CHAPTER III 



SCIENTIFIC THEORY SUBORDINATED TO 

 APPLICATION ROME : VITRUVIUS 



VITRUVIUS was a cultured engineer and architect. 

 He was employed in the service of the Roman 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 (JDe Architecture Libri Decem), 

 in which he touches upon much of the 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 



