Vitruvian Man Rome Under Construction Ta

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Tue Jul 02 2019, NEWGEN
Vitruvian Man
Rome under Construction
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JOHN OKSANISH
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii

List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1. Vitruvius, man? 31
2. History from the ground up: Vitruvius’s “textual” monuments 59
3. The body in brief: De architectura and the limits of somatic synopsis 94
4. Introducing the architectus 119
5. Bodies as behavior: Corpus architectorum 144
Epilogue: Alternate realities—a palimpsestic corpus 185
Appendix: Summary of contents of De architectura 191

Works cited 207
Index 227

C0 Introduction
C0.P1 Early in the reign of Augustus, a military engineer named Vitruvius

dedicated his brief treatise on architectural topics to the new princeps. The
work, known to later centuries as De architectura libri decem or simply De
architectura, surveys a range of topics relating to architecture in its con-
temporary sense (i.e., the design and construction of buildings), as well as
two other areas, machinery and timekeeping, which Vitruvius’s definition
of architectura comprised.1 This tripartite definition, however, belies the
breadth and depth of what his vision of architecture actually entails, for
De architectura not only touches on many areas of public and private life
in Augustan Rome and beyond, but provides a striking portrait of the ideal
architectus, his ethical disposition, and the extent of his influence both in and
beyond his art of monumental representation. Not unlike the rhetorical art
that is exalted by Gorgias or, mutatis mutandis, Crassus’s view of oratory in
De oratore, Vitruvian architecture is so wide-ranging in its effects that its ideal
practitioner assesses the products even of other arts: “To the architect belongs
a domain of knowledge adorned by many different areas of learning and in-
struction; every product of the other arts is put to proof by his authority.”2
C0.N1 1. 1.3.1. The oldest manuscripts record De architectura libri decem as the title, but this could be
an externally imposed description used to catalog the work; see Rowland, Howe, and Dewar
1999: 1 n. 1. A clear distinction must be made, however, between externally imposed “catalog”
descriptions and self-descriptions within the body of a text. Instances of the latter comprise acts
of “directed reception” (cf. Conte 1994b: xx).
C0.N2 2. 1.1.1 Architecti est scientia pluribus disciplinis et variis eruditionibus ornata cuius iudicio
probantur omnia quae ab ceteris artibus perficiuntur opera. In this book I have generally pre-
ferred the text of the Budé editions of De architectura; I have endeavored to mark departures
from those editions when they occasionally occur.

2 In t roduct ion
C0.P2 Until very recently scholars of Latin literature, at least in the Anglo-
American tradition, have largely ignored and sometimes even reviled this text
and its author. John Mackail, the Scottish classicist, socialist, and biographer
of William Morris, presents a telling, if extreme, example. Conceding
that Vitruvius’s books “are the single important work on classical architecture
which has come down from the ancient world,” Mackail reminds readers
that “their reputation is not due to any literary merit” and turns
Vitruvius’s own claims on behalf of De architectura against him: “Vitruvius,
however able as an architect, was a man of little general knowledge, and far
from handy with his pen. . . . Where in his introductory chapters or
elsewhere he ventures be-yond his strict province, his writing is that of a
half-educated man who has lost simplicity without acquiring skill.”3
C0.P3 On the one hand, we must be careful in the face of such vehement and
sub-jective critiques not to perpetuate a centuries- long cycle of Vitruvian
apolo-getics.4 On the other, it is only by interrogating the nature and origins
of these criticisms that we can unburden ourselves from their legacy, which
begins to take shape as early as the 15th c. with Leon Battista Alberti’s
harsh assess-ment of Vitruvius’s Latinity in his own De re aedificatoria.
Alberti, though he admired Vitruvius, sought to replace Vitruvius more than
to imitate him, and his suggestion that Vitruvius spoke neither Latin nor
Greek came to typify how readers understood De architectura and its
author for centuries. Even now, much of what we think we know about
Vitruvius as an author and his-torical figure finds its roots in classicizing
polemics that conflate Vitruvius’s authorial voice with Vitruvius the
historical figure in an extension of the prin-ciple that “style makes the
man.”5 In short, when Vitruvius is judged against
C0.N3 3. Mackail 1895: 166–7. Cf. 1.1.1–3, 4.pr.1, 5.pr.1–3, etc. Mackail’s critique and its ilk are discussed
by Oksanish 2018 in greater detail in the context of De architectura’s scholarly reception. See
also the brief summary at Gros 1982: 669–75.
C0.N4 4. An “orgy of recrimination,” to quote Wilson Jones 2000: 35. But Vitruvius has had staunch
defenders, too. Morris Hicky Morgan (see works cited), who translated De architectura into
English, offered a more nuanced treatment of the text and its author than had many of his
predecessors and contemporaries, though he hardly shied away from noting Vitruvius’s limita-
tions: “He has all the marks of one unused to composition, to whom writing is a painful task”
(M. H. Morgan 1906: 502). (Albert A. Howard, who wrote the preface to Morgan’s posthu-
mously published translation of De architectura, takes this critique somewhat further; M. H.
Morgan 1914: iv.)
C0.N5 5. Talis oratio, qualis vita. The specific formulation is best known from Sen. Epist. 114, but the
sentiment is widespread. See, e.g., Keith 1999 and Dugan 2005a. For Alberti’s classicism and
his aemulatio with antiquity, see Grafton 2002. Both Vitruvius the author and Vitruvius the
historical figure have largely been alienated from Vitruvius qua genius of Western architectural
classicism. For discussion and bibliography, see Oksanish 2018. More conventional treatments

Introduction 3
classicizing, Ciceronian criteria, he is likely to fall short on grounds of both

content and style.6
C0.P4 And yet Vitruvius’s “failure” to write like the master of Roman prose hardly
means that Vitruvius was not literate or that what he wrote was not literature.
Indeed, a “literary” reading of De architectura is precisely what this book aims to
accomplish. Through a series of close readings with particular focus on rhetoric
and intertextuality, I aim to suggest that De architectura sheds special light on
a coherent model of civic expertise that implicates both ruler and ruled in the
imperial republic. This is not the only way to approach De architectura, but it is
an approach that in my view continues to demand attention as a catalyst for fur-
ther study of the work in its context. This introduction will begin to suggest how
Vitruvius’s authorial voice simultaneously describes and enacts both the poten-
tial and the limits of architectura and its definitive text, De architectura.
C0.S1 Defining literature

C0.P5 What does it mean to speak of a “literary” Vitruvius or of approaching “De
architectura as literature”? Whether and in what ways technical writing may
be considered literary remains a topic of debate. Suffice it to say that the field
of Classics, under the influence of the New Historicism, has become more
ecumenical in the kinds of texts it sees fit to treat. Individual approaches con-
tinue to vary, however, according to how strongly one believes the constructed
author in a technical text may differ from the historical figure who wrote it.7
of Vitruvius’s reception include Kruft 1983 and part I of Hart and Hicks 1998; see also the dis-
cussion in Novara 2005 and now Sanvito 2015.
C0.N6 6. In fact, the comparison with Cicero is invited by Vitruvius, 9.pr.17–18. Vitruvius also evokes
Cicero obliquely through the form of the treatise (see below) and especially in his definition
of the ideal architectus. The latter figure, as others have noted, bears particular resemblance
to Cicero’s definition of the ideal orator. For these and other Ciceronian points of contact,
see Romano 1987, 1994, 2013, 2016; Courrént 1998; as well as my c hapters 2, 3, and 4. For
the shadow cast by Ciceronian classicism over roughly contemporary Latin prose, see the in-
sightful view of Gaertner 2010 on the Bellum Hispaniense. Adams 2016: 183–4 notes several
correspondences with Vitruvius’s Latin and that of Caesar and suggests that some features of
Vitruvian prose that may appear un-Classical are merely un-Ciceronian; the est + infinitive
construction, for example, is common in Vitruvius, though it also appears in Livy, Sallust,
Varro, and the correspondence of Cicero as well (Adams 2016: 181–2, 191).
C0.N7 7. Foucault 1998 remains a fundamental discussion, but more recent studies approaching
the question in Classics include Formisano and Eijk 2017 (see p. 17 thereof for comment on
Doody and Taub 2009: 7); J. König and Woolf 2017; Roby 2013, 2016; Fögen 2009; Asper
2007; and Hutchinson 2009. Analogies may also be found in scholarship in Caesar (e.g., Grillo

4 In t roduct ion
C0.P6 All texts respond in some way to the social worlds that envelop them, of
course; some are even command performances. But the present study sees a
danger in construing Vitruvius only from the viewpoint of the presumed his-
torical figure rather than the author constructed by the text. For in failing
to accommodate a literary Vitruvius, we deny De architectura participation
in the textual world from which it emerged and the sort of “involved inter-
textuality” that characterizes other (non-technical) writing.8 As a result, we
will be ill prepared to distinguish between several distinct pairs: the histor-
ical figure and the authorial persona; real architects and the ideal architectus
that is formed by the text; between architectura as it was actually practiced
and architectura as it is described by the text. That De architectura is the only
complete construction that Vitruvius has left us is a truth that should not be
taken lightly.
C0.P7 Marco Formisano has recently noted that claims to treat technical texts
“as literature” tend to presume (problematically) that the “literariness” of
technical texts is found only in their prefaces, thereby ignoring or sanitizing
the textuality of the whole.9 This is a legitimate concern, and I have therefore
endeavored to integrate portions of the “main” text whenever it has suited my
argument. Still, to whatever extent this book still devotes much of its efforts
to the prefaces and other “non-technical” elements (e.g., its description of the
ideal architectus in book 1), this focus is based on the following considerations.
First, the tendency noted by Formisano that scholars generally “take liter-
ally what [technical] texts and their authors say” often fails to apply when it
comes to Vitruvius’s evidence and claims of his own literary learning.10 As we
will see, many of these claims appear in the prefaces.11 It is sometimes implied,
for instance, that he knew the writers he cites mostly from doxographies,
anthologies, and the like, approaching literature in a more or less instru-
mental fashion.12 Though it is undeniable that Vitruvius approaches his
sources unevenly—some borrowings are not explicitly acknowledged, despite
2012). This book is generally sympathetic with the views advanced by Nichols 2017, who also
emphasizes the constructedness of the author and his persona.
C0.N8 8. For the phrase, see Hutchinson 2009.
C0.N9 9. Formisano and Eijk 2017: 15.
C0.N10 10. Formisano and Eijk 2017: 15.
C0.N11 11. See note 46 on Gros, Corso, and Romano 1997.
C0.N12 12. Inter alios, Courrént 2011; cf. Porter 2003 on the tension between materiality and literature.
See also the following chapter.

