VITRUVIUS (MARCUS VITRUVIUS PoLLio), Roman architect and engineer, author of a celebrated work on architecture. Nothing is known of him except what can be gathered from his writings. Owing to the discovery of inscriptions relating to the gens Vitruvia at Formiae in Campania (Mola di Gaeta), it has been suggested that he was a native of that city, and he has been less reasonably connected with Verona on the strength of an arch of the 3rd century, which is inscribed with the name of a later architect of the same family name—"Lucius Vitruvius Cerdo, a freedman of Lucius." Vitruvius himself says that he was appointed, in the reign of Augustus, a superintendent of balistae and other military engines (De Architecture, i. pref.). In another passage (v. 1) he describes a basilica and adjacent cedes Augusti, of which he was the architect. To a great extent the theoretical and historical parts of his work are compiled from earlier Greek authors, of whom he gives a list at i. 1 and viii. 3. The practical portions are evidently the result of his own professional experience, and are written with much sagacity, and in a far clearer style. Vitruvius's
name is mentioned by Frontinus in his work on the aqueducts of Rome; and most of what Pliny says (Hist. Nat. xxxv. and xxxvi.) about methods of wall-painting and practical details in building is taken from Vitruvius, though without any acknowledgment.
The treatise De Architecture Libri Decem is dedicated to Augustus. Lost for a long time, it was rediscovered in the 15th century at St. Gall; the oldest existing ms. dates from the Toth century. Throughout the period of the classical revival Vitruvius was the chief authority studied by architects, and in every point his precepts were accepted as final. Bramante, Michelangelo, Palladio, Vignola and earlier architects were careful students of the work of Vitruvius.
The best edition of the De Architectura is by Rose (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1899) ; see also Nohl, Index Vitruvianus (1876) ; Jolles, Vitruvs Aesthetik (1906) ; Sontheimer, Vitruv und seine Zeit (1908). For translations, see that by Gwilt (1826 ; reprinted 1874) ; and by M. H. Morgan, with illustrations (Cambridge, U.S.A., 1914).