Preface and Acknowledgments
I once had the pleasure of eating lunch with a scholar of Roman historiography who was a visiting scholar at Yale when I was working on the dissertation on which this book is loosely based. I offered that among the many challenges of writing about De architectura from a literary and rhetorical perspective was that I regularly encountered the very same problems that Vitruvius himself had claimed to encounter when writing De architectura. Just as Vitruvius noted that most of his sources on architecture were not Roman but Greek, so too I found myself adapting a vast and disparate array of scholarly sources to new purposes. Many of these sources had been produced on the European continent, where interest in Vitruvius had been strong for at least two decades but where scholarly traditions, conventions, and priorities were somewhat different from those with which I was most familiar. Similarly, Vitruvius’s subject matter, architecture, meant poking my head in several other of our disciplinary silos—for example, art history, material culture, and archaeology. It seemed to me that, when Vitruvius spoke in the prefaces to books 4 and 5 of De architectura about gathering the wandering particles and inchoate tidbits of the discipline into a coherent body of work, he may as well have been speaking for me. This is to say nothing of the raised eyebrows that I received from colleagues in the discipline who evidently did not see much value in Vitruvius except perhaps as a repository of architectural miscellany unsupported by the material record (or, at least, its canonical narratives). It was also clear that these attitudes toward Vitruvius, at least in the recent Anglo-American tradition, had prejudicially denied De architectura fair treatment from the literary-critical tools that other technical and scientific works (De rerum natura, De oratore) had enjoyed for some time. The textual ecumenism of the New Historicism was not enough, it seems, to have rescued Vitruvius from the shipwreck of marginal Latinity to which the adoption of Ciceronian classicism had consigned him.
Vitruvian Man: Rome under Construction. John Oksanish, Oxford University Press (2019).
© Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190696986.001.0001
Fortunately, the winds have changed since I began my writing in earnest on De architectura in 2006. Vitruvius now requires (somewhat) less introducing than he did then, since Continental interest in Vitruvius has finally found a counterpart across the channel and across the pond. My own work on the topic has benefited not only from these broader forces, but also from the interventions and support of fellow scholars. First and foremost, Christina Shuttleworth Kraus has been a more generous and supportive reader and critic of my work than I could have deserved or imagined; the keenest of interlocutors during and after the composition of my doctoral thesis, she more than anyone is to be credited for this book’s strengths. Mary Boatwright and, especially, Kirk Freudenburg also deserve thanks as additional readers on that thesis, the latter also for entertaining my thoughts on the intersection of Vitruvius and Horace.
Opportunities to present papers on Vitruvius at conferences on De architectura and other, related topics have provided invaluable catalysts for crystalizing my thoughts on the topics discussed herein. Audiences at Amherst, Columbia, Yale, Ohio, Johns Hopkins, and UMass-Amherst, as well as at meetings of the Society for Classical Studies (both under the new and former moniker) and the Classical Association of the UK have likewise offered valuable feedback. Special thanks are owed to Ian Ruffell and Lisa Irene Hau, who ran a successful panel at the Celtic Conference in Classics VII (Bordeaux), at which I first aired my thoughts on Vitruvius’s treatment of caryatids, and who graciously allowed me to reserve those thoughts—which might otherwise have appeared in the collection resulting from the panel, Truth and History in the Ancient World: Pluralising the Past (Routledge, 2016)—for the present volume. Likewise my thanks go to Christina S. Kraus (again) and Marco Formisano for an invitation to speak in New Haven for the Marginality, Canonicity, and Passion conference, in the proceedings of which (Oxford University Press, 2018) I develop ideas that are treated more briefly in the introduction and chapter 1 of this book. I also thank Marco Formisano and Serafina Cuomo for an invitation to speak in Berlin as part of the 2013 conference Vitruvius in the Round. Portions of my contribution to the special issue of Arethusa that resulted (= Arethusa 49.2 [2016]) appear in chapter 3, and I am grateful to Johns Hopkins University Press for allowing me to reprint them here.
Others who have read this work, in whole or in part and at various stages of development, include (in no particular order) Katharina Volk, Eric Adler, Sinclair Bell, James Ker, Katherine Clarke, and Jelle Stoop, along with Wake Forest colleagues past and present, Mary L. B. Pendergraft, Michael Sloan,
T. H. M. Gellar- Goad, Amy Lather, Laura Veneskey, Robert Ulery, Cary Barber, and James T. Powell. Insightful criticism from the anonymous readers at Oxford has much improved the final result, and I am especially grateful to Stefan Vranka for his patient encouragement over the many years that it has taken to bring this project to fruition. The copyeditors and production team at Oxford have been indispensable, and my brother James A. Oksanish lent his keen eye to proofreading portions of the manuscript. All remaining errors are entirely my own.
