Vitruvian Man
Subtitle: Rome under Construction
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2019
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780190696986
Subjects: Architecture
Description: "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. Vitruvian Man's radical reappraisal of a poorly understood Roman author will be valuable to all scholars of classics and architectural history."--from jacket.