Vitruvius
Vitruvius
fl. first century b.c.e.
Architect
Military engineer
Wrote Architectural Handbook.
Vitruvius was a Roman architect and engineer who lived and worked during the early part of the reign of the emperor Augustus. Aside from his architectural achievements, his major work was a treatise titled De architectura (On Architecture). This was based on his own experience as well as on works written by other (mainly Greek) architects. The contents of this handbook includes chapters on town planning, architecture in general and the qualifications of the architect, building materials, temples, civic buildings, domestic buildings, pavements and plaster work, water supplies, measurement and geometry, and machines. His work is especially valuable because it reflects his practical experience and for the careful analysis he provided of the architectural orders and the standards of proportion. His description of "Tuscan" temple design contributes to modern knowledge of the appearance of lost Etruscan architecture. The sections on materials and construction methods are particularly useful to an understanding of ancient building techniques. Besides his written work and buildings attributed to his design, little else is known of Vitruvius.
sources
N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989): 1130.