Introduction 5
long lists of names elsewhere—neither this incongruence nor Vitruvius’s ap-

parent proximity to the technical, material world should lead us to believe
that his text is any less a product of a literary mind or incapable of sustained
contact with other, “real” texts. In short, whereas the prefaces themselves do
not stand in for the text as a whole, they remain important sites of inquiry for
questions about De architectura’s constitution and function.
C0.P8 There are other reasons that we may broadly call “historical” for devoting
considerable effort to the prefaces. The prefaces to each of the ten books
conservatively make up no less than 10 percent of the entire treatise as it was
published for the definitive “Augustan” edition, which likely appeared after
27 bce. This is not an insignificant proportion: the prefaces of De oratore
and the extant books of De inventione, for example, constitute roughly 5
and 6 percent of each, respectively.13 Nor is the date of publication insig-
nificant for how we view the treatise as a whole. Although there has been
some debate about the order of composition of De architectura’s books, the
prefaces will also have been written or rewritten for this edition: the ded-
ication in particular seems to recall the end of the civil wars and the triple
triumph of 29 (1.pr.1) and, probably, thinly veiled references to Octavian’s
new title “Augustus,” which was granted in January of 27 (1.pr.1 amplissimis
tuis cogitationibus; 1.pr.2 civitas per te non solum provinciis esset aucta; 1.pr.3
amplitudine rerum gestarum, etc.).14
C0.P9 Finally, and perhaps most important, all of the Vitruvian prefaces but one
address the dedicatee Augustus (as imperator, Caesar, or imperator Caesar),
definitively tying the value of Vitruvius’s text and the civic ethos it implies di-
rectly to its addressee.15 Some of these passages simply introduce the contents
of the books to which they are attached. Many of them, however, also elucidate
C0.N13 13. Note that if one includes the first chapters of books 1 and 2 (on the ideal architect and the
Vitruvian anthropology, respectively), the proportion of paratextual material at the beginning
of each book rises to nearly 14 percent. For the prefatory/paratextual qualities of 1.1 and 2.1, see
Fleury 1990: xxx and Novara 2005: 3 n. 9.
C0.N14 14. On the question of Vitruvius’s date, Baldwin 1990 remains useful; the introduction to
Fleury 1990 is particularly lucid. It seems clear on the basis of internal references that the ed-
ition we possess was published sometime after 27 bce (or perhaps shortly before; see in par-
ticular the reference to an aedes Augusti at 5.1.7). Vitruvius’s inclusion of Varro, who died in
27 bce, as a writer whom context suggests was deceased also suggests an early Augustan date,
9.pr.16–18. See the following chapter for further discussion.
C0.N15 15. Book 8 contains no such address, while 1.1.18 (the conclusion to the description of the ideal
architectus) contains the only such address outside the prefaces. The recipient is named impe-
rator, Caesar, or (as in the dedication) imperator Caesar. Regarding the nomenclature, see Syme
1958 regarding the title and Baldwin 1990: 426 for the irrelevance of the dedicatee’s invoked
title to the work’s date: “Not calling Augustus Augustus means nothing.” Cf. divus Caesar at

6 In t roduct ion
Vitruvius’s aims in writing. Crucially, these aims are often directed toward a
readership beyond the dedicatee himself, and they are regularly illuminated by
references to Vitruvius’s autobiography.16
C0.S2 Munus non ingratum: power in the paratext

C0.P10 Although a sustained interest in writing may seem surprising from an au-
thor of a treatise on architecture (see my c hapter 2), such focus was a regular
feature of many republican prose prefaces, subject matter notwithstanding.
There same is true, mutatis mutandis, of their Greek precedents.17 As Baraz
has recently emphasized, Roman writers who were (or had been) politically
active regularly used their prefaces to air anxiety about writing as an accept-
able elite activity to substitute for or supplement traditional, political ac-
tion.18 Sallust provides a locus classicus for this stance in the preface to his
Bellum Catilinae, but the Auctor of the Rhetorica ad Herennium also provides
a salient comparison with Vitruvius.19 The Auctor, for instance, reminds his
dedicatee and reader of the difficulties he has faced in finding time to write,
and he is particularly anxious to show that he has had to give up his leisure
time to satisfy the curiosity of his dedicatee: Rhet. Her. 1.1 “My private af-
fairs keep me so busy that I can hardly find enough leisure to devote to study
(negotiis familiaribus inpediti vix satis otium studio suppeditare possumus) and
the little that is vouchsafed to me I have usually preferred to spend on philos-
ophy”20 (tr. Caplan). Insofar as curtailing one’s otium is for the Auctor a labor
2.9.15 (undoubtedly a reference to the princeps’s adoptive father) and cum patre Caesare at (the
admittedly difficult) 8.3.25.
C0.N16 16. E.g., 2.pr.4 and 6.pr.5; 4.pr.1, 5.pr.5, and 7.pr.10. For a additional discussion of Vitruvius’s
audience and a summary of related questions, see Nichols 2017: 10–15.
C0.N17 17. Of particular importance for Vitruvius were the prooemia of Isocrates. (This is especially
clear in 5.pr. and 9.pr.) The epistolary prefaces of Archimedes often characterized the works to
which they were attached as responses to requests from the dedicatee ( Janson 1964: 22). See
note 31 below.
C0.N18 18. Baraz 2012: esp. chap. 1. Baraz discusses, e.g., the extant prefaces of Sallust, the Rhetorica ad
Herennium, and the Ciceronian philosophica written under the domination of Caesar. On an-
cient prefaces in general, Janson 1964 is still useful, but see Santini, Scivoletto, and Zurli 1990
for more examples and analysis. For the Vitruvian prefaces and writing, see Novara 2005, with
special emphasis on 7.pr. and 9.pr. For Vitruvius’s interest in the utility and durability of writing
as a comparandum for architectural representation, see my chapter 2.
C0.N19 19. Sal. Cat. 1–4 with Baraz 2012: 22ff.
C0.N20 20. Baraz 2012: 36. For another perspective on “time to write,” see Stroup 2010: esp. 37–65.

Introduction 7
in itself, it enhances the negotium that results, that is, the four books of the
Rhetorica ad Herennium.
C0.P11 In contrast, otium scarcely appears in Vitruvius’s lexicon.21 While the
Auctor cannot find time to write amidst private affairs (negotiis familiaribus),
Vitruvius represents himself as working to alleviate those same burdens
in his readers, who, like the dedicatee, are distracted by public and private
obligations.22 Augustus, first and foremost, is shown to have been weighed
down by the great concerns of governance and conquest and cannot attend
to his concern for public and private buildings (1.pr.1 tantis occupationibus;
1.pr.2 de opportunitate publicorum aedificiorum curam habere, 1.pr.3 curam
habiturum). The city as a whole, moreover, is occupied with public and pri-
vate obligations (5.pr.3 distentam occupationibus civitatem publicis et privatis
negotiis; cf. Rhet. Her. 1.1. negotiis familiaribus impediti vix . . . possumus).
Finally, where the Auctor responds to his dedicatee’s desire to learn about rhet-
oric for its intrinsic advantages (Rhet. Her. 1.1 te non sine causa velle cognoscere
rhetoricam intellegebamus; non enim in se parum fructus habet copia dicendi
et commoditas orationis), Vitruvius suggests that the stakes of De architectura
are significantly higher. Because he has recognized the emperor’s cura for the
maiestas imperii and res gestae as they are represented by public and private
buildings, writing De architectura requires no justification or excuse vis-à-vis
other personal obligations.23 Indeed, the latter have been subsumed entirely
by the writer’s sense of duty to produce a work of maximal utility (4.pr.1 rem
utilissimam) and brevity (5.pr.1–3) for his readership.24
C0.P12 Such privileged interactions between author and reader at the border of
a text and its content also suit Gérard Genette’s framework of the paratext,
a “zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of a
C0.N21 21. Its sole appearance describes the house of the Council of Elders (gerousia) at Sardis (2.8.10),
formerly the Palace of Croesus. (The authenticity of the passage was once questioned by Krohn
but the text has been retained by most recent editors.)
C0.N22 22. Previous studies treating the question of Vitruvius’s intended readership include Gros 1994
(for whom De architectura is both Fachbuch and Sachbuch). I generally presume an elite lay
audience that included Augustus as primus inter pares, as was the case in politics. This is some-
what distinct from Vitruvius’s constructed notion of a “double readership,” e.g., his immediate
contemporary audiences and omnes gentes, si qui lecturi, etc.
C0.N23 23. Notably Vitruvius anticipates a request rather than responds to one already made; but cf.
6.pr.5 rogatum, non rogantem oportere suscipere curam, quod ingenuus color movetur pudore
petendo rem suspiciosam. See also note 17 above on Janson 1964: 22.
C0.N24 24. See my chapter 3. On brevitas, see Kessissoglu 1993 (with focus on 5.pr.) and Fögen
2009: 119–28; cf. also Formisano 2001.

8 In t roduct ion
pragmatics and a strategy.”25 The last of these descriptors is especially appro-

priate to the prefaces of De architectura, in which statements suggesting textu-
ally mediated transaction and exchange between the author and his audiences
are rife. Most important is the dedication, in which Vitruvius suggests that
he is the recipient of two instances of Augustan kindness: one of these is pri-
vate or personal; the other public and shared with the senatus populusque
Romanus. Augustus, through the intervention of his sister Octavia, has
rescued Vitruvius from a fear of want by continuing the commoda that had
previously been awarded him: 1.pr.3 ut ad exitum vitae non haberem inopiae
timorem. Parallel to this private reward is Augustus’s liberation of the res pu-
blica, a public benefice if ever there was one. Accordingly, Vitruvius under-
took to publish a work containing all the principles of architecture. In this
context of exchange it is appropriate that Vitruvius at 6.pr.7 should call his
work a munus, a word implying the continuative pattern of dutiful exchange
or gift-debt.26 However, in speaking of exchanges of this sort one must always
remember that both giver and receiver are continuously implicated. One good
turn at Rome not only deserves another; it compels one. In Vitruvius’s case, of
course, the pattern of exchange that is implied by the term munus is complex
and asymmetrical. Both the greatness of Vitruvius’s primary dedicatee and the
distinct domains of the gifts exchanged (one is literary, one is material) ensure
that Vitruvius’s munus will differ in kind from the “isonomic” literary munera
exchanged among elite peers in the republic.27
C0.P13 All the same, Vitruvius suggests that he has provided a substantial return
on what he has been given. This “return,” however, far exceeds the provision
of his discipline’s complete principles (1.pr.3 omnes rationes) and the smorgas-
bord of practical knowledge that Vitruvius’s text provides. For although the
princeps would surely have been interested in the sort of technical matters that
Vitruvius discusses (the best ways to plan a city, the best sources of water, the
C0.N25 25. Genette 1997: 2; cited also by Baraz 2012: 5. Augustus is not the text’s only reader (see
below); indeed, any reader is in some way “activated” by these direct, personal forms of address.
C0.N26 26. For a recent treatment of literary munera, see Stroup 2010. A different, more concrete sort
of munus is foregrounded in the preface to the final book of De architectura and indeed in its
final passages; see my chapter 1.
C0.N27 27. Stroup 2010: 269–70. And yet, as Stroup also notes, the advent of imperial structures of
patronage did not entirely erase the power of textual munera to compel a return of some sort.
Note that there had long been asymmetric munera bestowed at Rome in the form of the gift
of games to the people from magistrates (who could in turn expect the people’s support; cf.
10.pr.2). Vitruvius’s gift displays attributes of both kinds of munera. See my c hapter 2 for the
double-edged munus of Diognetus to the city of Rhodes.

