Complete Works of Celsus, Vitruvius, Censorinus, and Frontinus

reproduce the translation of Perrault? Vitruvius lived in the time of Augustus; Perrault was a contemporary of Louis XIV. Who could better understand an author from the finest time of Latinity than a translator from the century of Louis XIV? Who was more capable of interpreting the Latin architect than the author of the colonnade of the Louvre? Perrault was, however, mistaken in certain places; more recent work on the text, the relics of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and the progress of architectural science have caused some errors to be discovered. Thus, to eliminate these errors and to conform the version to the excellent text of Gottlob Schneider, we have permitted ourselves to make some touch-ups, imitating, as much as possible, the qualities of language that make this translation a literary monument.

The Treatise on the Aqueducts of Frontinus is a necessary complement to the Architecture of Vitruvius. This work is, as is known, by the author of the Stratagems of War, who was no less competent to speak of war than of aqueducts; for before being intendant of waters under Nero, he had waged war in Britain in the expedition of Agricola. A learned academician, the architect Rondelet, provided a justly esteemed translation of this treatise in 1820. We have been authorized to reproduce it.

As for the treatise of Censorinus, De die natali On the Birthday, a treatise whose subject is the institution of days, months, years, centuries, and the principal eras of antiquity, it touches upon Celsus through research on the origin of man, on generation, on the duration of gestation, etc.; it touches upon Vitruvius, or rather an accessory part of Vitruvius's work, through curious remarks on music, astronomy, the zodiac, and sundials. Almost as praised as Celsus by the scholars, some of whom called his book a golden book, Censorinus deserves the praise Scaliger gives him of being a very sure and very learned guarantor of times and antiquity, egregius et doctissimus temporum et antiquitatis vindex an excellent and most learned champion of times and antiquity, which means quite simply a good chronologist. It is, in effect, to the chronologists that the work of Censorinus has been particularly useful for determining certain dates. Moreover, it offers more than one curious passage, either to those interested in the history of physiology among the ancients, or to philologists who can note there a talent for writing and qualities of style quite remarkable in an author of the 3rd century, contemporary to some of the authors of the Historia Augusta History of the Emperors.