Ten Books on Architecture (De Architectura)

From the doctrine of all the aforementioned authors, he compiled a most absolute body of the whole of architecture, divided into ten books, using a method which they call 'resolutive.' For having proposed a definition for himself, and distributed it into its parts, he assigned individual parts to individual books. In the first place, he instructs the architect himself most diligently, and adorns him with various disciplines and sciences: in which, since he seems to desire more than what is absolutely necessary for an architect from every quarter, he provided Leon Battista Alberti an occasion to criticize him obliquely in Book IX, Chapter 10, where he too shapes his own architect. The reason why this was done is that Vitruvius looked toward perfection, while he himself looked toward mere necessity. But to return from the digression to the path: our author made architecture trimembral, and divided it such that he called the first part 'Building,' the second 'Gnomonics' the art of constructing sundials, and the third 'Machination.' He therefore assigns the first book to the first part, in the second he pursues the material, in the third he examines the forms and types of sacred buildings, the fourth he attributes to the kinds of ornaments, the fifth to public buildings, though not sacred ones, namely basilicas, theaters, baths, wrestling schools, and harbors. In the sixth he deals with private dwellings, both rural and urban. He gives the seventh to plasters and paintings. The eighth to the balancing of waters and aqueducts: with which books he covers almost the whole of building. In the ninth he deals with Gnomonics, though if you look at it strictly, [he does so] superficially, and with a 'dry foot,' as they say. In the tenth he treats machines clearly, first in general, then of those which pertain to the business of peace, and then of those which pertain to war. And this is the anatomy, and, if I may say so, the articulation of almost the entire work. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether he wrote anything else besides architecture, although in doubt it is more certain that he wrote nothing: for we have no testimony or author for the contrary opinion. And indeed, if the magnitude of the work, its excellence, and the abundance of things gathered in it are noted, I think no one would doubt that he had been entirely in this, and had spent on it all the time he had taken away from both public and domestic occupations.