For their time, interest, and overall encouragement, I am also deeply grateful to the following: Glenn Most, Luca Grillo, Yelena Baraz, Andrew Riggsby, Tony Corbeill, Alice König, Nicolas Wiater, Jim O’Hara, Jane Chaplin, Steven D. Smith, Hunter Gardner, Richard Thomas, Elizabeth Keitel, Marios Philippides, Brian Breed, Kenneth Kitchell, Ayelet Haimson Lushkov, Pramit Chaudhuri, Gareth Williams, John Marincola, Victor Bers, Egbert Bakker, Michael Peppard, Rogan Kersh, Michele Gillespie, John A. Ruddiman, Mary Foskett, and Dean Franco.
This project enjoyed financial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (for chapter 4), and the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute, which is also funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Wake Forest generously provided a semester’s leave. The Office of the Dean of the College at Wake Forest, the MacDonough Family Faculty Fellowship, and the Provost’s Office provided additional support for the preparation of the manuscript and for the purchase of necessary research materials.
Finally, it is not too much to say that this book would not have been possible without the encouragement of my wife, Devon Healy MacKay, my children, and my parents. They have tolerated much that is otherwise inexplicable in the name of Vitruvius.
Abbreviations
Classical authors and works in this book are generally abbreviated according to the conventions of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (OLD) and the Liddell Scott Jones Greek-English Lexicon (LSJ). Modern works of reference typically follow the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 4th ed. The following are additions and exceptions to these guidelines:
Cic. De orat. Cicero De oratore
RG Res Gestae Divi Augusti
Plu. Alex. fort. aut virt. Plutarch De Alexandri fortuna aut virtute
HLR H. Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric
Verg. Aen. Vergil Aeneid
Vitruvian Man: Rome under Construction. John Oksanish, Oxford University Press (2019).
© Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190696986.001.0001
Introduction
Early in the reign of Augustus, a military engineer named Vitruvius dedicated his brief treatise on architectural topics to the new princeps. The work, known to later centuries as De architectura libri decem or simply De architectura, surveys a range of topics relating to architecture in its contemporary sense (i.e., the design and construction of buildings), as well as two other areas, machinery and timekeeping, which Vitruvius’s definition of architectura comprised.1 This tripartite definition, however, belies the breadth and depth of what his vision of architecture actually entails, for De architectura not only touches on many areas of public and private life in Augustan Rome and beyond, but provides a striking portrait of the ideal architectus, his ethical disposition, and the extent of his influence both in and beyond his art of monumental representation. Not unlike the rhetorical art that is exalted by Gorgias or, mutatis mutandis, Crassus’s view of oratory in De oratore, Vitruvian architecture is so wide-ranging in its effects that its ideal practitioner assesses the products even of other arts: “To the architect belongs a domain of knowledge adorned by many different areas of learning and instruction; every product of the other arts is put to proof by his authority.”2
1. 1.3.1. The oldest manuscripts record De architectura libri decem as the title, but this could be an externally imposed description used to catalog the work; see Rowland, Howe, and Dewar 1999: 1 n. 1. A clear distinction must be made, however, between externally imposed “catalog” descriptions and self-descriptions within the body of a text. Instances of the latter comprise acts of “directed reception” (cf. Conte 1994b: xx).
2. 1.1.1 Architecti est scientia pluribus disciplinis et variis eruditionibus ornata cuius iudicio probantur omnia quae ab ceteris artibus perficiuntur opera. In this book I have generally preferred the text of the Budé editions of De architectura; I have endeavored to mark departures from those editions when they occasionally occur.
Vitruvian Man: Rome under Construction. John Oksanish, Oxford University Press (2019).
© Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190696986.001.0001
Until very recently scholars of Latin literature, at least in the AngloAmerican tradition, have largely ignored and sometimes even reviled this text and its author. John Mackail, the Scottish classicist, socialist, and biographer of William Morris, presents a telling, if extreme, example. Conceding that Vitruvius’s books “are the single important work on classical architecture which has come down from the ancient world,” Mackail reminds readers that “their reputation is not due to any literary merit” and turns Vitruvius’s own claims on behalf of De architectura against him: “Vitruvius, however able as an architect, was a man of little general knowledge, and far from handy with his pen. . . . Where in his introductory chapters or elsewhere he ventures beyond his strict province, his writing is that of a half- educated man who has lost simplicity without acquiring skill.”3
On the one hand, we must be careful in the face of such vehement and subjective critiques not to perpetuate a centuries-long cycle of Vitruvian apologetics.4 On the other, it is only by interrogating the nature and origins of these criticisms that we can unburden ourselves from their legacy, which begins to take shape as early as the 15th c. with Leon Battista Alberti’s harsh assessment of Vitruvius’s Latinity in his own De re aedificatoria. Alberti, though he admired Vitruvius, sought to replace Vitruvius more than to imitate him, and his suggestion that Vitruvius spoke neither Latin nor Greek came to typify how readers understood De architectura and its author for centuries. Even now, much of what we think we know about Vitruvius as an author and historical figure finds its roots in classicizing polemics that conflate Vitruvius’s authorial voice with Vitruvius the historical figure in an extension of the principle that “style makes the man.”5 In short, when Vitruvius is judged against
3. Mackail 1895: 166–7. Cf. 1.1.1–3, 4.pr.1, 5.pr.1–3, etc. Mackail’s critique and its ilk are discussed by Oksanish 2018 in greater detail in the context of De architectura’s scholarly reception. See also the brief summary at Gros 1982: 669–75.
