Ten Books on Architecture (De Architectura)

Hieronymus Cardanus, in Book XVI of On Subtlety, ranks Vitruvius among twelve men whom he considers to have excelled others in genius and the faculty of invention; these are Archimedes, Aristotle, Euclid, Duns Scotus, John Suisset (byname the Calculator), Apollonius of Perga, Archytas of Tarentum, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, the inventor of Algebra, Al-Kindi, Heber the Spaniard Abraham ibn Ezra, Galen, and Vitruvius. He asserts, however, that the latter should be placed not in the last, but in the first rank, if he had written down his own inventions rather than those of others. The same Cardanus, in his book on his own writings, affirms that he began to write a commentary on Vitruvius, but afterwards pursued other matters, though he explained quite a few Vitruvian points in his books on the variety and subtlety of things.

The books of Vitruvius were first discovered by Poggio Poggio Bracciolini in the Monastery of St. Gall, as he himself records in his Epistle, page 346. There is no mention of this codex in Polenus, nor is it handed down what became of it. I dare not judge whether all other existing copies flowed from it, since their variations and agreements are not yet sufficiently known.

Regarding the editions of the Vitruvian work and its editors, Io. Polenus wrote quite diligently in his own commentary, published in Padua in 1739 in folio. For he himself had the intention of preparing a new edition. We shall, therefore, follow him in reviewing them.