Ten Books on Architecture (De Architectura)

I prepared for my mind those possessions, of which this is the sum of the fruits: to have no necessity for having more, and that this is the property of wealth, to desire nothing at all. From what has been said, we easily gather that he was born of honorable parents and in an honorable place, though he did not abound in riches; yet he did not contend greedily to acquire great ones for himself, but rather loved a golden mediocrity with a good reputation. This he himself, addressing Augustus, ingenuously professes. In the sciences and disciplines, however, he states openly that he progressed only so much as would be enough for an architect, and did not pursue the highest knowledge of things, contrary to the opinion of Pythius, in these words: "Therefore, he seems to have done enough and abundantly, who has a moderate knowledge of the parts and principles of individual disciplines that are necessary for architecture, so that if there should be need to judge or approve anything concerning these matters and arts, he may not be found wanting." This assertion of his indeed has the greatest affinity with what the Philosopher Aristotle brought forth in the very threshold of the Nicomachean Ethics, namely: "To be educated is to seek an exact explanation in each genre only as far as the nature of the thing itself can bear it." Therefore, lest the Emperor reproach him as if he were only lightly versed in the disciplines, he meets him with these words: "I beg of you, Caesar, and of others who are about to read my volumes, that if anything has been explained with too little regard for the rule of the art of grammar, it may be pardoned. For I am not a supreme Philosopher, nor an eloquent Rhetor, nor a Grammarian exercised in the highest principles of art, but an Architect imbued with these letters; I have attempted to write these things." Thus he; and although he uttered these things modestly and far from all boasting, his writings and the very matters he treats abundantly testify that he was nonetheless a most learned man and well-versed in the Greek language. Finally, that he was of the most candid and highly ingenuous character is easily elicited from those things (as if from an image of his mind expressed to the life) which, being full of moral character and worthy of any philosopher, he interpolated into the prefaces of his books. But how far these...