4. An “orgy of recrimination,” to quote Wilson Jones 2000: 35. But Vitruvius has had staunch defenders, too. Morris Hicky Morgan (see works cited), who translated De architectura into English, offered a more nuanced treatment of the text and its author than had many of his predecessors and contemporaries, though he hardly shied away from noting Vitruvius’s limitations: “He has all the marks of one unused to composition, to whom writing is a painful task” (Morgan 1906: 502). (Albert A. Howard, who wrote the preface to Morgan’s posthumously published translation of De architectura, takes this critique somewhat further; Morgan 1914: iv.)
5. Talis oratio, qualis vita. The specific formulation is best known from Sen. Ep. 114, but the sentiment is widespread. See, e.g., Keith 1999 and Dugan 2005a. For Alberti’s classicism and his aemulatio with antiquity, see Grafton 2002. Both Vitruvius the author and Vitruvius the historical figure have largely been alienated from Vitruvius qua genius of Western architectural classicism. For discussion and bibliography, see Oksanish 2018. More conventional treatments
classicizing, Ciceronian criteria, he is likely to fall short on grounds of both content and style.6
And yet Vitruvius’s “failure” to write like the master of Roman prose hardly means that Vitruvius was not literate or that what he wrote was not literature. Indeed, a “literary” reading of De architectura is precisely what this book aims to accomplish. Through a series of close readings with particular focus on rhetoric and intertextuality, I aim to suggest that De architectura sheds special light on a coherent model of civic expertise that implicates both ruler and ruled in the imperial republic. This is not the only way to approach De architectura, but it is an approach that in my view continues to demand attention as a catalyst for further study of the work in its context. This introduction will begin to suggest how Vitruvius’s authorial voice simultaneously describes and enacts both the potential and the limits of architectura and its definitive text, De architectura
Defining literature
What does it mean to speak of a “literary” Vitruvius or of approaching “De architectura as literature”? Whether and in what ways technical writing may be considered literary remains a topic of debate. Suffice it to say that the field of Classics, under the influence of the New Historicism, has become more ecumenical in the kinds of texts it sees fit to treat. Individual approaches continue to vary, however, according to how strongly one believes the constructed author in a technical text may differ from the historical figure who wrote it.7
of Vitruvius’s reception include Kruft 1983 and part I of Hart and Hicks 1998; see also the discussion in Novara 2005 and now Sanvito 2015.
6. In fact, the comparison with Cicero is invited by Vitruvius, 9.pr.17–18. Vitruvius also evokes Cicero obliquely through the form of the treatise (see below) and especially in his definition of the ideal architectus. The latter figure, as others have noted, bears particular resemblance to Cicero’s definition of the ideal orator. For these and other Ciceronian points of contact, see Romano 1987, 1994, 2013, 2016; Courrént 1998; as well as my chapters 2, 3, and 4. For the shadow cast by Ciceronian classicism over roughly contemporary Latin prose, see the insightful view of Gaertner 2010 on the Bellum Hispaniense. Adams 2016: 183–4 notes several correspondences with Vitruvius’s Latin and that of Caesar and suggests that some features of Vitruvian prose that may appear un- Classical are merely un- Ciceronian; the est + infinitive construction, for example, is common in Vitruvius, though it also appears in Livy, Sallust, Varro, and the correspondence of Cicero (Adams 2016: 181–2, 191).
7. Foucault 1998 remains a fundamental discussion, but more recent studies approaching the question in Classics include Formisano and Eijk 2017 (see p. 17 thereof for comment on Doody and Taub 2009: 7); J. König and Woolf 2017; Roby 2013, 2016; Fögen 2009; Asper 2007; and Hutchinson 2009. Analogies may also be found in scholarship in Caesar (e.g., Grillo 2012).
All texts respond in some way to the social worlds that envelop them, of course; some are even command performances. But the present study sees a danger in construing Vitruvius only from the viewpoint of the presumed historical figure rather than the author constructed by the text. For in failing to accommodate a literary Vitruvius, we deny De architectura participation in the textual world from which it emerged and the sort of “involved intertextuality” that characterizes other (non-technical) writing.8 As a result, we will be ill prepared to distinguish between several distinct pairs: the historical figure and the authorial persona; real architects and the ideal architectus that is formed by the text; architectura as it was actually practiced and architectura as it is described by the text. That De architectura is the only complete construction that Vitruvius has left us is a truth that should not be taken lightly.
