s disciplined attention to materials, siting, and maintenance feels newly practical. Equally, his insistence that architects think broadly gives the book continuing appeal, linking ancient craft to contemporary design and making it a classic that structures debates we still conduct.
Synopsis
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio’s The Ten Books on Architecture is a Latin treatise composed in the late first century BCE and dedicated to Augustus. Vitruvius frames architecture as a learned discipline integrating practice and theory, outlining the education and ethical responsibilities of the architect. He introduces foundational principles of firmness, utility, and beauty, together with proportion, symmetry, and decorum. Book I also treats city planning: site selection, orientation, healthful air, and defense. Climate and the course of the sun guide street layout and building exposure. Throughout, Vitruvius positions architecture as a civic art whose standards derive from nature, reason, and measured precedent.
Book II surveys building materials, emphasizing empirical properties and proper preparation. Vitruvius compares types of stone, notes the burning and slaking of lime, and distinguishes sands suitable for mortar, including volcanic pozzolana, prized for hydraulic concrete. He discusses bricks and their drying, timber species and seasoning, and techniques to reduce decay or fire risk. Regional variations and quarrying practices matter for durability and cost. The account interweaves practical recipes with warnings about adulteration and unsuitable sources. By grounding construction in material science as observed on site, Vitruvius seeks to secure structural integrity and longevity before ornament or planning are considered.
Books III and IV detail sacred architecture and the classical orders. Vitruvius sets out canons of proportion for Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian columns and entablatures, using a modular system to maintain coherence across parts. He links proportion to the human body as a model for harmony. The treatise explains intercolumniation types and the effects they produce, and distinguishes temple plans, including peripteral, pseudodipteral, and others. He also addresses Tuscan and Etruscan forms and prescribes appropriate ornament and layout for deities and cult practice. The emphasis falls on fitness, clarity, and consistency, aligning structural logic with ritual and visual expectations.
Book V turns to civic buildings and the spaces that support communal life. Vitruvius analyzes forums and basilicas with attention to dimensions, circulation, and light. He expounds theater design, notably seating geometry, stage proportions, and acoustic theory, including the placement of resonant vessels to reinforce sound. Baths, palaestrae, and harbors receive practical guidance on orientation, ventilation, and foundations, with notes on using hydraulic concrete for breakwaters. The prescriptions balance spectacle and serviceability, insisting that public works be sited, scaled, and constructed to accommodate crowds, promote health, and display dignified order appropriate to the city’s status and environmental conditions.
Book VI addresses domestic architecture, contrasting Greek and Roman traditions and adapting layouts to climate, latitude, and social use. Vitruvius describes atrium houses and peristyle courts, arranging rooms by function and season, with attention to light, privacy, and cross-ventilation. He relates room proportions to human activity, recommending dimensions for dining rooms, oeci, and bedrooms, and differentiating reception spaces suited to patrons and clients. Rural villas require service areas for production and storage, while urban dwellings contend with street noise and shade. The guidance treats comfort and decorum as technical problems, to be solved through orientation, proportion, and considered circulation.
Book VII examines finishes and decorative techniques that protect and enrich interiors. Vitruvius prescribes multilayer plaster systems, lime putty maturation, and aggregates, leading to polished stucco and durable pavements such as opus signinum. He explains fresco painting on wet plaster and surveys mineral pigments, noting their sources, preparation, and stability. Remedies for damp, salt efflorescence, and smoke staining aim to preserve color and surface. He also records methods for veneering with thin stone, setting marbles, and achieving even illumination. Ornament remains subordinate to construction, but, properly executed, contributes to salubrity and dignified appearance by sealing, smoothing, and proportionally articulating surfaces.
Book VIII is devoted to water: its discovery, qualities, and conveyance. Vitruvius offers techniques to locate springs, evaluate taste and clarity, and recognize healthful sources. He compares conveyance methods—channels, clay pipes, and lead pipes—observing material effects on water quality and recommending gradients and settling basins for aqueducts. Wells and cisterns are designed with waterproofing and filtration in mind. Practical tests and site observation guide decisions, while hydraulic concrete enables durable works below the waterline. The discussion links public health to engineering, asserting that reliable supply, careful materials choice, and controlled flow are prerequisites for urban growth and daily life.
Book IX connects architecture to astronomy and geometry, arguing that builders must grasp celestial motions to orient structures and measure time. Vitruvius introduces the analemma and principles for constructing sundials suited to different latitudes, alongside notes on the zodiac, planets, and the winds. This cosmological primer supports practical tasks: aligning streets, placing windows for seasonal sun, and calibrating timekeeping devices. He compiles Greek sources and emphasizes proportional reasoning, reinforcing architecture’s dependence on mathematics. The aim is not speculative astronomy but applied knowledge that secures accurate orientation, consistent shadows, and reliable schedules in the planning and operation of buildings.
