Vitrūvius Pollio

Vitrūvius Pollio, Roman engineer and architect of the first century BC, who saw military service under Julius Caesar. He wrote a treatise in ten books, De architectura (‘on architecture’), dedicated to the emperor Augustus. Compiled partly from his own experience and partly from similar works by earlier architects, mostly Greek, it is the only treatise of its kind to have survived. Although it was fairly well known in manuscript copies in the Middle Ages, it was not until the Renaissance that it assumed great importance, becoming adopted as the supreme architectural authority (in spite of the frequent obscurity of the text). The first printed edition appeared c.1486, the first illustrated edition in 1511. The term ‘Vitruvian man’ refers to his theory of human proportion, in which the human figure is shown to fit into a square circumscribed by a circle (illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci).

Book 1 of De architectura deals with town planning, architecture in general, and the qualifications necessary for an architect; 2 , building materials; 3 and 4 , temples and the ‘orders’ of architecture; 5 , theatres (and their acoustics), baths, and other public buildings; 6 , domestic architecture; 7 , interior decoration, mosaic pavements, decorative plasterwork, and the use of colouring; 8 , water supplies; 9 includes geometry, astronomy, mensuration, etc., with interesting remarks about water-clocks; 10 , machines, civil and military.