Introduction 9
advantages of particular machines, how sundials work, etc.), such tidbits, as

provided by the text, are of relatively limited value, as we will see.28 Rather, the
true value of De architectura to Augustus lies elsewhere, particularly in the en-
actment (in text) of the sort of devotion and commemoration that Augustus
may expect from architects of the Vitruvian stripe when the pattern of ex-
change is upheld. A sampling (but not necessarily an unqualified guarantee)
of that devotion is enacted at the head of his treatise, in which Vitruvius offers
a synopsis of the princeps’s achievements in a “public work” (albeit textual)
with a universal ambition.29 Vitruvius presents De architectura first and fore-
most to imperator Caesar, and he also anticipates the circulation of his work
among “all men of wisdom” (1.1.18 omnes sapientes), “all nations” (munus om-
nibus gentibus non ingratum futurum; cf. 1.pr.1 gentes omnes subactae tuum
[sc. imperator Caesar] spectarent nutum), and indeed, posterity (1.1.18 lecturi;
6.pr.5 posteris ero notus).30 This is a striking variation on the Hellenistic prac-
tice of “double dedication,” which creates within the text a community of
ideal readers, and it particularly suits his dedicatee’s alleged interest (cura) in
buildings in which he will represent res gestae to posterity (1.pr.3 animadver
ti . . . te . . . aedificiorum . . . curam habiturum; his voluminibus aperui omnes
disciplinae rationes).31 In his own way, then, Vitruvius anticipates a reader-
ship “limited by neither time nor space,” the sort to match the extent of an
Augustan empire as stipulated by Jupiter’s memorable proclamation at Aen.
1.278–9.32
C0.N28 28. For Augustus’s interest in technical matters, see Suet. Aug. 89; cf. Str. 5.3.7. Janson 1964: 103
may unnecessarily downplay Augustus’s interest in De architectura, though he rightly points
to the possibility that prefaces, by representing a social protocol, could amplify the relation
between author and dedicatee (and other included elements) to the point of fictionality, if not
absurdity.
C0.N29 29. For this point see esp. my chapters 2 and 3.
C0.N30 30. See also my chapters 1 and 2.
C0.N31 31. I.e., of identifying a primary and secondary reader. The practice of “double-dedication”
appears to be a Hellenistic development adopted by Catullus and Cicero (see Stroup
2010: 186–8), and was associated early on with epistolary dedications of scientific texts (e.g.,
Archimedes); see also Janson 1964: 20 for the Hellenistic origins of epistolary dedication
(with which the prefaces of De architectura are generally consistent). As Stroup 2010: 187
n. 42 indicates, however, there was also an Isocratean precedent, while open letters and other
extensions of the epistolary form are also perhaps relevant; see, e.g., Trapp 2003: 23ff. For a
comparable use of cura to describe the memorialization of Augustus’s legacy, see Hor. C. 4.14.1-
6 quae cura. . . aeternet . . . ?
C0.N32 32. Aen. 1.278–9 His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono | imperium sine fine dedi.

10 In t roduct ion
C0.S3 Are you experienced?

C0.P14 Complicating this mission, however, are two factors. First, De architectura does
not generally provide the means for its readers to produce anything; how, then,
will its principles (and its other content) assist in the project of imperial com-
memoration? Second, Vitruvius depicts the busy city as teeming not only with
business, but also with architectural impostors who are out for their own gain
and glory. The two issues are related, and I will deal with them in turn. Similarly,
we will want to ask: If munera compel a return, what, if anything, does Vitruvius
gain through the munus of De architectura?
C0.P15 Let us deal first with content, broadly construed.33 By and large De
architectura comprises several complementary kinds of passages apart from the
prefaces: descriptive taxonomies (of principles, materials, architectural projects,
and natural phenomena); stipulative precepts (“let a line be drawn . . .”); and
aetiologies and exempla with varying degrees of narrativity. These categories sug-
gest what centuries of frustrated attempts to apply the precepts and principles
of De architectura affirm, namely that its value lies anywhere but in its ability to
provide comprehensive (or even reasonably complete) instructions for building
or design.34 De architectura is in the final analysis a rhetorical performance of ex-
pertise rather than an invitation to practice.35
C0.P16 This feature—to label it a fault would beg the question of the text’s
purpose—invites analogy with other precept-oriented texts, particularly
rhetorical examples such as De inventione and, to a more limited extent,
the metarhetorical De oratore.36 For example, both De architectura and De
inventione are characterized by taxonomic schematization and division
of content, which informs the shape and organization of the books them-
selves.37 Yet unlike any number of other “technical” or “encyclopedic” works,
C0.N33 33. A book, as Formisano has noted, is not merely its subject. See the appendix to this book for
a narrative summary of the wide-ranging content of Vitruvius’s ten books.
C0.N34 34. Pellecchia 1992 provides an important account; see now also Nichols 2017 and Oksanish
2018. That Vitruvian principles can, in the hands of an architect, be adapted and applied—
consider Thomas Gordon Smith’s “Vitruvian House” in South Bend, Indiana—hints that the
frustration of Renaissance readers may have been due to other factors. See below on taxonomic
schemes and Riggsby 2010: 390–2.
C0.N35 35. On Vitruvius’s status as a didactic text, see Hutchinson 2009, as well as Sharrock 1998 and
Gibson 1998 in Atherton 1998.
C0.N36 36. De oratore is important for Vitruvius in other ways as well; see chapter 4.
C0.N37 37. For a simple example, compare, e.g., Vitr. 1.2.2 dispositio autem est rerum apta conlocatio
elegansque compositionibus effectus operis cum qualitate; cf. Cic. Inv. 1.9.6–7 dispositio est rerum
inventarum in ordinem distributio.

Introduction 11
De architectura and De inventione share two distinctive and important traits.

First is that the subject matter provided by De architectura, De inventione, and
their ilk belongs to artes or technai, which, when applied by the competent
practitioner, result in distinctive “products” (buildings and speeches) that are
themselves capable of representing a subject apart from the maker himself.38
This fact significantly alters the stakes of these arts in societies such as Greece
and Rome, which were driven by reputation; it was of course particularly cru-
cial to the definition of the principate.
C0.P17 The second attribute is what Andrew Riggsby (in discussing rhetorical
texts) has described as generativity, that is, the provision of procedures for
determining style and content in speeches to be delivered on any number of
occasions.39 Again, the rules of such works are incomplete by their very na-
ture. Though they provide “basic tools of composition,” they “do not actually
give you forms or cut down the many possibilities.”40
C0.P18 In rhetoric and architecture alike, narrowing such choices is necessarily
left to the practitioner, who must judge the contextual demands of the task
at hand despite an infinite number of possible situations.41 In De architectura,
phrases indicating that its principles cannot cover all contingencies underscore
the fact that the narrowing of choices—the power of mutare mutanda, so to
speak—will always remain the expert’s purview. Not all temples will be built
on the same principles for every deity; nor will the same principles be useful
for the building of siege cranes and ladders in different places.42 Crucially,
such an arrangement presumes that the practitioner of the art possesses both
a certain level of generalized cultural capital and discipline-specific technical
C0.N38 38. Cf. Stabo’s Geography, the agricultural manuals, the works of the gromatici, and the military
handbooks of Aeneas Tacticus and Onasander, etc. See, e.g., HLR §1244 “opus” I.B.
C0.N39 39. Riggsby 2010: 390.
C0.N40 40. Riggsby 2010: 391. The remarks address style, but the notion may be extended to other
areas. It may be argued that Vitruvius provides some choices and, not infrequently, narrows the
possibilities by noting what should be avoided. Even so, the resulting heuristics fail to compre-
hend all situations. One is also reminded of the generalizing remark that introduces Caesar’s
description of the wall at Gergovia: Caes. Gal. 7.23.1 muri autem omnes Gallici hac fere forma
sunt. Caesar presents the exemplary form, but this paradigm allows (and perhaps even implies)
variation in the construction of individual examples.
C0.N41 41. De orat. 1.21 [ut orator] omni de re, quaecumque sit proposita, ornate ab eo copioseque dicatur;
cf. Vitr. 1.1.2 in the discussion of the architect’s wide-ranging knowledge and authority: uti
omnibus armis ornati citius cum auctoritate, quod fuit propositum, sunt adsecuti. For further dis-
cussion of these passages, see my chapter 4.
C0.N42 42. 4.8.1 non enim omnibus diis isdem rationibus aedes sunt faciundae; 10.16.1 ea ipsa omnibus
locis neque eisdem rationibus possunt utilia esse.

12 In t roduct ion
knowledge, some of which will have been learned through experience.43

Accordingly, Vitruvius stipulates a broad, literary education for his architect
in various disciplines (which includes but is not limited to general “culture”),
as well as an experiential, manual component: 1.1.1 Architecti est scientia plu-
ribus disciplinis et variis eruditionibus ornata [ . . . ] ea nascitur ex fabrica et
ratiocinatione.44 Only with both of these components in hand will the ideal
architect and his products achieve auctoritas.
C0.S4 (Dis)closure: Plotting Vitruvian didaxis

C0.P19 All of this results in something of a paradox: texts such as De inventione and
De architectura, though technical in subject and nominally didactic, allow
the reader neither to produce products nor to “become” an architectus (or
an orator), since either of these outcomes requires lengthy training and ex-
perience that come from outside the text. Two examples from book 10 make
this abundantly clear. The first is that the use of a machine for hoisting large
loads speedily is reserved for experts (10.2.8 in eo dare operam non possunt
nisi periti), while the reader is simply asked to trust Vitruvius’s description
of Ctesibius’s water organ (10.8.6), since only experience can confirm that
Vitruvius has given a correct and well-considered description. The second
example especially belies De architectura’s rhetoric of openness (cf. 1.pr.3
aperui . . .) and reinforces rather than diminishes the distance between the
author’s and reader’s familiarity with the subject matter in question.45
C0.P20 This distance is also explicitly theorized by Vitruvius as ratiocinatio (rea-
soning; but see below), placed alongside fabrica (craftsmanship) as a con-
stitutive element in architectural knowledge (scientia). Ratiocinatio is not
just “theory,” but “what can demonstrate and explain products crafted in
relation to skill and principle” (quae res fabricatas sollertiae ac rationis pro
portione demonstrare atque explicare potest).46 Later we learn that architects
C0.N43 43. On the place of “tacit knowledge” brought by experience (and perhaps also innate quali-
ties), see Cuomo 2016.
C0.N44 44. Although both of these components are made explicit by Vitruvius, De architectura ar-
guably places more emphasis on the latter than on the former, though to the detriment of his
logical consistency. See my chapter 4.
C0.N45 45. Cf. the position of Long 2001.
C0.N46 46. The terms remain controversial even in their broader strokes. For different emphases, see
Gros, Corso, and Romano 1997 and Fleury 1990 on 1.1.1 and 1.1.15–16; Courrént 2004a, 2011
and E. Thomas 2009.