Marco Formisano has recently noted that claims to treat technical texts “as literature” tend to presume (problematically) that the “literariness” of technical texts is found only in their prefaces, thereby ignoring or sanitizing the textuality of the whole. 9 This is a legitimate concern, and I have therefore endeavored to integrate portions of the “main” text whenever it has suited my argument. Still, to whatever extent this book still devotes much of its efforts to the prefaces and other “non-technical” elements (e.g., the description of the ideal architectus in book 1), this focus is based on the following considerations. First, the tendency noted by Formisano that scholars generally “take literally what [technical] texts and their authors say” often fails to apply when it comes to Vitruvius’s evidence and claims of his own literary learning.10 As we will see, many of these claims appear in the prefaces.11 It is sometimes implied, for instance, that he knew the writers he cites mostly from doxographies, anthologies, and the like, approaching literature in a more or less imprecise fashion.12 Though it is undeniable that Vitruvius approaches his sources unevenly—some borrowings are not explicitly acknowledged, despite long lists of names elsewhere—neither this incongruence nor Vitruvius’s
This book is generally sympathetic with the views advanced by Nichols 2017, who also emphasizes the constructedness of the author and his persona.
8. For the phrase, see Hutchinson 2009.
9. Formisano and Eijk 2017: 15.
10. Formisano and Eijk 2017: 15.
11. See note 46 on Gros, Corso, and Romano 1997.
12. Inter alios, Courrént 2011, albeit emphasizing Vitruvius’s literary qualities; cf. Porter 2003 on the tension between materiality and literature. See also the following chapter.
apparent proximity to the technical, material world should lead us to believe that his text is any less a product of a literary mind or incapable of sustained contact with other, “real” texts. In short, whereas the prefaces themselves do not stand in for the text as a whole, they remain important sites of inquiry for questions about De architectura’s constitution and function.
There are other reasons that we may broadly call “historical” for devoting considerable effort to the prefaces. The prefaces to each of the ten books conservatively make up no less than 10 percent of the entire treatise as it was published for the definitive “Augustan” edition, which likely appeared after 27 bce. This is not an insignificant proportion: the prefaces of De oratore and the extant books of De inventione, for example, constitute roughly 5 and 6 percent of each, respectively.13 Nor is the date of publication insignificant for how we view the treatise as a whole. Although there has been some debate about the order of composition of De architectura’s books, the prefaces will have been written or rewritten for this edition: the dedication in particular seems to recall the end of the civil wars and the triple triumph of 29 (1.pr.1) and, probably, thinly veiled references to Octavian’s new title “Augustus,” which was granted in January of 27 (1.pr.1 amplissimis tuis cogitationibus; 1.pr.2 civitas per te non solum provinciis esset aucta; 1.pr.3 amplitudine rerum gestarum, etc.).14
Finally, and perhaps most important, all of the Vitruvian prefaces but one address the dedicatee Augustus (as imperator, Caesar, or imperator Caesar), definitively tying the value of Vitruvius’s text and the civic ethos it implies directly to its addressee.15 Some of these passages simply introduce the contents
13. Note that if one includes the first chapters of books 1 and 2 (on the ideal architect and the Vitruvian anthropology, respectively), the proportion of paratextual material at the beginning of each book rises to nearly 14 percent. For the prefatory/paratextual qualities of 1.1 and 2.1, see Fleury 1990: xxx and Novara 2005: 3 n. 9.
14. On the question of Vitruvius’s date, Baldwin 1990 remains useful; the introduction to Fleury 1990 is particularly lucid. It seems clear on the basis of internal references that the edition we possess was published sometime after 27 bce (or perhaps shortly before; see in particular the reference to an aedes Augusti at 5.1.7). Vitruvius’s inclusion of Varro, who died in 27 bce, as a writer whom context suggests was deceased also suggests an early Augustan date, 9.pr.16–18. See the following chapter for further discussion.
15. Book 8 contains no such address, while 1.1.18 (the conclusion to the description of the ideal architectus) contains the only such address outside the prefaces. The recipient is named imperator, Caesar, or (as in the dedication) imperator Caesar. Regarding the nomenclature, see Syme 1958 regarding the title and Baldwin 1990: 426 for the irrelevance of the dedicatee’s invoked title to the work’s date: “Not calling Augustus Augustus means nothing.” Cf. divus Caesar at 2.9.15 (undoubtedly a reference to the princeps’s adoptive father) and cum patre Caesare at (the admittedly difficult) 8.3.25.
of the books to which they are attached. Many of them, however, also elucidate Vitruvius’s aims in writing. Crucially, these aims are often directed toward a readership beyond the dedicatee himself, and they are regularly illuminated by references to Vitruvius’s autobiography.16
Munus non ingratum: power in the paratext
Although a sustained interest in writing may seem surprising from an author of a treatise on architecture (see my chapter 2), such focus was a regular feature of many republican prose prefaces, subject matter notwithstanding. There same is true, mutatis mutandis, of their Greek precedents.17 As Baraz has recently emphasized, Roman writers who were (or had been) politically active regularly used their prefaces to air anxiety about whether writing was an acceptable elite activity to substitute for or supplement traditional, political action.18 Sallust provides a locus classicus for this stance in the preface to his Bellum Catilinae, but the Auctor of the Rhetorica ad Herennium also provides a salient comparison with Vitruvius.19 The Auctor, for instance, reminds his dedicatee and reader of the difficulties he has faced in finding time to write, and he is particularly anxious to show that he has had to give up his leisure time to satisfy the curiosity of his dedicatee: Rhet. Her. 1.1 “My private affairs keep me so busy that I can hardly find enough leisure to devote to study (negotiis familiaribus inpediti vix satis otium studio suppeditare possumus) and the little that is vouchsafed to me I have usually preferred to spend on philosophy”20 (tr. Caplan). Insofar as curtailing one’s otium is for the Auctor a labor
16. E.g., 2.pr.4 and 6.pr.5; 4.pr.1, 5.pr.5, and 7.pr.10. For a additional discussion of Vitruvius’s audience and a summary of related questions, see Nichols 2017: 10–15.