Book X catalogues machines and engines used in construction, transport, and warfare. Vitruvius describes cranes, capstans, and compound pulleys; water-lifting devices such as the screw and wheel; force pumps and the water organ; and siege equipment including ballistae and tortoises, often crediting Greek innovators. He stresses stability, materials, and mechanical advantage, linking workshop practice to geometric principles. The treatise as a whole culminates in a vision of architecture as an integrated discipline uniting science, craft, and civic purpose. As the only comprehensive ancient architectural treatise to survive, it has long served as a reference point for proportion, planning, and technical method.
Historical Context
The Ten Books on Architecture emerged in the late first century BCE, when Rome had consolidated control over the Mediterranean and was transitioning from a turbulent republic to Augustus’s principate. Italy and the provinces were administered through the Senate, magistracies, and expanding imperial offices, while armies and priestly colleges buttressed authority. Urban life centered on the forum, baths, theaters, and temples. In this setting, architecture was both a craft and a tool of statecraft. Vitruvius wrote in Latin for Roman patrons yet drew deeply on Greek learning, crafting a comprehensive treatise that addressed the practical tasks of building within a society reorganizing its institutions and ideals.
The decades before the treatise were marked by civil wars: Sulla’s dictatorship, the rise of Pompey and Caesar, Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE, and renewed conflict among rival factions. The decisive Battle of Actium in 31 BCE left Octavian (Augustus) dominant. Augustus presented his rule as the restoration of order and tradition, channeling resources into construction to stabilize civic life and display legitimacy. Vitruvius’s work, typically dated to the 30s–20s BCE and dedicated to Augustus, answers this moment: it offers standards, definitions, and procedures that transform building from ad hoc practice into a disciplined public good aligned with the new political settlement.
Augustus’s building program set the tone for the age. He famously boasted (as recorded later by Suetonius) that he found Rome a city of brick and left it of marble, and his Res Gestae claims the restoration of many temples, including eighty-two in a single year. This policy nurtured conservative piety while employing architecture as civic spectacle. Vitruvius’s extended treatment of temples, proportions, and decorum serves that program by supplying criteria for appropriate design according to deity, site, and ritual. His stress on propriety and order turns the grammar of Greek architecture into a Roman moral and political language that could underwrite Augustan restorations.
Rome and its provinces were being reshaped through colonization and municipal development. New veteran colonies and refounded cities across Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, and the East required grids, forums, basilicas, markets, and walls. Land division (centuriation) and civic standardization accelerated. Vitruvius devotes attention to the siting of towns, orientation to winds, street layouts, and public amenities, offering a template portable to provincial contexts. In this respect the treatise mirrors the empire’s administrative reach: it translates metropolitan ideals into implementable plans that local magistrates and builders could adapt, supporting a common civic fabric from the Italian heartland to newly organized communities.
The treatise stands within a Hellenistic tradition of technical writing and architectural theory. Vitruvius cites Greek masters—architects and engineers such as Ictinus, Hermogenes, Dinocrates, Archimedes, and Ctesibius—and insists that an architect be versed in geometry, music, medicine, law, and philosophy. This broad education aligns with Roman elite values of the late Republic, when Greek paideia was a mark of status. Yet his prefaces also chastise contemporary builders who pursue ornament without understanding. The critique responds to a marketplace awash in luxury and novelty, redirecting ambition toward measured proportion, symmetria, and the triad of firmitas, utilitas, venustas as civic virtues.
Technological change undergirded the era’s construction boom. Roman concrete (opus caementicium), matured in the second and first centuries BCE, allowed vaults, domes, and vast substructures. Vitruvius describes lime, aggregates, timber seasoning, and the volcanic sands from the Bay of Naples—pozzolana—that set under water, enabling harbors and foundations. He notes material properties and failure modes, giving builders empirical guidance. The expanding exploitation of stone, including Luna (Carrara) marble and widespread travertine from Tibur, reshaped urban aesthetics and logistics. By codifying materials science, the treatise both reflects and advances the late Republican shift from ashlar to concrete as the backbone of Roman monumental building.
Mechanical ingenuity was equally central. The book catalogues cranes, hoists, capstans, and pulley systems used to lift heavy elements, along with water-lifting devices such as the Archimedean screw, tympanum, and chain of buckets. It also preserves the earliest known description of a water-powered mill, indicating experimentation with rotary power for grain processing. Vitruvius details siege engines and ballistae, testimony to a society that had honed military mechanics and repurposed them for civil tasks. Writing in Latin consolidates this technical knowledge within Roman state culture, ensuring that the tools of conquest and infrastructure became standardized components of urban development.
Water management defined Roman urbanism. Aqueducts—Aqua Marcia, Tepula, and others—preceded Augustus, and the early principate saw renewed investment, notably Agrippa’s work in the 30s–10s BCE, including the Aqua Iulia and Aqua Virgo. Vitruvius systematizes hydrological knowledge: sources, tests for potability, gradients, and the chorobates for leveling. He discusses distribution networks and public fountains and remarks on health, warning against lead piping and favoring clay as safer—a notable public-health sensibility. The treatise thus aligns with and informs the era’s push to supply water to baths, fountains, and households, linking technical precision to civic well-being.