Introduction 13
are commonly called upon to give explanations for the choices that they
have made in ornament and design (1.1.5 architecti . . . rationem cur fecerint
quaerentibus reddere debent; reddet rationem). Notably, these accounts
(rationem reddere) are retrospective: they help those who ask—probably
their patrons—to understand choices that have already been made by the ex-
pert.47 Crucially, this same expertise extends to Vitruvius’s role as author, who
presents his own choices for designing his treatise in the very same terms (e.g.,
1.7.2 in tertio et quarto volumine reddam rationes; 2.1.8 . . . si qui de ordine huius
libri disputare voluerit . . . ne putet me erravisse, sic reddam rationem).
C0.P21 The exclusivity of architecture is also implied in what we may call
Vitruvius’s “didactic positionality”—that is, the way that Vitruvius the au-
thor relates to his ideal “student” (i.e., readership), even if he places signifi-
cant limits on the latter’s ability to access architectural knowledge.48 Indeed,
despite these limits, the fundamentally discursive (vs. narrative) frame of De
architectura formally meets the baseline requirements of a “presumed prag-
matics of utterance” common to all didactic literature: “Vitruvius” is teacher
while his dedicatee “Augustus” is head pupil.49 (I have enclosed these names in
scare quotes to emphasize that the formation of this fictive, intratextual rela-
tionship between the speaker and addressee exists independently of any “real”
relationship between them.)50
C0.P22 Don Fowler’s important study of “didactic plots” emphasized the struc-
tural importance of metaphors for the discursive teacher–pupil relationship
that sets didactic literature apart from other writing.51 A near-ubiquitous plot,
C0.N47 47. The importance of “rendering account” in Roman intellectual culture is discussed also by
Moatti 1997: 204–14. For architects and patrons, see Anderson 2013. See also 6.pr.6, 10.pr.2.
C0.N48 48. For “didactic positionality,” see Fowler 2000: 212.
C0.N49 49. For “pragmatics of utterance,” see Fowler 2000: 205. In his study of “imperativals,” R. K.
Gibson 1998 found De architectura a fine example of a “technical treatise” but not, it would
seem, didactic literature proper. Sharrock 1998 (answering Gibson in the same volume)
counters that, since Vitruvius clearly displays “didactic self-consciousness” (a somewhat intan-
gible quality revealed through a complex of formal features shared by all didactic literature), De
architectura might well be considered didactic after all. Taking a different approach, Callebat
1982 suggests that Vitruvius’s prefatory captationes benevolentiae reveal an intent to shape the
reception of De architectura precisely as a didactic work, much as Lucretius had done.
C0.N50 50. The relationship is variously characterized as that between a writer and a reader, an author
and a dedicatee, a teacher and a student, a narrator and an addressee, etc. For its purely fictive/
intratextual nature see Volk 2002: 10–12, 36–8, with additional references.
C0.N51 51. Fowler 2000: 208. Fowler’s plots imply that didactic literature involves far more than
completing a checklist of formal features (e.g., “imperativals,” frequent addresses to the reader),
and his view of didactic relies upon a more flexible understanding of didactic as a complex of
metaphors. “[ J]‌ust as any plot will have an underlying structural metaphor or metaphors, so

14 In t roduct ion
for example, reflects the pupil’s metaphorical progress “from ignorance to

knowledge” and will rest upon any number of additional metaphors: a venatic
metaphor (the pupil uses vestigia of empirical knowledge to “track down” the
truth) or one in which (as in De rerum natura) the student moves from the
darkness of ignorance into the light of knowledge, suggesting the student’s
“initiation” into mysteries of Epicurean philosophy. These metaphors “posi-
tion” (to adapt Fowler’s term) didactic narrator and addressee with respect to
each other. Lucretius, whom Vitruvius counted among his models (9.pr.17–
18), is notable for his striking use of such metaphorical plots, particularly his
“light-dark” metaphor. But other metaphors, particularly those of opening
or unfolding (pandere, evolvere, e.g.), also contribute to De rerum natura’s
didactic positionality by promising to disclose “first-causes of things” and
“the entire nature of the universe.”52 The literary genealogy underlying these
particular programmatic verbs suggests an oracular, vatic quality, implying a
positionality in which the narrator solemnly reveals privileged secrets to the
initiand.53
any metaphor will imply a plot” (Fowler 2000: 213). Among the most important metaphors in
De architectura is that of the body (corpus), discussed in my chapters 3–5; see Volk 2002: 20ff
for a brief discussion of archaic metaphors contributing to didactic poetry’s constitutive “si-
multaneity.” Although De rerum natura is a poem that is highly self-conscious about its status
as verse (e.g., Lucr. 1.136ff.; see Volk 2002 and Fowler 2000: 205), Hutchinson 2009: 198 cites
the Vitruvian passage noted here as evidence of an ancient view that placed didactic prose and
poetry “on a [sc. comparable] level,” close enough to allow “an involved intertextuality” be-
tween these two kinds of didactic that might “complicate and challenge our own divisions of
ancient writing.” Cf. Kenney 1977: 27–8, 38. Conte 1994b likewise notes how the “missionary”
enthusiasm of De rerum natura infused the reader-focused model of Alexandrian “operational”
poetics with passionate belief in communicating truth. Consideration of Lucretius’s influence
upon Vitruvius has remained relatively minimal; in addition to those studies cited above,
note Merrill 1904. Among recent honorable exceptions is Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, who
characterizes Vitruvius’s account of acoustics and musical theory (in book 5) as “the classic
example of patient exposition of difficult theory in the Lucretian mode in the face of patrii
sermonis egestas,” adding that Vitruvius, like Lucretius, can profitably be considered a “mis-
sionary” (Wallace-Hadrill 2008: 146). On the “poverty topos,” see Farrell 2001: 39 and Fögen
2000 passim.
C0.N52 52. Lucretius uses evolvere at Lucr. 1.954 but pandere at 1.54 (rerum primordia pandam) and 5.52
(omnem rerum naturam pandere dictis). As far as I am aware, there has been no large-scale study
of the metaphors of disclosure in didactic literature. See, inter alios, Schiesaro 1987: 31–2 on the
importance of such reminders to effect “cohesion and persuasion” in Lucretius.
C0.N53 53. Pandere, e.g., is an Ennian word, later picked up by Catullus, Vergil, and Ovid for pro-
phetic utterances. Examples include Catullus 64.325, introducing the Fates’ Carmen (accipe
quod laeta tibi pandunt luce sorores | ueridicum oraclum); the words of the infelix vates
Celaeno at Verg. Aen. 3.252: quae Phoebo pater omnipotens, mihi Phoebus Apollo | praedixit,
vobis furiarum ego maxima pando; Ovid at Fasti 4.193, asking the Muses to reveal the secrets
of the Megalensia: “pandite mandati memores, Heliconis alumnae | gaudeat assiduo cur dea
Magna sono.” Likewise evolvere (cf. volumen, the book roll) was used by Ennius (perhaps at the

Introduction 15
C0.P23 Vitruvius, too, favors certain “opening” verbs of disclosure when he wishes
to mark content that has been explained or soon will be, often at the beginning
and ending of a book or section. Among these, explicare is Vitruvius’s clear fa-
vorite; its forms appear no fewer than 103 times in De architectura (including
substantive use of the participle and the nominal counterpart explicatio).54 He
uses its participial form, explicata, to characterize the corpus as a whole both in
the main preface (1.pr.1) and in the sphragis (10.16.12).55 Together these instances
create what Antoinette Novara has recently called “un certain dynamisme de
continuité” whereby forms of explicare not only provide a sense of “what comes
next,” but also impart a concomitant notion of the project’s vastness and its pro-
grammatic unity.56 By frequently pairing forms of explicare with corresponding
forms of volumen (e.g., [in] hoc volumine explicabo), Vitruvius invites us to con-
sider the disclosure of his subject in terms of the physicality of the book that the
author “unrolls” for the reader.57
C0.P24 Like Lucretius’s use of pandere or evolvere, Vitruvius’s explicare becomes
a thread with which Vitruvius self-consciously guides his reader through an
opening of Annales 6; cf. Quint. Inst. 6.3.86) to mark narrative disclosure: quis potis ingentis
oras evolvere belli. The line was evoked by Vergil in Aeneid 9, where the narrator asks Calliope
to reveal the “limits” of the “massive war” (Annales Vahlen 178; Macrobius 6.1.18, cf. Verg. Aen.
9.526 et mecum ingentes oras evolvite belli). In asking the Muse herself to roll them out (= reveal;
evolvite), Vergil reactivates the vatic quality of evolvere, if not its metaphorical power; cf. also
the famous tag, sic volvere Parcas, at Aen. 1.23.
C0.N54 54. The most common verbs used to fulfill this function in Vitruvius are exponere, aperire,
dicere, and explicare (Novara 2005: 114). Vitruvius only once uses dicere to disclose his content,
even though that is Varro’s favorite verb in similar circumstances. Cf. Habinek 2005a: 70 with
Lowrie 2009: 15 on dicere as a marker of authoritative utterance and above on the importance
of liminality for Genette’s model of the paratext. Note, too, that a basic need to orient the
reader is common in authors who struggle with specialized or vast subject matter; in such cases
it is common to point repeatedly to previous and upcoming content as well as, occasionally, to
the “grand scheme” of the work overall. As Volk 2002: 23–4 notes, this kind of “simultaneity”
(not necessarily poetic; cf. above) is common to Lucretius as well as to prose treatises. It is
common, for example, in Livy.
C0.N55 55. Vitr. 1.pr.1 de architectura scripta et magnis cogitationibus explicata edere . . . ; cf. 10.16.12 uti
totum corpus omnia architecturae membra in decem voluminibus haberet explicata.
C0.N56 56. Novara 2005 with Gros, Corso, and Romano 1997: 1 and André 1987, 1985.
C0.N57 57. Novara 2005. See the important concerns raised by McEwen 2003 about the standard
translations of corpus, discussed below. Courrént 2005 also lends currency to the idea that the
metaphor embedded within explicare is significant, noting that even on the etymological level,
explicatio suggests successful communication. (The very act of “laying out” material signals an
attention to intelligibility that underscores Vitruvius’s more broadly “didactic, or ‘demonstra-
tive’ ” attitudes.) Note also Moatti 1997: 22–3, 384 n. 11.

