150 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



the end of the eighteenth, and it has been revived at the beginning of 

 the twentieth century in a series of learned articles by M. Victor 

 Mortet. 9 But what Degering has said 10 of the arguments of the 

 last of these scholars applies equally well to the arguments of them 

 all ; many, taken by themselves, may show that our Vitruvius might 

 possibly have been written in the Flavian period, but not one of 

 them shows that it must have been written at that time, and none 

 of them show that it could not have been written in the Augustan 

 age. 



On the other hand, strong evidence is not wanting that this work 

 was produced early in the Augustan age, and that it could not have 

 been produced later. Some of this evidence I have myself offered ; 11 

 more is to be found in the writers whom I have already cited; and 

 some new evidence I may present upon another occasion. 



But in spite of it all, the preface which stands at the very opening of 

 the work seems at first thought to contain words and ideas which 

 belong only to a time when the Roman Empire had been established 

 for a considerable period and when more than one emperor had 

 already occupied the throne. In translations into modern languages, 

 as well as in such commentaries as those of Newton, Schultz, Ussing, 

 and Mortet, these words and ideas are so represented or expounded 

 that the difficulty of applying them to an earlier age has seemed well- 

 nigh insuperable to many scholars, and not merely to those who are 

 approaching the critical study of Vitruvius for the first time. If, 

 however, we are convinced that the earlier part of the Augustan age 

 is a date which suits the rest of the work, it is obvious that this diffi- 

 culty cannot be insuperable. To solve it we must rid ourselves of all 

 those shades of meaning in language and all those novelties of thought 

 which were imperial growths, and we must ask ourselves at every 

 point whether the words and ideas in question are such as might 

 well have been used by one who was brought up under the Republic 

 and who wrote soon after its fall. If they are such, we must explain 



9 Rev. Arch<3ologique, Ser. Ill, 41, 39 ff. (1902); Ser. IV, 3, 222 ff.. 382 ff. 

 (1904); 4, 265 ff. (1904); 8, 268 ff. (1906); 9, 75 ff. (1907); 10, 277 ff. 

 (1907); 11, 101 ff. (1908). These articles contain much useful material for 

 the study of Vitruvius. 



10 Berl. Phil. Woch., ib., 1468. 



11 Harvard Studies, 17, 9 ff. (1906). But M. Mortet (Rev. Phil., 31, 66 

 (1907) ) has rightly observed that nothing can be proved from Vitr. 243, 18, 

 which I had quoted as evidence that Vitruvius could not have written after 

 22 b. c. For we do not know that Vitruvius was speaking only of the city 

 of Rome in this passage. In the municipalities, aediles continued to serve 

 as curaiores ludurum long after praetors superseded them in Rome. 