The late Republican city was crowded, noisy, and prone to fire. Insulae (multistory rental blocks) jostled with workshops, and property lines were contentious. Fires and collapses prompted regulatory concern that intensified under the principate. Vitruvius’s chapters on materials, walls, and finishes recommend lime plasters, stuccoes, and careful bonding, and his attention to ventilation, light, and site orientation engages real urban hazards. While later imperial measures formalized height limits and firefighting corps, the treatise anticipates a culture of prevention, embedding resilience in construction practice. It reflects a world where building was not merely expressive but also a primary instrument of public safety.
Religious revival was integral to Augustan policy. Restored temples, priesthoods, and rituals asserted continuity with ancestral customs. Vitruvius’s prescriptions for temple types, orders, column spacing, and orientation serve this revival by connecting architectural form with divine attributes and ritual approach. He links decorum to the character of deities, ensuring that sacred space communicates proper reverence. His guidance on altars, porticoes, and pronaoi harmonizes Greek formal canon with Roman cult practice. In this way the treatise functions as a manual for piety in stone, translating political claims of moral renewal into a concrete program for sanctuaries across the empire.
Public entertainment, essential to civic cohesion and elite competition, receives systematic treatment. Vitruvius discusses theater planning, cavea geometry, and acoustics, recommending sounding vessels (echea) and precise proportional relationships to carry the voice—a direct inheritance from Greek harmonic science. Seating arrangements traditionally mapped civic hierarchy, and access routes managed large crowds. By prescribing rational layouts, sightlines, and auditory clarity, the treatise underwrites an orderly spectacle culture consonant with Augustan ideals. It registers how politics, performance, and technology merged in spaces where consensus was displayed and negotiated through festivals, dramas, and official ceremonies.
Rome’s military machine, although turned inward during the civil wars, remained the empire’s backbone. Siegecraft, artillery, and fortification science had been refined over centuries of expansion. Vitruvius includes practical instructions for ballistae and other engines, reflecting a technical repertoire essential both in war and in the construction of walls, bridges, and temporary works. His attention to logistics and machine elements mirrors a society where engineering supported both conquest and civil pacification. In the Augustan settlement, the codification of such knowledge helps preserve expertise during a shift from internecine conflict to frontier defense and infrastructural consolidation.
The treatise integrates architecture with broader ancient science. Vitruvius discusses gnomonics, sundials, and celestial orientation, situating buildings within cosmic order. The recent Julian calendar reform (46–45 BCE) had standardized civic time, and the alignment of civic space with regulated time and celestial phenomena carried ideological weight. He also echoes Hippocratic medicine in his concern for airs, waters, and places, advising healthy sites and acknowledging climate’s effects on bodies and customs. Such passages locate architecture within natural philosophy, reaffirming that good building, like good governance, conforms to rational principles discoverable in nature and useful for public health.
The economic and labor systems of the late Republic and early principate depended on slaves, freedmen, and skilled artisans, often organized in collegia. Building drew on complex supply chains—quarries, timber stands, lime kilns, brickworks, and transport networks. Vitruvius addresses cost, procurement, and resource management in his discussion of distributio (economy), advising masters of works and patrons on appropriate expenditures and allocations. In a culture where euergetism and public contracts financed construction, his insistence on measured spending and quality control critiques corruption and waste, aligning a moral economy of materials with the accountability that Augustan administration sought to project.
A flourishing literary culture reinforced technical codification. The first public library in Rome was founded by Asinius Pollio in the 30s BCE, and Augustus later established libraries on the Palatine and in the Porticus Octaviae. Latin prose increasingly accommodated specialized subjects—agriculture (Varro), geography (Agrippa’s map, later compilations), and, here, architecture. Vitruvius, translating Greek theory into Latin while preserving Greek terminology, positions architecture among the liberal arts and makes it legible to Roman magistrates and patrons. His prefaces advocate for learned practice and defend the social dignity of architects, reflecting a milieu where knowledge became a civic resource.
Land survey and infrastructure policy played central roles in consolidating Roman power. Centuriation rationalized rural territory, and roads, bridges, and aqueducts demanded precise leveling and measurement. Vitruvius details instruments like the groma’s functional relatives, the dioptra, and especially the chorobates, explaining how to achieve reliable gradients. By formalizing surveying, the treatise supports cadastral control, taxation, and the reliable delivery of water—state concerns intensified by Augustus’s administrative reorganization. The emphasis on precision and repeatability imagines a built environment that mirrors imperial order, extending the reach of Roman governance into the technical routines of construction and maintenance.
Vitruvius’s city-siting advice also registers contemporary expansion and public health anxieties. He warns against marshy grounds and insalubrious winds, recommends orientations for sun and breezes, and ties urban form to climate. These prescriptions respond to real settlement patterns, from Italian valleys to coastal plains, where new colonies and veteran towns were founded. The marriage of practical meteorology with urban planning echoes the era’s ambition to harmonize human settlement with a stable cosmos, a theme that resonated with Augustan propaganda of restored nature and peace. Architecture thus becomes a means of aligning civic life with the rhythms of the environment and seasons—order in space and time.