17. Of particular importance for Vitruvius were the prooemia of Isocrates. (This is especially clear in 5.pr. and 9.pr.) The epistolary prefaces of Archimedes often characterized the works to which they were attached as responses to requests from the dedicatee (Janson 1964: 22). See note 31 below.
18. Baraz 2012: esp. chap. 1. Baraz discusses, e.g., the extant prefaces of Sallust, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, and the Ciceronian philosophica written under the domination of Caesar. On ancient prefaces in general, Janson 1964 is still useful, but see Santini, Scivoletto, and Zurli 1990 for more examples and analysis. For the Vitruvian prefaces and writing, see Novara 2005, with special emphasis on 7.pr. and 9.pr. For Vitruvius’s interest in the utility and durability of writing as a comparandum for architectural representation, see my chapter 2.
19. Sal. Cat. 1–4 with Baraz 2012: 22ff.
20. Baraz 2012: 36. For another perspective on “time to write,” see Stroup 2010: esp. 37–65.
in itself, it enhances the negotium that results, that is, the four books of the Rhetorica ad Herennium.
In contrast, otium scarcely appears in Vitruvius’s lexicon.21 While the Auctor cannot find time to write amidst private affairs (negotiis familiaribus), Vitruvius represents himself as working to alleviate those same burdens in his readers, who, like the dedicatee, are distracted by public and private obligations.22 Augustus, first and foremost, is shown to have been weighed down by the great concerns of governance and conquest and cannot attend to his concern for public and private buildings (1.pr.1 tantis occupationibus; 1.pr.2 de opportunitate publicorum aedificiorum curam habere, 1.pr.3 curam habiturum). The city as a whole, moreover, is occupied with public and private obligations (5.pr.3 distentam occupationibus civitatem publicis et privatis negotiis; cf. Rhet. Her. 1.1. negotiis familiaribus impediti vix . . . possumus). Finally, where the Auctor responds to his dedicatee’s desire to learn about rhetoric for its intrinsic advantages (Rhet. Her. 1.1 te non sine causa velle cognoscere rhetoricam intellegebamus; non enim in se parum fructus habet copia dicendi et commoditas orationis), Vitruvius suggests that the stakes of De architectura are significantly higher. Because he has recognized the emperor’s cura for the maiestas imperii and res gestae as they are represented by public and private buildings, writing De architectura requires no justification or excuse vis-à-vis other personal obligations.23 Indeed, the latter have been subsumed entirely by the writer’s sense of duty to produce a work of maximal utility (4.pr.1 rem utilissimam) and brevity (5.pr.1–3) for his readership.24
Such privileged interactions between author and reader at the border of a text and its content also suit Gérard Genette’s framework of the paratext, a “zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of a
21. Its sole appearance describes the house of the Council of Elders (gerousia) at Sardis (2.8.10), formerly the Palace of Croesus. (The authenticity of the passage was once questioned by Krohn but the text has been retained by most recent editors.)
22. Previous studies treating the question of Vitruvius’s intended readership include Gros 1994 (for whom De architectura is both Fachbuch and Sachbuch). I generally presume an elite lay audience that included Augustus as primus inter pares, as was the case in politics. This is somewhat distinct from Vitruvius’s constructed notion of a “double readership,” e.g., his immediate contemporary audiences and omnes gentes, si qui lecturi, etc.
23. Notably Vitruvius anticipates a request rather than responds to one already made; but cf. 6.pr.5 rogatum, non rogantem oportere suscipere curam, quod ingenuus color movetur pudore petendo rem suspiciosam. See also note 17 above on Janson 1964: 22.
24. See my chapter 3. On brevitas, see Kessissoglu 1993 (with focus on 5.pr.) and Fögen 2009: 119–28; cf. also Formisano 2001.
