Vitruvius

Vitruvius's De architectura is the only major work on architecture to survive fromclassical antiquity, and until the eighteenth century it was the text to which all otherarchitectural treatises referred. While European classicists have focused on the factual truth ofthe text itself, English-speaking architects and architectural theorists have viewed it as atimeless source of valuable metaphors. Departing from both perspectives, Indra Kagis McEwen examinesthe work's meaning and significance in its own time.Vitruvius dedicated De architectura to hispatron Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor, whose rise to power inspired its composition nearthe end of the first century B.C. McEwen argues that the imperial project of world dominion shapedVitruvius's purpose in writing what he calls "the whole body of architecture." Specifically,Vitruvius's aim was to present his discipline as the means for making the emperor's body congruentwith the imagined body of the world he would rule.Each of the book's four chapters treats adifferent Vitruvian "body." Chapter 1, "The Angelic Body," deals with the book as a book, in termsof contemporary events and thought, particularly Stoicism and Stoic theories of language. Chapter 2,"The Herculean Body," addresses the book's and its author's relation to Augustus, whose doubleVitruvius means the architect to be. Chapter 3, "The Body Beautiful," discusses the relation ofproportion and geometry to architectural beauty and the role of beauty in forging the new worldorder. Finally, chapter 4, "The Body of the King," explores the nature and unprecedented extent ofAugustan building programs. Included is an examination of the famous statue of Augustus from PrimaPorta, sculpted soon after the appearance of De architectura.