Author Biography
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman architect, engineer, and author active in the late first century BCE. He is known for De architectura, a comprehensive treatise in ten books that became the most influential surviving text on ancient architecture and building technology. Composed during the transition from the Roman Republic to the Augustan principate and dedicated to Augustus, the work sets out principles that shaped architectural theory for centuries. Vitruvius wrote as a practitioner addressing both technical craft and civic purpose, seeking to codify knowledge ranging from materials and machines to urbanism, and to articulate the intellectual stature of architecture.
Little is securely known about Vitruvius’s early life and formal training, but his treatise reveals a technical education grounded in Roman engineering and a sustained engagement with Greek scholarship. He insists that architecture belongs among the liberal arts and requires familiarity with geometry, music, medicine, and astronomy. Throughout De architectura he cites Greek designers and theorists, including Ictinus, Hermogenes, and Dinocrates, and relies on writers such as Aristoxenus for acoustics. His knowledge of Hellenistic proportion theory, temple design, and theater science reflects a milieu in which Roman builders assimilated Greek methods while adapting them to the civic and infrastructural needs of Rome.
Vitruvius refers to his experience as a military engineer, describing siege machines, ballistae, and field works with practical specificity. Although precise posts and campaigns remain uncertain, his descriptions indicate service in the Roman army and work on public projects. De architectura was composed and revised in the late first century BCE and addressed to the new imperial patronage. The ten books proceed systematically: education of the architect; materials; temple orders; public buildings such as theaters and baths; private houses; pavements and decorative finishes; hydraulics and water supply; gnomonics and timekeeping; and machines. No extant building can be securely attributed to him.
Vitruvius framed architecture as a discipline governed by three interdependent aims: firmitas, utilitas, venustas—stability, utility, and beauty. He advocated rigorous education, ethical conduct, and responsibility to public health and safety, advising attention to climate, site, and water quality. His account of proportion links buildings to the measured harmony of the human body, a conceit that later inspired depictions of the “Vitruvian Man.” He treated the architectural orders as systems of measured relationships, not mere ornament. In theater design he combined acoustical theory with practical seating and sightline concerns, illustrating his broader commitment to marry speculative knowledge with empirically tested craft.
In addition to temples and houses, Vitruvius documented a wide range of technologies. He described lime, pozzolana, timber, and masonry; vaulting and roof construction; and durable pavements. His books on water address sources, aqueduct design, distribution, and testing for potability. He explained sundials, calendars, and astronomical orientations used to lay out cities and align buildings. His final book catalogs machines, including cranes, hoists, water-lifting devices, and war engines, setting out principles of mechanics and safety. This encyclopedic approach presents architecture as an applied science grounded in geometry and natural philosophy, yet always directed toward civic usefulness and environmental fitness.
De architectura circulated in antiquity and survived the Middle Ages in manuscript tradition, though its readership was limited. With the advent of printing, the text was edited and translated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, becoming a foundational authority for Renaissance humanists and architects. Figures such as Leon Battista Alberti, Sebastiano Serlio, Andrea Palladio, and Leonardo da Vinci engaged closely with Vitruvian concepts of proportion, orders, and urban form. Commentators debated his prescriptions while adapting them to contemporary practice. The treatise shaped pedagogies, notational conventions, and the very idea that architecture rests on codified principles accessible to reasoned inquiry.
Details of Vitruvius’s later life, including his death, remain uncertain. The dedication of his treatise to Augustus suggests he sought or received imperial favor, but firm evidence is sparse. His legacy rests on the survival and interpretive afterlife of De architectura rather than on identifiable buildings. Modern historians rely on his chapters to reconstruct Roman construction, hydraulics, and town planning, while architects and theorists continue to engage his triad of aims and his humanist definition of the field. The term “Vitruvian” now signals a durable ideal: architecture as a measured synthesis of technical knowledge, public purpose, and aesthetic judgment.
The Ten Books on Architecture
PREFACE
During the last years of his life, Professor Morgan had devoted much time and energy to the preparation of a translation of Vitruvius, which he proposed to supplement with a revised text, illustrations, and notes. He had completed the translation, with the exception of the last four chapters of the tenth book, and had discussed, with Professor Warren, the illustrations intended for the first six books of the work; the notes had not been arranged or completed, though many of them were outlined in the manuscript, or the intention to insert them indicated. The several books of the translation, so far as it was completed, had been read to a little group of friends, consisting of Professors Sheldon and Kittredge, and myself, and had received our criticism, which had, at times, been utilized in the revision of the work.
After the death of Professor Morgan, in spite of my obvious incompetency from a technical point of view, I undertook, at the request of his family, to complete the translation, and to see the book through the press. I must, therefore, assume entire responsibility for the translation of the tenth book, beginning with chapter thirteen, and further responsibility for necessary changes made by me in the earlier part of the translation, changes which, in no case, affect any theory held by Professor Morgan, but which involve mainly the adoption of simpler forms of statement, or the correction of obvious oversights.
