Introducing the architectus

Abstract

Vitruvius prioritizes the ideal architectus over the ars architectonica and thus also restricts access to the body of architecture. The architectus embodies architecture, but he becomes complete only through a “well-rounded” course of training in various disciplines, which Vitruvius likens to a corpus. This encyclios disciplina has recalled the artes liberales for many readers, who imagine that Vitruvius invokes these disciplines to “elevate” architecture or indeed Vitruvius himself. Yet it is also clear that architecture was already viewed as intellectually meticulous. By creating an asymmetry between his training (multidisciplinary but moderate) and his influence (extending even to the products of all other arts), Vitruvius creates a gap reminiscent of a similar disparity that characterizes the ideal orator in Cicero’s De oratore. Vitruvius recreates the ebb and flow of De oratore in order to put architecture in competition with the oratory as the best sort of civic knowledge. Of special importance is that both Vitruvius and Cicero demur on whether their disciplines were true “arts,” recalling the principal objection leveled by Socrates against rhetoric in Gorgias. Cicero effectively sidesteps these issues by negating the possibility of a Roman ars oratoris and by insisting instead on oratory’s embodiment. Vitruvius’s architectus also becomes a distinctively Roman master of signs and representation, precisely because he embodies architecture. Vitruvius’s account ultimately differs from that of Cicero, however. Whereas the orator’s attention to decorum proved his suitability as an ambitious leader in the interest of the republican civitas, the training of the architectus ultimately ensures that he will faithfully (but not obsequiously) serve the princeps.