pragmatics and a strategy.”25 The last of these descriptors is especially appropriate to the prefaces of De architectura, in which statements suggesting textually mediated transaction and exchange between the author and his audiences are rife. Most important is the dedication, in which Vitruvius suggests that he is the recipient of two instances of Augustan kindness: one of these is private or personal; the other public and shared with the senatus populusque Romanus. Augustus, through the intervention of his sister Octavia, has rescued Vitruvius from a fear of want by continuing the commoda that had previously been awarded him: 1.pr.3 ut ad exitum vitae non haberem inopiae timorem. Parallel to this private reward is Augustus’s liberation of the res publica, a public benefice if ever there was one. Accordingly, Vitruvius undertook to publish a work containing all the principles of architecture. In this context of exchange it is appropriate that Vitruvius at 6.pr.7 should call his work a munus, a word implying the continuative pattern of dutiful exchange or gift-debt.26 However, in speaking of exchanges of this sort one must always remember that both giver and receiver are continuously implicated. One good turn at Rome not only deserves another; it compels one. In Vitruvius’s case, of course, the pattern of exchange that is implied by the term munus is complex and asymmetrical. Both the greatness of Vitruvius’s primary dedicatee and the distinct domains of the gifts exchanged (one is literary, one is material) ensure that Vitruvius’s munus will differ in kind from the “isonomic” literary munera exchanged among elite peers in the republic.27
All the same, Vitruvius suggests that he has provided a substantial return on what he has been given. This “return,” however, far exceeds the provision of his discipline’s complete principles (1.pr.3 omnes rationes) and the smorgasbord of practical knowledge that Vitruvius’s text provides. For although the princeps would surely have been interested in the sort of technical matters that Vitruvius discusses (the best ways to plan a city, the best sources of water, the advantages of particular machines, how sundials work, etc.), such tidbits, as
25. Genette 1997: 2; cited also by Baraz 2012: 5. Augustus is not the text’s only reader (see below); indeed, any reader is in some way “activated” by these direct, personal forms of address.
26. For a recent treatment of literary munera, see Stroup 2010.
27. Stroup 2010: 269–70. And yet, as Stroup also notes, the advent of imperial structures of patronage did not entirely erase the power of textual munera to compel a return of some sort. Note that there had long been asymmetric munera bestowed at Rome in the form of the gift of games to the people from magistrates (who could in turn expect the people’s support; cf. 10.pr.2). Vitruvius’s gift displays attributes of both kinds of munera. See my chapter 2 for the double-edged munus of Diognetus to the city of Rhodes.
provided by the text, are of relatively limited value, as we will see.28 Rather, the true value of De architectura to Augustus lies elsewhere, particularly in the enactment (in text) of the sort of devotion and commemoration that Augustus may expect from architects of the Vitruvian stripe when the pattern of exchange is upheld. A sampling (but not necessarily an unqualified guarantee) of that devotion is enacted at the head of his treatise, in which Vitruvius offers a synopsis of the princeps’s achievements in a “public work” (albeit textual) with a universal ambition.29 Vitruvius presents De architectura first and foremost to imperator Caesar, and he also anticipates the circulation of his work among “all men of wisdom” (1.1.18 omnes sapientes), “all nations” (munus omnibus gentibus non ingratum futurum; cf. 1.pr.1 gentes omnes subactae tuum [sc. imperator Caesar] spectarent nutum), and indeed, posterity (1.1.18 lecturi; 6.pr.5 posteris ero notus).30 This is a striking variation on the Hellenistic practice of “double dedication,” which creates within the text a community of ideal readers, and it particularly suits his dedicatee’s alleged interest (cura) in buildings in which he will represent res gestae to posterity (1.pr.3 animadverti . . . te . . . aedificiorum . . . curam habiturum; his voluminibus aperui omnes disciplinae rationes).31 In his own way, then, Vitruvius anticipates a readership “limited by neither time nor space,” the sort to match the extent of an Augustan empire as stipulated by Jupiter’s memorable proclamation at Aen. 1.278–9.32
28. For Augustus’s interest in technical matters, see Suet. Aug. 89; cf. Str. 5.3.7. Janson 1964: 103 may unnecessarily downplay Augustus’s interest in De architectura, though he rightly points to the possibility that prefaces, by representing a social protocol, could amplify the relation between author and dedicatee (and other included elements) to the point of fictionality, if not absurdity.
29. For this point see esp. my chapters 2 and 3.
30. See also my chapters 1 and 2.
31. I.e., of identifying a primary and secondary reader. The practice of “double-dedication” appears to be a Hellenistic development adopted by Catullus and Cicero (see Stroup 2010: 186–8), and was associated early on with epistolary dedications of scientific texts (e.g., Archimedes); see also Janson 1964: 20 for the Hellenistic origins of epistolary dedication (with which the prefaces of De architectura are generally consistent). As Stroup 2010: 187 n. 42 indicates, however, there was also an Isocratean precedent, while open letters and other extensions of the epistolary form are also perhaps relevant; see, e.g., Trapp 2003: 23ff. For a comparable use of cura to describe the memorialization of Augustus’s legacy, see Hor. C. 4.14.1–6 quae cura. . . aeternet . . . ?
32. Verg. Aen. 1.278–9 His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono | imperium sine fine dedi.
Are you experienced?
Complicating this mission, however, are two factors. First, De architectura does not generally provide the means for its readers to produce anything; how, then, will its principles (and its other content) assist in the project of imperial commemoration? Second, Vitruvius depicts the busy city as teeming not only with business, but also with architectural impostors who are out for their own gain and glory. The two issues are related, and I will deal with them in turn. Similarly, we will want to ask: If munera compel a return, what, if anything, does Vitruvius gain through the munus of De architectura?