The text followed is that of Valentine Rose in his second edition (Leipzig, 1899), and the variations from this text are, with a few exceptions which are indicated in the footnotes, in the nature of a return to the consensus of the manuscript readings.
The illustrations in the first six books are believed to be substantially in accord with the wishes of Professor Morgan. The suggestions for illustrations in the later books were incomplete, and did not indicate, in all cases, with sufficient definiteness to allow them to be executed, the changes from conventional plans and designs intended by the translator. It has, therefore, been decided to include in this part of the work only those illustrations which are known to have had the full approval of Professor Morgan. The one exception to this principle is the reproduction of a rough model of the Ram of Hegetor, constructed by me on the basis of the measurements given by Vitruvius and Athenaeus.
It does not seem to me necessary or even advisable to enter into a long discussion as to the date of Vitruvius, which has been assigned to various periods from the time of Augustus to the early centuries of our era. Professor Morgan, in several articles in the Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, and in the Proceedings of the American Academy, all of which have been reprinted in a volume of Addresses and Essays (New York, 1909), upheld the now generally accepted view that Vitruvius wrote in the time of Augustus, and furnished conclusive evidence that nothing in his language is inconsistent with this view. In revising the translation, I met with one bit of evidence for a date before the end of the reign of Nero which I have never seen adduced. In viii, 3, 21, the kingdom of Cottius is mentioned, the name depending, it is true, on an emendation, but one which has been universally accepted since it was first proposed in 1513. The kingdom of Cottius was made into a Roman province by Nero (cf. Suetonius, Nero, 18), and it is inconceivable that any Roman writer subsequently referred to it as a kingdom.
It does seem necessary to add a few words about the literary merits of Vitruvius in this treatise, and about Professor Morgan's views as to the general principles to be followed in the translation.
Vitruvius was not a great literary personage, ambitious as he was to appear in that character. As Professor Morgan has aptly said, "he has all the marks of one unused to composition, to whom writing is a painful task." In his hand the measuring-rod was a far mightier implement than the pen. His turgid and pompous rhetoric displays itself in the introductions to the different books, where his exaggerated effort to introduce some semblance of style into his commonplace lectures on the noble principles which should govern the conduct of the architect, or into the prosaic lists of architects and writers on architecture, is everywhere apparent. Even in the more technical portions of his work, a like conscious effort may be detected, and, at the same time, a lack of confidence in his ability to express himself in unmistakable language. He avoids periodic sentences, uses only the simpler subjunctive constructions, repeats the antecedent in relative clauses, and, not infrequently, adopts a formal language closely akin to that of specifications and contracts, the style with which he was, naturally, most familiar. He ends each book with a brief summary, almost a formula, somewhat like a sigh of relief, in which the reader unconsciously shares. At times his meaning is ambiguous, not because of grammatical faults, which are comparatively few and unimportant, but because, when he does attempt a periodic sentence, he becomes involved, and finds it difficult to extricate himself.
Some of these peculiarities and crudities of expression Professor Morgan purposely imitated, because of his conviction that a translation should not merely reproduce the substance of a book, but should also give as clear a picture as possible of the original, of its author, and of the working of his mind. The translation is intended, then, to be faithful and exact, but it deliberately avoids any attempt to treat the language of Vitruvius as though it were Ciceronian, or to give a false impression of conspicuous literary merit in a work which is destitute of that quality. The translator had, however, the utmost confidence in the sincerity of Vitruvius and in the serious purpose of his treatise on architecture.
To those who have liberally given their advice and suggestions in response to requests from Professor Morgan, it is impossible for me to make adequate acknowledgment. Their number is so great, and my knowledge of the indebtedness in individual cases is so small, that each must be content with the thought of the full and generous acknowledgment which he would have received had Professor Morgan himself written this preface.
Personally I am under the greatest obligations to Professor H. L. Warren, who has freely given both assistance and criticism; to Professor G. L. Kittredge, who has read with me most of the proof; to the Syndics of the Harvard University Press, who have made possible the publication of the work; and to the members of the Visiting Committee of the Department of the Classics and the classmates of Professor Morgan, who have generously supplied the necessary funds for the illustrations.
ALBERT A. HOWARD.
VITRUVIUS
BOOK I
PREFACE
1. While your divine intelligence and will, Imperator Caesar, were engaged in acquiring the right to command the world, and while your fellow citizens, when all their enemies had been laid low by your invincible valour, were glorying in your triumph and victory—while all foreign nations were in subjection awaiting your beck and call, and the Roman people and senate, released from their alarm, were beginning to be guided by your most noble conceptions and policies, I hardly dared, in view of your serious employments, to publish my writings and long considered ideas on architecture, for fear of subjecting myself to your displeasure by an unseasonable interruption.
