The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius

This was a decade of renewed peace and prosperity that followed some two or three generations of brutal turmoil and civil war, starting with the conflict between Marius and Sulla in the 90s b.c. This edition is the standard English translation, prepared over a period of several years by Professor M. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio wrote his ten books on architecture in the first decade of the Pax Augusta, c. Besides being an instructive treatise on nearly everything connected with Roman and Greek architecture, it is an entertaining description of some aspects of the life and beliefs of the times. Vitruvius wrote in such a fascinating manner, and digressed from his subject so often (as, for instance, when he wrote about the winds, Archimedes in his bath, and why authors should receive awards and honors at least as often as athletes), that his book has had a continuing appeal to the general reader for many centuries. It is a direct, authoritative, and detailed introduction to the ancients' methods of construction, the materials of the architect, and the prevailing aesthetic beliefs of the times but it is also a work of art. Vitruvius describes the classic principles of symmetry, harmony, and proportion in architecture the design of the treasury, prison, senate house, baths, forum, and temples the construction of the theater: its site, foundations, and acoustics the proper style and proportion for private dwellings the differences between the Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian styles methods of giving durability and beauty to polished finishings and many other topics that help us understand the methods and beliefs of the Roman architect. His book is thus one of those rare works that have been supremely important in the creation of the greatest art masterpieces. Bramante, Michelangelo, Palladio, Vignola, and earlier were careful students of the work of Vitruvius. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, he was the chief authority studied by architects, and in every point his precepts were accepted as final. For hundreds of years, the specific instructions he gave in his Ten Books on Architecture were followed faithfully, and major buildings in all parts of the world reveal the widespread influence of his precepts. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a Roman architect and engineer flourishing in the first century B.C., was the author of the oldest and most influential work on architecture in existence.

The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius