CHAPTER III 



SCIENTIFIC THEORY SUBORDINATED TO 

 APPLICATION ROME : VITRUVIUS 



VITRUVIUS was a culturedengineer and architect. 

 He was employed in the service of the Itoman State 

 at the time of Augustus, shortly before the begin- 

 ning of the Christian era. He planned basilicas and 

 aqueducts, and designed powerful war-engines capa- 

 ble of hurling rocks weighing three or four hundred 

 pounds. He knew the arts and the sciences, held 

 lofty ideals of professional conduct and dignity, and 

 was a diligent student of Greek philosophy. 



We know of him chiefly from his ten short books 

 on Architecture (De Architecture Libri Decent), 

 in which he touches upon much 1 oirthe learning of 

 his time. Architecture for Vitruvius is a science 

 arising out of many other sciences. Practice and 

 theory are its parents. The merely practical man 

 loses much by not knowing the background of his 

 activities ; the mere theorist fails by mistaking the 

 shadow for the substance. Vitruvius in the theoret- 

 ical and historical parts of his book draws largely 

 on Greek writers ; but in the parts bearing on prac- 

 tice he sets forth, with considerable shrewdness, the 

 outcome of years of thoughtful professional experi- 

 ence. One cannot read his pages without feeling that 

 he is more at home in the concrete than in the ab- 

 stract and speculative, in describing a catapult than 

 in explaining a scientific theory or a philosophy. He 