2. But when I saw that you were giving your attention not only to the welfare of society in general and to the establishment of public order, but also to the providing of public buildings intended for utilitarian purposes, so that not only should the State have been enriched with provinces by your means, but that the greatness of its power might likewise be attended with distinguished authority in its public buildings, I thought that I ought to take the first opportunity to lay before you my writings on this theme. For in the first place it was this subject which made me known to your father, to whom I was devoted on account of his great qualities. After the council of heaven gave him a place in the dwellings of immortal life and transferred your father's power to your hands, my devotion continuing unchanged as I remembered him inclined me to support you. And so with Marcus Aurelius, Publius Minidius, and Gnaeus Cornelius, I was ready to supply and repair ballistae, scorpiones, and other artillery[2], and I have received rewards for good service with them. After your first bestowal of these upon me, you continued to renew them on the recommendation of your sister.
3. Owing to this favour I need have no fear of want to the end of my life, and being thus laid under obligation I began to write this work for you, because I saw that you have built and are now building extensively, and that in future also you will take care that our public and private buildings shall be worthy to go down to posterity by the side of your other splendid achievements. I have drawn up definite rules to enable you, by observing them, to have personal knowledge of the quality both of existing buildings and of those which are yet to be constructed. For in the following books I have disclosed all the principles of the art.
CHAPTER I
THE EDUCATION OF THE ARCHITECT
1. The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory[1q]. Practice is the continuous and regular exercise of employment where manual work is done with any necessary material according to the design of a drawing. Theory, on the other hand, is the ability to demonstrate and explain the productions of dexterity on the principles of proportion.
2. It follows, therefore, that architects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their pains, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of both, like men armed at all points, have the sooner attained their object and carried authority with them.
3. In all matters, but particularly in architecture, there are these two points:—the thing signified, and that which gives it its significance. That which is signified is the subject of which we may be speaking; and that which gives significance is a demonstration on scientific principles. It appears, then, that one who professes himself an architect should be well versed in both directions. He ought, therefore, to be both naturally gifted and amenable to instruction. Neither natural ability without instruction nor instruction without natural ability can make the perfect artist. Let him be educated, skilful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens.
4. The reasons for all this are as follows. An architect ought to be an educated man so as to leave a more lasting remembrance in his treatises. Secondly, he must have a knowledge of drawing so that he can readily make sketches to show the appearance of the work which he proposes. Geometry, also, is of much assistance in architecture, and in particular it teaches us the use of the rule and compasses, by which especially we acquire readiness in making plans for buildings in their grounds, and rightly apply the square, the level, and the plummet. By means of optics, again, the light in buildings can be drawn from fixed quarters of the sky. It is true that it is by arithmetic that the total cost of buildings is calculated and measurements are computed, but difficult questions involving symmetry are solved by means of geometrical theories and methods.
5. A wide knowledge of history is requisite because, among the ornamental parts of an architect's design for a work, there are many the underlying idea of whose employment he should be able to explain toGree inquirers. For instance, suppose him to set up the marble statues of women in long robes, called Caryatides[1], to take the place of columns, with the mutules and coronas placed directly above their heads, he will give the following explanation to his questioners. Caryae, a state in Peloponnesus, sided with the Persian enemies against Greece; later the Greeks, having gloriously won their freedom by victory in the war, made common cause and declared war against the people of Caryae. They took the town, killed the men, abandoned the State to desolation, and carried off their wives into slavery, without permitting them, however, to lay aside the long robes and other marks of their rank as married women, so that they might be obliged not only to march in the triumph but to appear forever after as a type of slavery, burdened with the weight of their shame and so making atonement for their State. Hence, the architects of the time designed for public buildings statues of these women, placed so as to carry a load, in order that the sin and the punishment of the people of Caryae might be known and handed down even to posterity.
Photo. H. B. Warren
caryatides of the erechtheum at athens
caryatides from the treasury of the cnidians at delphi
Photo. Anderson
caryatides now in the villa albani at rome
6. Likewise the Lacedaemonians under the leadership of Pausanias, son of Agesipolis, after conquering the Persian armies, infinite in number,
caryatides (From the edition of Vitruvius by Fra Giocondo, Venice, 1511)
with a small force at the battle of Plataea, celebrated a glorious triumph with the spoils and booty, and with the money obtained from the sale thereof built the Persian Porch, to be a monument to the renown and valour of the people and a trophy of victory for posterity. And there they set effigies of the prisoners arrayed in barbarian costume and holding up the roof, their pride punished by this deserved affront, that enemies might tremble for fear of the effects of their courage, and that their own people, looking upon this ensample of their valour and encouraged by the glory of it, might be ready to defend their independence. So from that time on, many have put up statues of Persians supporting entablatures and their ornaments, and thus from that motive have greatly enriched the diversity of their works. There are other stories of the same kind which architects ought to know.
