Ten Books on Architecture (De Architectura)

As Vitruvius himself suggests, the parts of his eighth book, chapter 6, were lost with great detriment to the readers, although they have been restored in some fashion by editors and by Philander through his own ingenuity. The same Philander correctly noted that the distribution of chapters in the Florentine edition, which others follow, is most inept in many places, and that Vitruvius wrote his books in a continuous stream of prose. Among the ancient Latins, Fuffitius, Terentius Varro, and Publius Septimius had written on the same subject before Vitruvius. In Labbe’s New Library of Manuscripts, page 384, from the expanded catalog of Scipio Tettius, The Architecture of Vitruvius, Rufus, and Epaphroditus are mentioned. Barthius, in Adversaria XXX. 7, thought that we do not have the complete Vitruvius, but only an epitome of his books. However, I do not know how that learned man was prone to sniffing out epitomes in ancient monuments without sufficient cause. In the preface to Book I, Vitruvius says that he was available to M. Aurelius, P. Minidius (manuscript: Numidius), and Cn. Cornelius for the preparation of ballistae and scorpions, and for the perfection of other engines of war. He mentions the aedileship of Varro and Murena in II. 8. He mentions the Divine Caesar in II. 9: original: "C. Iulius Masinissae filius cum patre Caesare militavit, is hospitio meo est usus." "C. Julius, son of Masinissa, campaigned with the elder Caesar; he used my hospitality." In VIII. 4, when he had observed that many had left volumes of architectural precepts not arranged but merely begun, like stray particles, in the preface to book 4, he professed that he was writing a Body of Architecture. In Book II, chapter 1, he treats the duty of the art in the first volume, and he wishes the architect to be skilled in almost all sciences, just like the cook Sicon in Athenaeus IX, pages 378, 381 ff., 404 ff. In the second, he writes on the natural materials of the subject and what use they have; in the third and fourth, on sacred buildings and on Doric, Corinthian, Tuscan, and Ionic columns; in the fifth, on public places, the forum, treasury, prison, senate house, theater, porticoes, baths, wrestling schools, promenades, and harbors; in the sixth, on private urban and rural buildings, according to the custom and usage of both the Romans and the Greeks; in the seventh, on finishing for strength and ornament, where there is also much on colors; in the eighth, on waters and aqueducts; in the ninth, on gnomonic related to sundials theories, the preface to which book is broken off in published editions sooner than it should be, for the first three chapters of that book are still intact; finally, in the tenth, on machines.

x See Vossius, On the Mathematical Sciences, ch. 47, § 1, p. 279.