16 In t roduct ion
architectural labyrinth.58 Yet while this feature may seem to unite Lucretian
and Vitruvian revelation, there are significant differences between Vitruvius’s
and Lucretius’s use of allegorical verbs of disclosure. Whereas the Lucretian
model of disclosure indicated by pandere and evolvere withholds little if an-
ything in anticipation of the reader’s total initiation into Epicureanism (at
least rhetorically), explicatio may hint that the revelatory ethic underlying De
architectura is more limited and circumscribed. As I have discussed elsewhere,
the word is strongly associated with highly condensed, synoptic historio-
graphical and chronographic works in Latin, for example, Nepos’s Chronica
(cf. Cat. 1), Atticus’s Liber annalis, and Velleius’s Historia Romana.59 This
may, as Feeney following Woodman has suggested, indicate something about
the physical layout of these chronographic works, yet there is also therefore
a strong sense in which the organizing principle reflects an ethos of synoptic
brevity rather than a copiously complete account.60 In this respect explicatio,
like the formula rationem reddere (cf. above), tends to reinforce the expert-
status of the three parallel Vitruvian corpora—his own, that of his architectus,
and of course that of De architectura itself—as unique sources of architectural
knowledge.
C0.P25 Vitruvius’s treatment of the didactic metaphor of illumination
distinguishes De architectura from Lucretius in a similar way, reminding the
reader of just how much he requires Vitruvian intervention to come from
darkness into light. The imagery of illumination is said to reflect the “didactic
plot” of initiation, “in which the postulant is led through darkness and fear
to light and a vision of the truth,” and it was labeled by Fowler as “the most
C0.N58 58. And yet the very existence of that thread implies the reader’s helplessness without it: the
obscuritas of architectura is not simply going to explain itself. On navigating a perhaps analo-
gous historiographical labyrinth of Livy, see Jaeger 1997.
C0.N59 59. Oksanish 2016.
C0.N60 60. See above for Novara’s complementary emphasis on the physicality of the book roll with the
complementary discussion of Vitruvius’s corpus metaphor in my c hapter 3. For explicare in uni-
versal history and chronography, see also Habinek 1998: 94–5, 199 n. 20 and Feeney 2007: 21ff.
with reference to Woodman 1975. For the Catullan dedication to Nepos, see Elder 1966,
Singleton 1972, B. J. Gibson 1995, Wiseman 1979, and Woodman 2003. An intriguing com-
plementary point is made by Gurd 2010: 99 on the use of explicate at Cic. Verr. 2.2.187: “partial
and necessarily divergent from its original, succeeding in its persuasive task by invoking readers
who already know what it does not represent and whose supplementing imaginations are a
crucial part of its authenticity.” For Vitruvius’s use of explicatio (vs. conlocatio) to describe the
layout of public buildings, see Meyers 2005: 73–6.

Introduction 17
obvious of all the metaphorical complexes in [De rerum natura].”61 Thus, even
if his addressee, Memmius himself, is not the “brightest” student, Lucretius
stresses his aim to shed light upon the “dark” discoveries of the Greeks in
Latin verses (Graiorum obscura reperta | inlustrare Latinis versibus) and to
open up bright lights upon Memmius’s mind (clara tuae praepandere lumina
menti) so that he can see hidden matters (res occultas convisere possis).62
C0.P26 De architectura, however, narrates rather than enacts this plot. As I sug-
gest in c hapter 4, Vitruvius restricts an ascent to the pinnacle of architectural
learning (1.1.12 summum templum architecturae) to those who have balanced
ratiocinatio with fabrica, which, as we have seen, is generally reserved for
those who have attained some level of practical experience, which lies outside
the text. Reinforcing this arrangement is Vitruvius’s focus on the inscruta-
bility of architectural terminology, which offends the senses (5.pr.2 vocabula
ex artis propria necessitate concepta inconsueto sermone obiciunt sensibus
obscuritatem), which is “obscure” (cf. 5.pr.2 occultas nominationes; cf. Lucr.
1.145 res . . . occultas), and which does not reveal itself (5.pr.2 [vocabula] per se
non sint aperta nec pateant eorum in consuetudine nomina).63 That Vitruvius
has claimed to “open up” architecture’s principles for Augustus’s benefit in a
“well-defined text” will therefore surely be welcome (1.pr.3 ut [praescriptiones
terminatas] attendens . . . opera per te posses nota habere; namque his voluminibus
aperui omnes disciplinae rationes; cf. 5.pr.2 [vocabula] per se non . . . aperta),
and it is easy to see why scholars have sometimes compared his stance with
what we find in De rerum natura.64
C0.N61 61. “[W]‌hen Epicurus at the beginning of Book Three lifts the light in darkness inlustrans
commoda vitae . . . he is also showing the way” (Fowler 2000: 213). In this respect, Fowler’s
Lucretius reads a bit like Conte’s, who has “secrets” to reveal to the willing initiand, the latter of
whom—in keeping with the Hellenistic poetic tradition—must collaborate with the speaker
to make the poem’s delivery successful (Conte 1994b: 8).
C0.N62 62. As Volk 2002: 80 notes: “For despite the fact that the teacher presents a philosophical
system that will ultimately enable the student to live a ‘life worthy of the gods’ (Lucr. 3.22),
Memmius appears remarkably unsympathetic, unwilling to learn, and even plain stupid. The
speaker continually anticipates his addressee’s lagging attention and utterly misguided views.
[. . . A]s a result, [the speaker’s] speech is characterized by what Philip Mitsis has described as
the ‘aggressive, condescending tone of paternalism,’ ” with reference to Mitsis 1993: 112 and
Schiesaro 1987: 47–8; cf. Farrell 2001: 41–2.
C0.N63 63. Probably Vitruvius distinguishes between names and terms. See also Saliou 2009: ad loc.
with Var. Ling. 10.20(19).1 and Quint. Inst. 1.4.20.
C0.N64 64. Lucr. 1.136–45 “Nor does it escape me how difficult it is to cast light in Latin verses upon
the obscure discoveries of the Greeks, especially when having to treat of many points by means
of unfamiliar words, thanks to the poverty of the language and the novelty of the material. But
your character and the pleasure of sweet friendship that I long for persuade me to bear any

18 In t roduct ion
C0.P27 To be sure, Lucretius also faces a great challenge as he tries to communicate

difficult, “obscure” content to his reader. And yet, whereas Lucretius points to
the deficits of his native language (patrii sermonis egestas), Vitruvius—who has
no qualms about using Greek terms when convenient—points to an problem in-
herent in his content.65 Histories and poetry can rely respectively on the interest
intrinsic to narrative and various metrical and sonic features, but architecturae
conscriptiones have no such appeal or advantages: 5.pr.1 non enim de architectura
sic scribitur uti historia aut poemata.66 That is, the very poetic honey that Lucretius
exploits to “delight the reader and lead him all the way to the end of the work”—
here I paraphrase Vitruvius’s general remarks on poetry from 5.pr.1–2—is explic-
itly denied both Vitruvius and his reader. Never mind the patrii sermonis egestas;
there is no sermo equipped to deal with the egestas architecturae.67
C0.P28 Vitruvius had asserted earlier in this same passage (5.pr.) that one cannot
enhance the auctoritas of architectural writings simply by increasing their
length.68 To dispel the darkness that results from terms specific to the art
(vocabula ex arte propria), which disturb the senses with their obscuritas
and occultae nominationes, Vitruvius adopts an appropriately different
strategy. He promises to “illuminate” his subject in but a few crystal-clear
sentences (paucis et perlucidis) and emphasizes his attention to brevity in his
explanations of complex matters (ut memoriae tradantur, breviter exponam;
sic enim expeditius ea recipere poterunt mentes).69 The result will be a brief text
that can be understood quickly, which accommodates what little free time his
difficulty and induce me to stay watchful through the clear nights looking for just the right
language and poetry with which I might open to your mind the clear light by which you may
see deeply into hidden matters” (tr. Farrell 2001).
C0.N65 65. 5.4.1 evinces no regret that Greek must be used: [harmoniam] si volumus explicare, necesse
est etiam graecis verbis uti quod nonnullae eorum latinas non habent appellationes. In all there
are at least one hundred examples throughout De architectura where Vitruvius puts the Greek
term alongside a Latin counterpart with a simple “quod Graece dicitur,” vel sim. See Callebat
2013, 2017: chap. II.9.
C0.N66 66. For discussion of this remark with emphasis on historiae, see my chapters 2 and 3.
C0.N67 67. The labor of reading and writing (De) architectura will be harder, but commensurately
worthwhile.
C0.N68 68. See my chapter 3.
C0.N69 69. In only one other instance Vitruvius uses (per)lucidus in a metaphorical sense, at 3.pr.3. The
usage is somewhat different, but suggests that “transparency” was an important element in
Vitruvius’s civic-professional ethos. At 10.8.6, only those with specific training can be expected
to appreciate the subtle technicalities of what Vitruvius reveals about Ctesibius’s water organ
in his writings. Firsthand experience, however, may assist in comprehension: quantum potui
niti, ut obscura res per scripturam dilucide pronuntiaretur, contendi, sed haec non est facilis ratio
neque omnibus expedita ad intellegendum praeter eos, qui in his generibus habent exercitationem.

