Vitruvian Man: Rome under Construction

Author : "John Oksanish (Associate Professor, Department of Classical Languages, Associate Professor, Depar

Hardback

Published : Monday 18 November 2019

ISBN : 9780190696986

Price : €57.83

Description

This book reconsiders the Roman architect Vitruvius and his treatise, On Architecture. The ideal, Vitruvian man is not simply an architect in the narrow sense. He is a builder of Augustus' legacy, and the archetype for a distinctly imperial ethos of civic expertise.

Professionalism is political. This book offers a new assessment of the Roman architect Vitruvius and his treatise, On Architecture, dedicated to Augustus in the 20s BCE. Once reviled by scholars, Vitruvius emerges as an imperial expert par excellence when read alongside literary coevals through an intertextual lens. No building of Vitruvius' name survives from antiquity, but his treatise remains a formidable literary construction that partakes of Rome's vibrant textual culture. The book explores Vitruvius' portrait of the ideal architect as an imposing Vitruvian man at the dawn of Augustus' empire. In direct dialogue with his republican model, Cicero's ideal orator, the architect embodies a distinctly imperial civic ethos in which technically skilled partisans supersede old elites as guarantors of Augustan authority. Vitruvius promises to shape not only the emperor's legacy with architecture, but also the notion of a Roman citizen through his ideal architect.

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