7. As for philosophy, it makes an architect high-minded and not self-assuming, but rather renders him courteous, just, and honest without avariciousness. This is very important, for no work can be rightly done without honesty and incorruptibility. Let him not be grasping nor have his mind preoccupied with the idea of receiving perquisites, but let him with dignity keep up his position by cherishing a good reputation. These are among the precepts of philosophy. Furthermore philosophy treats of physics (in Greek φυσιολογἱα) where a more careful knowledge is required because the problems which come under this head are numerous and of very different kinds; as, for example, in the case of the conducting of water. For at points of intake and at curves, and at places where it is raised to a level, currents of air naturally form in one way or another; and nobody who has not learned the fundamental principles of physics from philosophy will be able to provide against the damage which they do. So the reader of Ctesibius or Archimedes and the other writers of treatises of the same class will not be able to appreciate them unless he has been trained in these subjects by the philosophers.
8. Music, also, the architect ought to understand so that he may have knowledge of the canonical and mathematical theory, and besides be able to tune ballistae, catapultae, and scorpiones to the proper key. For to the right and left in the beams are the holes in the frames through which the strings of twisted sinew are stretched by means of windlasses and bars, and these strings must not be clamped and made fast until they give the same correct note to the ear of the skilled workman. For the arms thrust through those stretched strings must, on being let go, strike their blow together at the same moment; but if they are not in unison, they will prevent the course of projectiles from being straight.
persians (From the edition of Vitruvius by Fra Giocondo, Venice, 1511)
9. In theatres, likewise, there are the bronze vessels (in Greek ἡχεια) which are placed in niches under the seats in accordance with the musical intervals on mathematical principles. These vessels are arranged with a view to musical concords or harmony, and apportioned in the compass of the fourth, the fifth, and the octave, and so on up to the double octave, in such a way that when the voice of an actor falls in unison with any of them its power is increased, and it reaches the ears of the audience with greater clearness and sweetness. Water organs, too, and the other instruments which resemble them cannot be made by one who is without the principles of music.
10. The architect should also have a knowledge of the study of medicine on account of the questions of climates (in Greek κλἱματα), air, the healthiness and unhealthiness of sites, and the use of different waters. For without these considerations, the healthiness of a dwelling cannot be assured. And as for principles of law, he should know those which are necessary in the case of buildings having party walls, with regard to water dripping from the eaves, and also the laws about drains, windows, and water supply. And other things of this sort should be known to architects, so that, before they begin upon buildings, they may be careful not to leave disputed points for the householders to settle after the works are finished, and so that in drawing up contracts the interests of both employer and contractor may be wisely safe-guarded. For if a contract is skilfully drawn, each may obtain a release from the other without disadvantage. From astronomy we find the east, west, south, and north, as well as the theory of the heavens, the equinox, solstice, and courses of the stars. If one has no knowledge of these matters, he will not be able to have any comprehension of the theory of sundials.
11. Consequently, since this study is so vast in extent, embellished and enriched as it is with many different kinds of learning, I think that men have no right to profess themselves architects hastily, without having climbed from boyhood the steps of these studies and thus, nursed by the knowledge of many arts and sciences, having reached the heights of the holy ground of architecture.
12. But perhaps to the inexperienced it will seem a marvel that human nature can comprehend such a great number of studies and keep them in the memory. Still, the observation that all studies have a common bond of union and intercourse with one another, will lead to the belief that this can easily be realized. For a liberal education forms, as it were, a single body made up of these members. Those, therefore, who from tender years receive instruction in the various forms of learning, recognize the same stamp on all the arts, and an intercourse between all studies, and so they more readily comprehend them all. This is what led one of the ancient architects, Pytheos, the celebrated builder of the temple of Minerva at Priene, to say in his Commentaries that an architect ought to be able to accomplish much more in all the arts and sciences than the men who, by their own particular kinds of work and the practice of it, have brought each a single subject to the highest perfection. But this is in point of fact not realized.
13. For an architect ought not to be and cannot be such a philologian as was Aristarchus, although not illiterate; nor a musician like Aristoxenus, though not absolutely ignorant of music; nor a painter like Apelles, though not unskilful in drawing; nor a sculptor such as was Myron or Polyclitus, though not unacquainted with the plastic art; nor again a physician like Hippocrates, though not ignorant of medicine; nor in the other sciences need he excel in each, though he should not be unskilful in them. For, in the midst of all this great variety of subjects, an individual cannot attain to perfection in each, because it is scarcely in his power to take in and comprehend the general theories of them.
14. Still, it is not architects alone that cannot in all matters reach perfection, but even men who individually practise specialties in the arts do not all attain to the highest point of merit. Therefore, if among artists working each in a single field not all, but only a few in an entire generation acquire fame, and that with difficulty, how can an architect, who has to be skilful in many arts, accomplish not merely the feat—in itself a great marvel—of being deficient in none of them, but also that of surpassing all those artists who have devoted themselves with unremitting industry to single fields?