Introduction 19
readers will have, “judg[ing it best] to write on a small scale, so that readers
may grasp it quickly in their small amount of spare time” (5.pr.3 paucis iudicavi
scribendum, uti angusto spatio vacuitatis ea legentes breviter percipere possent).
C0.P29 All of this suits Vitruvius’s desire to accommodate the pressing needs
of the princeps and other leaders in the civitas, and in a sense, Vitruvius can
be said to have fashioned himself as protecting his readers by establishing
limits on what they can access. Even Vitruvius’s words for technical terms
(terminatio, finitio) reinforce the exclusive nature of the expert’s expertise, re-
vealing quite clearly that his text will be distinguished from others not only by
its breadth, but also by its limits: 1.pr. 3 “I assembled fixed precepts (conscripsi
praescriptiones terminatas) so that, upon heeding them, you might be able to
comprehend for yourself both projects of the past as well as those that would
come later; for indeed in these volumes I have disclosed all the principles of
the discipline (aperui omnes disciplinae rationes).”
C0.P30 Again, a paradox. Even as Vitruvius “opens up all the principles” (aperui
omnes . . . rationes) of the discipline, he has reminded his reader of the in-
accessibility of what lies beyond the boundaries of the text (terminatas).70
This same restrictive force is sustained in other passages of the treatise in
similar terms. At the end of the second preface, for example, Vitruvius pairs
perscribo (i.e., to denote his task as author) with terminatio to describe the
boundaries of the art: 2.pr.5 “in the first book I wrote definitively on the
duty of the architect and the limits of his art” (. . . primo volumine de officio
architecturae terminationibusque artis perscripsi). Recent translations that
render terminationes into English as “technical terms” are serviceable, but
they fail to capture Vitruvius’s emphasis on closure and “bounding,” which
Morgan also recognized.71 In the third preface, too, Vitruvius again reminds
quodsi qui parum intellexerit ex scriptis, cum ipsam rem cognoscet, profecto inveniet curiose et
subtiliter omnia ordinata. See also 2.1.9, where Vitruvius uses ratiocinatio to make obscure
things clear: ne obscura sed perspicua legentibus sint ratiocinabor.
C0.N70 70. As M. H. Morgan 1909: 270 recognized. (Note that section numbers refer to Krohn’s
edition.) “The verb termino appears in only one other place in Vitruvius, 64, 20, terminavi
finitionibus, ‘I have defined the limits’; but cf. Cicero de Finibus 1.46, ipsa natura divitias . . . et
parabiles et terminatas. Further light on the meaning of the verb may be got from the use of
the substantive terminatio, which occurs thirteen times in Vitruvius. In five of these it means
‘limits.’ (1.1.2 finire terminationibus, cf. 64, 20, terminavi finitionibus just quoted above; 28,
8; 67, 20; 112, 6; 113, 21); ‘end’ in 103, 13; ‘terminating point,’ 135, 21; ‘boundary,’ 203, 5; 232, 2;
‘departments,’ 12, 8; ‘extremities’ in, 2; ‘rules’ or ‘laws,’ 155, 16; ‘scope,’32, 28.” Taking a slightly dif-
ferent approach, Gros, Corso, and Romano 1997: 64 n. 27 offer the following: “praescriptiones
terminatas si riferisce al rigore degli enunciate”
C0.N71 71. See note 63 above on vocabula and nomina at 5.pr.2. Ingrid D. Rowland, Howe, and Dewar
1999 translate terminatio at 2.pr.5 as “[technical] terms” (brackets in the original). Although

20 In t roduct ion
us that his first book had set conceptual bounds on architectura and its prac-
titioner, again combining two “bounding” lexemes, the verb termino and the
noun finitio: 3.pr.4 “And so, imperator, in the first volume I explained to you
about the art and distributed via partitio the principles of the pinnacle of ar-
chitecture and bound them according to their boundaries (finitionibusque
terminavi).”
C0.P31 Thus De architectura does not claim to provide “everything there is to know”
about architecture; rather it is a definitive synopsis bounded by the author’s ex-
pertise and judgment.72
C0.P32 And so, although Vitruvius’s attitude has rightly been described by Pierre
Gros as an ethos of “service,” it is important to emphasize that it is never one
of full subservience.73 It is rather one that constructs expertise, thereby asserting
a unique mastery of what is arguably the most important coin of the Augustan
realm: the making of legacies though architecture. Architecture is accord-
ingly an art of the civitas several times over—that is, it is an art with “political”
consequences in both the broad and narrow senses of that term.
C0.P33 References throughout the text to the kind of damage that can be done
by ignorant and self-serving imposters (insciti, inperiti, etc.) demonstrate
that the stakes within this realm of architecture are particularly high. These
inperiti (discussed at length in chapter 4) first appear as the ignorant straw
men who would doubt the feasibility of his wide-ranging course of architec-
tural training, which guarantees the competence and, because of his philo-
sophical training, the ethical integrity of the ideal architectus (1.1.12; cf. 1.1.7
philosophia vero perficit architectum animo magno et uti non sit adrogans, sed
potius facilis, aequus et fidelis, sine avaritia, quod est maximum). They are later
invoked in the preface at the start of the treatise’s second half (6.pr.6 indoctis
terminationes may partially suggest technical terms at 1.2.2, e.g. (hae sunt terminationes
dispositionum), nearly all other instances of the term in Vitruvius have local (i.e., spatial) and
temporal boundaries as their explicit concern. (No other Latin author of the classical world
appears to use termino in the sense of “technical terms.”) In Vitruvius “technical terms” seem
more likely rendered by finitio if at all; this meaning seems secure only in later authors. See, e.g.,
Reinhardt and Winterbottom 2006 on the use of finitur at Quint. Inst. 2.15.1 with reference to
Cels. 1.pr.57 and Sen. Ep. 89.5. Varro, notably, uses definitio (TLL s.v.) to mean “technical term”
(vel sim.) rather than finitio alone.
C0.N72 72. In both cases Vitruvius calibrates a verb of writing (specifically, a compound of scribo) with
the idea of limitation, as if perscribo and conscribo emphasize synopsis as much as synthesis. See
Novara 2005: 36ff. and Harris-McCoy 2008: 58 for different views on the matter.
C0.N73 73. Gros 1994 and Gros, Corso, and Romano 1997: ix–lxxvii.

Introduction 21
et inperitis; cf. indoctos/is at 3.pr.3 and 10.pr.2) and in the preface to the final
book.74
C0.P34 Although there are surprisingly few specific examples of “bad practice”
in the main text, these prefatory directives to avoid such anti-architects,
coupled with the occasional cautionary anecdote, haunt the reader none-
theless.75 (Vitruvius casts his entire section on plasterwork as a prophylactic
against costly error, for example.)76 Particularly troubling is that some of
these architects even rely on sound principles (rationes); as these are the only
thing revealed by De architectura (1.pr.3 namque his voluminibus aperui omnes
disciplinae rationes), even careful readers of the treatise will be helpless to rec-
ognize them. To take one of the few examples of bad practice from the text,
Vitruvius recalls how within his own lifetime one Paconius (otherwise un-
known) was hired to fix the cracks in the base of a colossal statue of Apollo.
The task required transporting significant quantities of stone, and although
the Greek Metagenes had left behind writings on the topic (7.1.12), Paconius
ignored its advice and built a machine of another type (10.2.13 alio genere
constituit machinam facere).77 The new machine was built on the same prin-
ciple as that of Metagenes (eadem ratione), but it failed, vitiated by Paconius’s
commitment to his own glory (gloria fretus).78
C0.S5 Good judgment

C0.P35 A crucial function of the architect as Vitruvius defines him is his embodi-
ment of the authority of judgment and approval, which militates against
these inperiti. As I discuss in c hapter 4, this authority extends even to all other
arts (1.1.1 iudicio . . . probantur; cf. 1.1.16 iudicare et probare), and like so many
of Vitruvius’s terms of art, these are borrowed from rhetorical discourse. In
C0.N74 74. On peritia in particular, see Moatti 2003.

C0.N75 75. I discuss the problematic case of Callias in chapter 2 and that of Dinocrates in c hapter 5.
Other counterexamples include Apaturius of Alabanda (on which see Courrént 2014 and
Nichols 2017) and Faberius (Nichols 2017).
C0.N76 76. 7.5.8 quae commonefacere potui, ut ab errore discedatur in opere tectorio, satis exposui. Instances
of si qui voluerit sine vitiis perficere (2.7.5) et sim. are plentiful in De architectura.
C0.N77 77. It is unknown which Apolline statue is meant, and Paconius is nowhere else attested; for
some possibilities see Callebat and Fleury 1986 on 10.2.13.
C0.N78 78. This, incidentally, is an occasion on which the pride of the architect undid himself and not
the project’s commissioner. (See the preface to that book, in which Vitruvius had praised a law
of the Ephesians stipulating that expenses exceeding original estimates by 25 percent or more
be paid by the architectus.)

22 In t roduct ion
rhetoric, iudicium is the faculty of discernment required for the appropriate

application of ornatus by the speaker/author and, according to Lausberg’s
magisterial heir to the handbook tradition, is the gift that mediates ingenium
(talent/nature) and ars (the theorized discipline) as these contribute to the
rhetorical opus of speech.79 For Lausberg, “iudicium is responsible for the in-
ternal aptum” so that “in the author, ingenium and iudicium should form an
adjusted, harmonious unity.”80 It is this claim to produce authoritative opera
through a technical and effectively universal iudicium that separates architec-
ture and oratory from other disciplines.
C0.P36 That Vitruvius ultimately invests the architectus rather than his ded-
icatee and readers with iudicium confirms our suspicions not only that De
architectura is unconcerned with teaching architecture comprehensively, but
that it is not at all concerned with “creating” architects. Iudicium is a unique
property of architecti, who, like Vitruvius, alone can assert and deploy it as a
result of his scientia. Vitruvius (qua author) and his architectus are notion-
ally united by the exclusive faculty of iudicium that they share. Like the ideal,
whose power consists in his judgment and authority, Vitruvius himself seeks
to demonstrate his own distinctive, indeed exclusive, faculty of judgment in
his role as the author of a definitive corpus on architecture for a busy elite.
C0.P37 Given the other parallels with rhetoric that we have seen, it should be no
surprise that parallels to this distinctive, authorial application of iudicium
are also found in Cicero.81 Particularly in Orator, Cicero emphatically states
that he approaches his topic, the ideal orator, not as a magister or praeceptor,
but as existimator and iudex (116 iudicem esse me, non doctorem volo). Indeed,
his dialogues and treatises are generally saturated with claims on judgment
and approval (iudicare-probare) rather than with the mechanics of rhetorical
C0.N79 79. HLR §1153; cf. §1152 (on ingenium), §§255–1150 (on ars). See also §8 “To distinguish vitium
from virtus [in any artistic opus] requires a special iudicium by the critic of the work.” Consider
with this Vitruvius’s famous invective against wall paintings (Vitr. 7.5.4–6), where iudicare and
probare are prevalent. On this passage (discussed also in my chapter 2), see especially Nichols
2017 and Elsner 1995; Edwards 1993: 137–72 provides useful moral background with reference
to the passage at 141 n. 9.
C0.N80 80. HLR §1152–3.
C0.N81 81. However, Vitruvius’s attitude toward his craft differs somewhat from what one finds
in Cicero, since Vitruvius fashions himself as a kind of buffer between the true vastness of
architectura and citizens who are otherwise occupied. He thereby recommends a kind of di-
vision of civic labor that would seem to separate those involved in traditional public life from
architecti in a way that Ciceronian rhetoric and oratory would not.

