The Ten Books on Architecture
Writing for the emperor Augustus in the 20s BC, the Roman architect and military engineer Vitruvius set down what he thought every builder ought to know. His ten books move from the training of the architect and the choice of a healthy site to lime, sand and timber, the proportions of the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders, theatres, forums and private houses suited to their climate, pigments for wall painting, the finding of water and aqueducts, astronomy and sundials, and finally hoists, pumps and siege engines. Book III takes temple proportions from the human body, the passage that later gave Leonardo his Vitruvian Man. Nothing comparable survives whole from antiquity, and the demand that a building be sound, useful and beautiful has shaped architectural argument ever since. This is the 1914 translation by Morris Hicky Morgan.