15. It appears, then, that Pytheos made a mistake by not observing that the arts are each composed of two things, the actual work and the theory of it. One of these, the doing of the work, is proper to men trained in the individual subject, while the other, the theory, is common to all scholars: for example, to physicians and musicians the rhythmical beat of the pulse and its metrical movement. But if there is a wound to be healed or a sick man to be saved from danger, the musician will not call, for the business will be appropriate to the physician. So in the case of a musical instrument, not the physician but the musician will be the man to tune it so that the ears may find their due pleasure in its strains.
16. Astronomers likewise have a common ground for discussion with musicians in the harmony of the stars and musical concords in tetrads and triads of the fourth and the fifth, and with geometricians in the subject of vision (in Greek λὁγος ὁπτικὁς); and in all other sciences many points, perhaps all, are common so far as the discussion of them is concerned. But the actual undertaking of works which are brought to perfection by the hand and its manipulation is the function of those who have been specially trained to deal with a single art. It appears, therefore, that he has done enough and to spare who in each subject possesses a fairly good knowledge of those parts, with their principles, which are indispensable for architecture, so that if he is required to pass judgement and to express approval in the case of those things or arts, he may not be found wanting. As for men upon whom nature has bestowed so much ingenuity, acuteness, and memory that they are able to have a thorough knowledge of geometry, astronomy, music, and the other arts, they go beyond the functions of architects and become pure mathematicians. Hence they can readily take up positions against those arts because many are the artistic weapons with which they are armed. Such men, however, are rarely found, but there have been such at times; for example, Aristarchus of Samos, Philolaus and Archytas of Tarentum, Apollonius of Perga, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, and among Syracusans Archimedes and Scopinas, who through mathematics and natural philosophy discovered, expounded, and left to posterity many things in connexion with mechanics and with sundials.
17. Since, therefore, the possession of such talents due to natural capacity is not vouchsafed at random to entire nations, but only to a few great men; since, moreover, the function of the architect requires a training in all the departments of learning; and finally, since reason, on account of the wide extent of the subject, concedes that he may possess not the highest but not even necessarily a moderate knowledge of the subjects of study, I request, Caesar, both of you and of those who may read the said books, that if anything is set forth with too little regard for grammatical rule, it may be pardoned. For it is not as a very great philosopher, nor as an eloquent rhetorician, nor as a grammarian trained in the highest principles of his art, that I have striven to write this work, but as an architect who has had only a dip into those studies. Still, as regards the efficacy of the art and the theories of it, I promise and expect that in these volumes I shall undoubtedly show myself of very considerable importance not only to builders but also to all scholars.
CHAPTER II
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF ARCHITECTURE
1. Architecture depends on Order (in Greek τἁξις[3]), Arrangement (in Greek διἁθεσις), Eurythmy, Symmetry, Propriety, and Economy (in Greek οἱκονομἱα[2q]).
2. Order gives due measure to the members of a work considered separately, and symmetrical agreement to the proportions of the whole. It is an adjustment according to quantity (in Greek ποσὁτης). By this I mean the selection of modules from the members of the work itself and, starting from these individual parts of members, constructing the whole work to correspond. Arrangement includes the putting of things in their proper places and the elegance of effect which is due to adjustments appropriate to the character of the work. Its forms of expression (Greek ἱδἑαι) are these: groundplan, elevation, and perspective. A groundplan is made by the proper successive use of compasses and rule, through which we get outlines for the plane surfaces of buildings. An elevation is a picture of the front of a building, set upright and properly drawn in the proportions of the contemplated work. Perspective is the method of sketching a front with the sides withdrawing into the background, the lines all meeting in the centre of a circle. All three come of reflexion and invention. Reflexion is careful and laborious thought, and watchful attention directed to the agreeable effect of one's plan[3q]. Invention, on the other hand, is the solving of intricate problems and the discovery of new principles by means of brilliancy and versatility. These are the departments belonging under Arrangement.
3. Eurythmy is beauty and fitness in the adjustments of the members. This is found when the members of a work are of a height suited to their breadth, of a breadth suited to their length, and, in a word, when they all correspond symmetrically.
4. Symmetry is a proper agreement between the members of the work itself, and relation between the different parts and the whole general scheme, in accordance with a certain part selected as standard. Thus in the human body there is a kind of symmetrical harmony between forearm, foot, palm, finger, and other small parts; and so it is with perfect buildings. In the case of temples, symmetry may be calculated from the thickness of a column, from a triglyph, or even from a module; in the ballista[6], from the hole or from what the Greeks call the περἱτρητος; in a ship, from the space between the tholepins διἁπηγμἁ; and in other things, from various members.
5. Propriety is that perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription (Greek: θεματισμὡ), from usage, or from nature. From prescription, in the case of hypaethral edifices[4], open to the sky, in honour of Jupiter Lightning, the Heaven, the Sun, or the Moon: for these are gods whose semblances and manifestations we behold before our very eyes in the sky when it is cloudless and bright. The temples of Minerva, Mars, and Hercules, will be Doric, since the virile strength of these gods makes daintiness entirely inappropriate to their houses. In temples to Venus, Flora, Proserpine, Spring-Water, and the Nymphs, the Corinthian order[5]