Introduction 23
practice.82 Cicero’s influence on Vitruvius is not in doubt, though scholars

have most often focused on the parallel portraits of the architect’s and orator’s
education as they appear in De architectura and De oratore, respectively.83 And
yet, as in De architectura, faculties of judgment and approval are not simply
possessed by the ideal orator; they are actually displayed by Cicero and his
interlocutors in these dialogues and treatises. That “iudicare-probare” is to
some extent the raison d’être of Orator, for example, is affirmed by a chiastic
ring composition.
C0.P38 Cic. Orat. 2–3 Given the substantial difference among good orators,
what task could be greater than to judge (iudicare) what is the best
form or, so to speak, the ideal of speech? . . . You ask, therefore (and in
fact ask quite frequently), what kind of eloquence I approve most of all
(quod eloquentiae genus probem maxime), as well as what the one that
can have nothing added to it is like, which I think is the paramount
C0.P39 and most perfect (quod ego summum et perfectissimum iudicem).
C0.P40 Cic. Orat. 237 Brutus, you have my judgment on the orator (de
oratore . . . iudicium). Pursue it, if you approve it (sequere, si probaveris),
or persevere in your own, if different.84
C0.P41 Cicero’s emphasis on judgment in these passages does more than simply com-
municate his intent not to (have) proceed(ed) as a teacher in the narration
of his treatise, though this is certainly important. This emphatic, evaluative
language also reveals an essential component of Cicero’s attitudes more gen-
erally, insofar as it highlights the orator’s role (and his own) as an authorita-
tive critic and judge; these attitudes also characterize Cicero’s remarks on the
C0.N82 82. See, e.g., Cic. Orat. 43 nulla praecepta ponemus, neque enim id suscepimus, sed excellentis
eloquentiae speciem et formam adumbrabimus; nec quibus rebus ea paretur exponemus, sed
qualis nobis esse videatur; Orat. 112 illud tamen quod iam ante diximus meminerimus, nihil
nos praecipiendi causa esse dicturos atque ita potius acturos ut existimatores videamur loqui, non
magistri; Orat. 117 iudicem esse me, non doctorem volo. Cf. Vitr. 4.pr.1 cum animadvertissem,
imperator, plures de architectura praecepta . . . non ordinata, etc. Remarking on the Ciceronian
passages, Dugan 2005a: 258 notes that Cicero’s task in Orator “is one of evaluation, not instruc-
tion.” For Narducci 2002: 430, Cicero approaches both his dedicatee Brutus and the general
reader as “a ‘connoisseur’ and not as a ‘school master.’ ” On exisimatio as a constitutive aspect of
Latin literature qua authoritative cultural discourse, see Edwards 1993: esp. 45–59.
C0.N83 83. See, e.g., Romano 1987 (cf. Romano 1994) and Courrént 1998. For Vitruvius and rhetoric,
see inter alios Callebat 1994a and Meyers 2005.
C0.N84 84. See Jahn and Kroll 1913 ad loc.

24 In t roduct ion
reception of the work among his peers. In a letter to Cornificius, Cicero says
that he is “intensely delighted that my Orator has met with [Cornificius’s]
approval” (Fam. 6.18.4 ‘Oratorem’ meum tanto opere a te probari vehementer
gaudeo). The orator’s authority encompasses not only technical matters of
speech, but also the very constitution of the orator and all that he embodies.
That is, Cicero here performs in writing the kind of judgment and approval
that an orator should always display when speaking, blurring the line between
speech-act and text that is characteristic of rhetoric qua discourse.85
C0.P42 In effect, this performance of judgment and approval is an enactment of
decorum (appropriateness), and it is no coincidence that Orator provides the
classic—albeit fundamentally tautological—definition of appropriateness as
the most difficult realm of discernment in life and speech (viz., “determining
what is appropriate”).86 This collapsing of appropriate life with appropriate
speech corresponds precisely to the collapse between individual performances
of spoken oratory (i.e., speech performances in the narrow sense) and a more
comprehensive notion of rhetorical performance that would seem to want to
encompass life itself—a kind of vita oratoris. This orator’s life or “rhetorical
life” is not merely a “lifestyle” in the relatively narrow sense of lavish versus
frugal (for example), but rather provides a discursive lens encompassing
ethics, politics, speech, and the like, of the type that Joy Connolly has recently
articulated.87 An analogous collapse between life and speech can be found in
Crassus’s remarks in De oratore 3.54, where he suggests that the orator’s sub-
ject matter (res subiectae) is in fact life itself—or at least all that pertains to
civic life (quae sunt in vita hominum).
C0.P43 Like decorum, Vitruvian iudicium resists theorization and regularization
beyond a certain point.88 These terms can be defined only by tautology, and
their proof, as it were, is in their performance: we accept the tautology of
Ciceronian decorum not on any rational basis, but on the basis (for example)
of Cicero’s authority as iudex. Such arrangements suggest that virtually all
C0.N85 85. See, e.g., Riggsby 2010: 396.

C0.N86 86. Orat. 70 ut enim in vita sic in oratione nihil est difficilius quam quid deceat videre. The uni-
versality of decorum as a category for both speech and life corresponds to the claim made by
Crassus in De oratore that the orator’s knowledge must encompass everything in the lives of
men; that is, it must encompass everything pertinent to the civitas: De orat. 3.54.
C0.N87 87. Connolly 2007a, 2009.
C0.N88 88. Vitruvius does not use the term decorum; he defines the cognate term decor at 1.2.5: Decor
autem est emendatus operis aspectus probatis rebus compositi cum auctoritate. For a discussion of
decorum in relation to Vitruvian decor in domestic ornament, see Nichols 2017: 111–14.

Introduction 25
decorum (and its notional kin iudicium) is mediated not through ratio or a
Hellenistic theoretical system; rather, it is necessarily embodied by an indi-
vidual and authoritative vir. Like the Greek notion of kairos, iudicium insists
that speech production requires the judgment of the speaker to determine
what is best for any given situation and that this essentially intuitive capacity
entails a kind of authority that is per se both unteachable and unlearnable,
even though a general course of paideia might be stipulated to prepare him for
it.89 In this way both De architectura and the Ciceronian rhetorical discourse
upon which it is modeled assert the necessity of judgment, while seeming to
claim only for themselves (and their ideal practitioners) the ability to attain
it. The project of De architectura therefore is not merely one of domesticating
a foreign art to suit Rome’s needs; it is the textual enactment of an embodied
model of civic expertise that, like oratory before it, claims for itself the power
of an elusive aptum. Its object, however, is no longer to sustain a republic
on the brink of collapse, which was a key function of the republican orator.
Rather, it is to present a stable image of the emperor who has saved that re-
public for posterity and—at his side—the architect.
C0.S6 An overview of the chapters

C0.P44 Chapter 1 briefly surveys what little we can say with reasonable certainty
about Vitruvius’s life and the circumstances surrounding De architectura’s
publication. Our knowledge of the historical Vitruvius is occluded by a lack
of contemporary external testimony, by his declared attitudes toward rep-
resentation, and by a particularly complex reception tradition both within
and outside of Classical scholarship. This chapter focuses in particular on the
second of these factors. I first examine how the work’s dedicatory preface,
with its open interest in “representing” Augustan auctoritas, exemplifies the
basic difficulties presented by Vitruvius’s rhetoric in the absence of external
testimony. I examine Vitruvius’s attitudes toward texts through close readings
of the prefaces to books 7 and 9. The presence of Ennius in the latter of
these has confounded scholars, but his appearance there in conjunction with
references to the simulacrum and figura poetae compels analogy to ancestral
C0.N89 89. See, e.g., Wilson 1980 on kairos, which connotes appropriate time as well as appropriate ex-
tent or “due measure” with Reinhardt 2007: 370. On the importance of Isocratean paideia, see
Livingstone 1998; for the importance of rhetorical educations more generally, see the selections
in Too and Livingstone 1998 and Connolly 2009, the latter with current suggestions for fur-
ther reading.

26 In t roduct ion
imagines. I turn to Cicero Pro Archia, which also compares the commem-
orative power of text and image (also with recourse to Ennius), in support
of my argument that Vitruvius’s strategies of self-representation portray him
as a close adviser who appropriates the glory of an imperator for the populus
Romanus. Comparisons with Horace’s persona in his Satires (Nichols) and
with late-republican attitudes, allegedly attributed to apparitorial scribae by
ancient writers, remain apt, but I approach the notion of the humble, scribal
Vitruvius by appealing to an earlier model, the Ennian “good friend.”
C0.P45 Vitruvius’s suggestion that De architectura will allow Augustus to com-
prehend buildings already built almost certainly points to the Augustan pro-
gram of renovating buildings. But it also introduces, as I argue in chapter 2,
the notion that buildings “already built” could also represent the Augustan
present for the future. History can be “built” just as it can be written, and its
history’s monuments can also be repurposed, whether through spoliation in
the concrete sense or through recharacterizing what celebrated architectural
signifiers mean, or both. Vitruvius’s phraseology in the preface (memorias
posteris tradere) reflects a well-known Augustan concern for posterity’s re-
ception in a general sense (RG), but it also recalls historiography, especially
Livy and (later) Tacitus. It is no coincidence that Vitruvius returns to this
same language in his discussion of historia—one of the disciplines in which
the architectus is supposed to be trained. Here Vitruvius provides his long-
misunderstood aetiology of caryatids and similar statues on the so-called
Persian porch as examples of how architects can use history to their patrons’
advantage. Just as Augustus co-opted the forms of the Erechtheum korai for
his Forum, so does Vitruvius invent (here in the rhetorical sense) a new “his-
tory” of the caryatids that is useful for the Romans. The key to understanding
Vitruvius’s approach here is textuality: his description of caryatids and their
meaning is couched entirely in the language of rhetorical narratio, which
suggests again that Vitruvius envisions architecture as a kind of ornamental
persuasion, with a scope that rivals historiography in its ability to tell future
generations about the present and to recharacterize the past in terms that suit
the present’s needs.
C0.P46 Chapters 3, 4, and 5 continue to emphasize the importance of textuality
for Vitruvius’s project. Each of these chapters examines, from a different point
of view, the means and implications of the various limits and controls that the
notion of embodiment imposes on the corpus architecturae (i.e., architecture’s
manifestation in De architectura) and on the discipline’s ideal practitioner
as Vitruvius imagines him, the architectus. These complementary sets of
limits—that is, on the text, field, and its practitioner—undergird Vitruvius’s