Let us deal first with content, broadly construed.33 By and large De architectura comprises several complementary kinds of passages apart from the prefaces: descriptive taxonomies (of principles, materials, architectural projects, and natural phenomena); stipulative precepts (“let a line be drawn . . .”); and aetiologies and exempla with varying degrees of narrativity. These categories suggest what centuries of frustrated attempts to apply the precepts and principles of De architectura affirm, namely that its value lies anywhere but in its ability to provide comprehensive (or even reasonably complete) instructions for building or design.34 De architectura is in the final analysis a rhetorical performance of expertise rather than an invitation to practice.35
This feature—to label it a fault would beg the question of the text’s purpose—invites analogy with other precept-oriented texts, particularly rhetorical examples such as De inventione and, to a more limited extent, the metarhetorical De oratore 36 For example, both De architectura and De inventione are characterized by taxonomic schematization and division of content, which informs the shape and organization of the books themselves.37 Yet unlike any number of other “technical” or “encyclopedic” works,
33. A book, as Formisano has noted, is not merely its subject. See the appendix to this book for a narrative summary of the wide-ranging content of Vitruvius’s ten books.
34. Pellecchia 1992 provides an important account; see now also Nichols 2017 and Oksanish 2018. That Vitruvian principles can, in the hands of an architect, be adapted and applied— consider Thomas Gordon Smith’s “Vitruvian House” in South Bend, Indiana—hints that the frustration of Renaissance readers may have been due to other factors. See below on taxonomic schemes and Riggsby 2010: 390–2.
35. On Vitruvius’s status as a didactic text, see Hutchinson 2009, as well as Sharrock 1998 and Gibson 1998 in Atherton 1998.
36. De oratore is important for Vitruvius in other ways as well; see chapter 4.
37. For a simple example, compare, e.g., Vitr. 1.2.2 dispositio autem est rerum apta conlocatio elegansque compositionibus effectus operis cum qualitate with Cic. Inv. 1.9.6–7 dispositio est rerum inventarum in ordinem distributio.
De architectura and De inventione share two distinctive and important traits. First is that the subject matter provided by De architectura, De inventione, and their ilk belongs to artes or technai, which, when applied by the competent practitioner, result in distinctive “products” (buildings and speeches) that are themselves capable of representing a subject apart from the maker himself.38 This fact significantly alters the stakes of these arts in societies such as Greece and Rome, which were driven by reputation; it was of course particularly crucial to the definition of the principate.
The second attribute is what Andrew Riggsby (in discussing rhetorical texts) has described as generativity, that is, the provision of procedures for determining style and content in speeches to be delivered on any number of occasions.39 Again, the rules of such works are incomplete by their very nature. Though they provide “basic tools of composition,” they “do not actually give you forms or cut down the many possibilities.”40
In rhetoric and architecture alike, narrowing such choices is necessarily left to the practitioner, who must judge the contextual demands of the task at hand despite an infinite number of possible situations.41 In De architectura, phrases indicating that its principles cannot cover all contingencies underscore the fact that the narrowing of choices—the power of mutare mutanda, so to speak—will always remain the expert’s purview. Not all temples will be built on the same principles for every deity; nor will the same principles be useful for the building of siege cranes and ladders in different places.42 Crucially, such an arrangement presumes that the practitioner of the art possesses both a certain level of generalized cultural capital and discipline-specific technical
38. Cf. Stabo’s Geography, the agricultural manuals, the works of the gromatici, and the military handbooks of Aeneas Tacticus and Onasander, etc. See, e.g., HLR §1244 “opus” I.B.
39. Riggsby 2010: 390.
40. Riggsby 2010: 391. The remarks address style, but the notion may be extended to other areas. It may be argued that Vitruvius provides some choices and, not infrequently, narrows the possibilities by noting what should be avoided. Even so, the resulting heuristics fail to comprehend all situations. One is also reminded of the generalizing remark that introduces Caesar’s description of the wall at Gergovia: Caes. Gal. 7.23.1 muri autem omnes Gallici hac fere forma sunt. Caesar presents the exemplary form, but this paradigm allows (and perhaps even implies) variation in the construction of individual examples.
41. De orat. 1.21 [ut orator] omni de re, quaecumque sit proposita, ornate ab eo copioseque dicatur; cf. Vitr. 1.1.2 in the discussion of the architect’s wide-ranging knowledge and authority: uti omnibus armis ornati citius cum auctoritate, quod fuit propositum, sunt adsecuti. For further discussion of these passages, see my chapter 4.
42. 4.8.1 non enim omnibus diis isdem rationibus aedes sunt faciundae; 10.16.1 ea ipsa omnibus locis neque eisdem rationibus possunt utilia esse.
knowledge, some of which will have been learned through experience.43 Accordingly, Vitruvius stipulates a broad, literary education for his architect in various disciplines (which includes but is not limited to general “culture”), as well as an experiential, manual component: 1.1.1 Architecti est scientia pluribus disciplinis et variis eruditionibus ornata [ . . . ] ea nascitur ex fabrica et ratiocinatione.44 Only with both of these components in hand will the ideal architect and his products achieve auctoritas.
