LITERARY NOTICE

M. VITRUVIUS POLLIO

The Bibliotheca Latina of Io. Albertus Fabricius,

edited with additions by Io. Aug. Ernesti, Vol. I, Ch. 17.

M. VITRUVIUS 1 POLLIO, by homeland a Veronese, as Scipio Maffaeus demonstrates with many and probable arguments in Verona Illustrata Part II; a writer not only especially skilled in his own art, but—as he himself requires in an architect—also learned in other sciences and disciplines, and diligently versed in Greek writers, even if scholars have noted a certain plebeian quality in his diction. He testifies that he became known to Julius Caesar for his skill in architecture in the preface to Book I. He served in the camps of Julius Caesar, in charge of war machines, as Ricciolus gathers in his Almagestum from Book VII, ch. 4, and Book X, ch. 16. There was another, Vitruvius Vaccius Fundanus, whose mention is in Livy VIII, 19 sqq. Another is Vitruvius Secundus in Lampridius, in the life of Commodus, where Casaubon incorrectly substitutes the name Victorinus. See Reinesius, page 340, Var. Lect.; Alciatus VIII, 5, Parergon Iuris.

1 The praenomen in the first edition and the Florence edition of 1496, etc., is Lucius: in some Italian ones it is M. L. It has also been found as A., but M. is most frequent, for which reason Polenus also shows a preference. It is also written Victruvius, not to mention the inscription cited a little later, in the first editions of Sulpicius and the Florence edition. Mention was made of him by the ancients:

Pliny, Servius, Sidonius Apollinaris, and—if Reinesius's emendation on page 118 of Var. Lect. is true, that we should read Vitruvio instead of bigridio—Isaac Tzetzes on Lycophron, page 164. It also seems that Palladius used him in one or another place in his books on rural affairs.