Vitruvian Man

Professionalism is political. This book offers a new assessment of the Roman architect Vitruvius and his treatise <em>On Architecture</em> dedicated to Augustus in the 20s BCE. Once reviled by scholars Vitruvius emerges as an imperial expert par excellence when read alongside literary coevals<br>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<br>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<br>legacy with architecture but also the notion of a Roman citizen through his ideal architect.<br>