(Dis)closure: Plotting Vitruvian didaxis
All of this results in something of a paradox: texts such as De inventione and De architectura, though technical in subject and nominally didactic, allow the reader neither to produce products nor to “become” an architectus (or an orator), since either of these outcomes requires lengthy training and experience that come from outside the text. Two examples from book 10 make this abundantly clear. The first is that the use of a machine for hoisting large loads speedily is reserved for experts (10.2.8 in eo dare operam non possunt nisi periti), while the reader is simply asked to trust Vitruvius’s description of Ctesibius’s water organ (10.8.6), since only experience can confirm that Vitruvius has given a correct and well-considered description. The second example especially belies De architectura’s rhetoric of openness (cf. 1.pr.3 aperui . . .) and reinforces rather than diminishes the distance between the author’s and reader’s familiarity with the subject matter in question.45
This distance is also explicitly theorized by Vitruvius as ratiocinatio (reasoning; but see below), placed alongside fabrica (craftsmanship) as a constitutive element in architectural knowledge (scientia). Ratiocinatio is not just “theory,” but “what can demonstrate and explain products crafted in relation to skill and principle” (quae res fabricatas sollertiae ac rationis pro portione demonstrare atque explicare potest).46 Later we learn that architects are commonly called upon to give explanations for the choices that they have made in ornament and design (1.1.5 architecti . . . rationem cur fecerint quaerentibus
43. On the place of “tacit knowledge” brought by experience (and perhaps also innate qualities), see Cuomo 2016.
44. See my chapter 4.
45. Cf. the position of Long 2001.
46. The terms remain controversial even in their broader strokes. For different emphases, see Gros, Corso, and Romano 1997 and Fleury 1990 on 1.1.1 and 1.1.15–16; Courrént 2004a, 2011 and Thomas 2009.
reddere debent; reddet rationem). Notably, these accounts (rationem reddere) are retrospective: they help those who ask—probably their patrons—to understand choices that have already been made by the expert.47 Crucially, this same expertise extends to Vitruvius’s role as author, who presents his own choices for designing his treatise in the very same terms (e.g., 1.7.2 in tertio et quarto volumine reddam rationes; 2.1.8 . . . si qui de ordine huius libri disputare voluerit . . . ne putet me erravisse, sic reddam rationem).
The exclusivity of architecture is also implied in what we may call Vitruvius’s “didactic positionality”—that is, the way that Vitruvius the author relates to his ideal “student” (i.e., readership), even if he places significant limits on the latter’s ability to access architectural knowledge.48 Indeed, despite these limits, the fundamentally discursive (vs. narrative) frame of De architectura formally meets the baseline requirements of a “presumed pragmatics of utterance” common to all didactic literature: “Vitruvius” is teacher while his dedicatee “Augustus” is head pupil.49 (I have enclosed these names in scare quotes to emphasize that the formation of this fictive, intratextual relationship between the speaker and addressee exists independently of any “real” relationship between them.)50
Don Fowler’s important study of “didactic plots” emphasized the structural importance of metaphors for the discursive teacher–pupil relationship that sets didactic literature apart from other writing.51 A near-ubiquitous plot, for example, reflects the pupil’s metaphorical progress “from ignorance to
47. The importance of “rendering account” in Roman intellectual culture is discussed also by Moatti 1997: 204–14. For architects and patrons, see Anderson 2013. See also 6.pr.6, 10.pr.2.
48. For “didactic positionality,” see Fowler 2000: 212.
49. For “pragmatics of utterance,” see Fowler 2000: 205. In his study of “imperativals,” Gibson 1998 found De architectura a fine example of a “technical treatise” but not, it would seem, didactic literature proper. Sharrock 1998 (answering Gibson in the same volume) counters that, since Vitruvius clearly displays “didactic self-consciousness” (a somewhat intangible quality revealed through a complex of formal features shared by all didactic literature), De architectura might well be considered didactic after all. Taking a different approach, Callebat 1982 suggests that Vitruvius’s prefatory captationes benevolentiae reveal an intent to shape the reception of De architectura precisely as a didactic work, much as Lucretius had done.
50. The relationship is variously characterized as that between a writer and a reader, an author and a dedicatee, a teacher and a student, a narrator and an addressee, etc. For its purely fictive/ intratextual nature see Volk 2002: 10–12, 36–8, with additional references.
51. Fowler 2000: 208. Fowler’s plots imply that didactic literature involves far more than completing a checklist of formal features (e.g., “imperativals,” frequent addresses to the reader), and his view of didactic relies upon a more flexible understanding of didactic as a complex of metaphors. “[J]ust as any plot will have an underlying structural metaphor or metaphors, so any metaphor will imply a plot” (Fowler 2000: 213). Among the most important metaphors in De architectura is that of the body (corpus), discussed in my chapters 3–5; see Volk 2002: 20ff for a brief discussion of archaic metaphors contributing to didactic poetry’s constitutive