Introduction 27
position as a didactic “expert” whose auctoritas depends in part on his refusal

to invest his reader with full, architectural knowledge. Indra Kagis McEwen’s
Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture recognized the thematic (indeed,
programmatic) importance of the body to Vitruvius’s work.90 The corpus
[architecturae] supplies a metaphor for the subject, its text, and its principles
of organization; it is also an important element in Vitruvius’s argument that
architectural products (e.g., buildings) should conform to natural principles
of composition of which the well-formed human body is the most famous ex-
ample. But whereas McEwen equates the “encyclopedic” body of a totalizing
text to mirror the increasing extent of Roman imperium under Augustan
rule, this book places more emphasis on the ways in which Vitruvius’s habit
of framing elements of his discipline in bodily terms carefully limits the scope
of his text vis-à-vis the discipline as a whole, just as it stipulates controls on
the architect’s character and constitutive knowledge. This is not to say that he
imagines architecture as in any way insufficient or does not aim at a universal
scope. Rather, the desirability of architectural expertise, already hard to find, is
only increased by Vitruvius’s thorough definitions and his didactic strategies.
Similarly, the bodily metaphors in De architectura point up architecture’s dis-
ciplinary power and the authoritative synopsis of the text itself. They further-
more prescribe the extent to which access to architectural knowledge ought to
be limited to a select group of good practitioners.
C0.P47 To that end, c hapter 3 continues to develop a picture of Vitruvian expertise
(and, thus, of “Vitruvian man”) by interrogating Vitruvius’s repeated charac-
terization of his text as a complete body marked by brevitas. I begin with a fresh
look at the corpus hominis bene figurati in book 3 (so-called Vitruvian man)
and consider its relevance to the corpus of De architectura as a text. The body
and its parts remain powerful metaphors for composition: a body is complete,
well ordered, and provides a “lifelike” (true?) mimesis of what it represents.
Any such claims to completeness, however, are tendentiously synoptic and, in
the Roman period especially, rarely politically disinterested. I suggest that we
approach the notion that Vitruvius’s body metaphors mark De architectura as
an “all-embracing” encyclopedia with special caution. In fact, despite ancient
and some modern claims to the contrary, textual bodies never embrace the
universal or comprehensive wholes with which they are associated. Rather,
C0.N90 90. McEwen 2003. Reviewers lauded the book’s boldness but criticized certain methodolog-
ical features and its lack of clarity; e.g., Galinsky 2004, Anderson 2004, Millette 2004, Taylor
2005, and Riccardi 2005. See my chapter 3 for McEwen’s incomplete accounting of the body–
text equivalence in Cicero.

28 In t roduct ion
textual bodies are often emphatically reductive and, as such, mediate various
wholes and universals through synopsis, synecdoche, and other forms of “def-
inition.” Such a bodily metaphor is especially appropriate for Vitruvius’s “ex-
pert” text. Examples from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero’s letters, and the so-called
universal historians show that the textual “body” (often described as “brief ”)
involved specific, ideological value before Vitruvius. His own claims to have
ordered the synoptic body of architecture properly suggest an analogous ide-
ological function. More than that, physical bodies are “compositions” of na-
ture (3.1.2–4), so the author’s claims to have put a textual body in good order
(e.g., 4.pr.1) mimic nature’s sense of what is appropriate. This is a decorum of
sorts—though Vitruvius does not use the term—and it is another quality par-
ticular to “experts.” Such expertise, notably, has implications well beyond the
proprietary fields on which they lay claim.
C0.P48 By cordoning off the true totality of architecture from the reader, the
guiding corpus metaphor of De architectura entails a strongly regulative and
restrictive function. In chapter 4, I show how the ideal architectus—whom
Vitruvius prioritizes over the ars architecturae/architectonica—performs a
similarly restrictive function. In the most basic sense, the architectus embodies
architecture as the practitioner of the discipline. But the architectus becomes
perfectus (complete) only after undergoing a “well-rounded” (encyclios) course
of training in various disciplines, which Vitruvius likens to a corpus. This
encyclios disciplina—which seems to have only an oblique relationship with
actual architectural practice and the rest of the treatise—has recalled the artes
liberales for many readers. These similarities are superficial, but scholars im-
agine nonetheless that Vitruvius invokes these disciplines to “elevate” archi-
tecture intellectually (e.g., to make it a proper ars, to put it on a par with artes
liberales, or to set the discipline above “banausic” crafts), or even to elevate the
architect (or Vitruvius himself ) socially. To perceive a causal relationship be-
tween the intellectual and social spheres in antiquity is speculative and prob-
lematic, and it is clear that Vitruvius was well educated in rhetoric—a course
of training available only to elite males. It is also clear that architecture was
already viewed as intellectually meticulous, perhaps in the extreme (see, e.g.,
Vitruvius’s comments on Pytheos’s overreaching and the tenor of Cic. Att.
2.3). In fact, Vitruvius seems eager to downplay the intellectualism of archi-
tecture by insisting on its mediocritas.
C0.P49 This position creates an asymmetry between his training (multidiscipli-
nary but moderate) and his influence (extending even to the products of all
other arts). Such a gap strongly recalls a similar (and similarly contentious)
disparity in Cicero’s discussion of the ideal orator in Cicero’s De oratore. The

Introduction 29
balance of this chapter shows in greater detail how Vitruvius condenses and
co-opts the argumentative ebb and flow of De oratore (which in turn mimics
and responds to Plato’s Gorgias, etc.) in order to put architecture in com-
petition with oratory as the best sort of political (i.e., civic) knowledge. Of
special importance is that both Vitruvius and Cicero avoid the question of
their discipline’s technicity (i.e., whether or not it has its own subject and is
therefore a proper ars), which is the principal objection leveled by Socrates
against rhetoric in Gorgias. Cicero, as Joy Connolly has argued, effectively
sidesteps these issues by negating the possibility of a Roman ars oratoris and
by insisting—not without some circularity—that oratory’s decorous embod-
iment by a Roman male is the final source of its power. Vitruvius’s architectus
also becomes a distinctively Roman master of signs and representation, pre-
cisely because he embodies architecture and pursues an encyclios disciplina.
However, Vitruvius’s appeal to “middle” values ultimately differs from that
of Cicero. Whereas the orator’s attention to decorum proved his suitability
as an ambitious political leader in the interest of the republican civitas, the
mediocritas and philosophical training of the architectus ultimately ensure
that he will faithfully (but not obsequiously) serve the princeps, not unlike
the way in which a client serves a patron.
C0.P50 The Dinocrates-Alexander episode (2.pr.1–3), which I discuss in chapter 5,
supplies the reader with a complex heuristic for differentiating good architects
from bad. In the preface to book 2, Vitruvius claims to rely on his know-
ledge and writing in anticipation of his own success, whereas he attributes
Dinocrates’ renown to an attractive bodily appearance. Although some
scholars continue to suggest that Dinocrates and Alexander are ideal versions
of Vitruvius and Augustus, a close intertextual reading of the passage suggests
that the former pair violates the ideal architect–autocrat relationship. For ex-
ample, Dinocrates resembles the problematically ambitious Lucumo of Livy
book 1—a resemblance that (inter alia) problematizes both Dinocrates’ offer
and Alexander’s willing receipt of cogitationes et formas, dignas [Alexandri]
claritati. This ambivalent phrase provides a diagnostic for the very lesson that
Vitruvius aims to teach his reader, since the manner in which one interprets
the anecdote indicates whether he or she can distinguish a true architectus
from an impostor, altruism from ambitio, and so on (cf. 3.pr., where Vitruvius
invokes Socrates to teach a similar lesson). My discussion of Dinocrates leads
me to an equally pessimistic reading of Alexander’s appetitious reaction to
Dinocrates and his body, which in its nudity and accoutrements problemati-
cally evokes both Hercules and athletic victors. To conclude the chapter I turn
to discussions in the rhetorical handbooks about how arguments concerning

30 In t roduct ion
a plaintiff ’s or defendant’s bodily state can support arguments about his char-
acter. Although the handbooks seem to presume a widespread valorization
of what the Greeks would call καλοκἀγαθία (cf. CIL VI 1285 for a Roman
analogue), there is an implicit acknowledgment that the equation of beauty
with goodness is syllogistic. The athletic and/or gladiatorial body is therefore
a particular locus of contestation and controversy, as Cicero’s (and Sallust’s)
depictions of Catiline show. On the Greek side, writers as early as Tyrtaeus
and Xenophanes had suggested that wisdom is better than strength. Isocrates
frames the issue politically, and Vitruvius (who paraphrases Isocrates’s views
on athletics in the preface to book 9) takes it one step further. In keeping
with the Roman handbooks that viewed the cultivation of bodily attributes
as the primary signifier of character (i.e., rather than the merely fortuitous
possession of those attributes), Vitruvius suggests that athletes are ethically
and politically bankrupt, while writers deserve triumphs and apotheosis.
Archimedes, Socrates, and even Vitruvius himself provide counterexamples.
C0.P51 The epilogue examines the implications of Vitruvius’s claim at the end
of pr. 2 to have relied on his scripta and scientia rather than his physique to
achieve renown. Vitruvius designs for himself a palimpsestic body. His tex-
tual corpus and the knowledge occluded by it (cf. chapter 3) complements
his physical corpus (cf. chapters 4 and 5) in an iconic definition of a pistos
hetairos who is remarkable for the power he claims over the emperor’s legacy
no less than for his alleged subservience. Professionalism was, as ever, polit-
ical. Again, this is not to say that Vitruvius was a mere shill for Augustus.
I conclude with a discussion of how Vitruvius’s characterization of Alexander
works to caution Augustus against tyranny and even (perhaps) to encourage
artistic autonomy by comparison with later accounts of the meeting with
Dinocrates. In those accounts, Alexander rejects the project for its hubris and
connotations of flattery—a theme which may yet remain perceptible beneath
the surface of the Vitruvian version.

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Tue Jul 02 2019, NEWGEN

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Preface and Acknowledgments vii

2. History from the ground up: Vitruvius’s “textual” monuments 59

3. The body in brief: De architectura and the limits of somatic synopsis 94

4. Introducing the architectus 119

5. Bodies as behavior: Corpus architectorum 144

Epilogue: Alternate realities—​a palimpsestic corpus 185

Appendix: Summary of contents of De architectura 191

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C0.P1 Early in the reign of Augustus, a military engineer named Vitruvius

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classicizing, Ciceronian criteria, he is likely to fall short on grounds of both

C0.S1 Defining literature

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long lists of names elsewhere—​neither this incongruence nor Vitruvius’s ap-

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C0.S2 Munus non ingratum: power in the paratext

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pragmatics and a strategy.”25 The last of these descriptors is especially appro-

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advantages of particular machines, how sundials work, etc.), such tidbits, as

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C0.S3 Are you experienced?

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De architectura and De inventione share two distinctive and important traits.

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knowledge, some of which will have been learned through experience.43

C0.S4 (Dis)closure: Plotting Vitruvian didaxis

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for example, reflects the pupil’s metaphorical progress “from ignorance to

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C0.P27 To be sure, Lucretius also faces a great challenge as he tries to communicate

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C0.S5 Good judgment

C0.N74 74. On peritia in particular, see Moatti 2003.

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rhetoric, iudicium is the faculty of discernment required for the appropriate

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practice.82 Cicero’s influence on Vitruvius is not in doubt, though scholars

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C0.N85 85. See, e.g., Riggsby 2010: 396.

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C0.S6 An overview of the chapters

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position as a didactic “expert” whose auctoritas depends in part on his refusal

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Epilogue: Alternate realities—a palimpsestic corpus 185

long lists of names elsewhere—neither this incongruence nor Vitruvius’s ap-