This elegantly written book can be seen as part of an ongoing ‘Vitruvius moment’ generated by the encounter of the European tradition of scholarship on technical treatises and the Anglophone tradition of literary studies in classics. As Oksanish acknowledges (vii), ‘continental’ scholars have been studying De architectura as literature for decades; then from around the turn of last century, as marked e.g. by the publication of Indra McEwen's Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture (2002), more and more publications in English have appeared, shifting Vitruvius from the margins of the Latin canon to the mainstream of cultural and intellectual history.
After surveying the little information we have about Vitruvius’ life in ch. 1, O. analyses in ch. 2 the ways in which architecture, particularly within the wider context of the Augustan imperial building programme(s), can be said to make history. He applies this interesting argument to the story of how the Caryatids got their name. Ch. 3 focuses on the sense in which De architectura is a corpus, while ch. 4 explores the notion of ideal architect, something to which Vitruvius goes back again and again in the course of the treatise. Finally, ch. 5 combines the theme of the body and of the ideal architect, by dissecting distinctions between good and bad practitioners, and more generally the moral import of embodying architectural knowledge. Central to the chapter is the anecdote about Alexander the Great and Dinocrates. The volume is book-ended by a long introduction, which provides historiographical contextualisation, and a shorter conclusion; there is an extremely useful appendix summarising the contents of De architectura.
O.'s stated aim is to produce ‘a “literary” reading of De architectura … with particular focus on rhetoric and intertextuality’ (3). That is a very worthwhile enterprise, if not, in the current Vitruvian landscape, a revolutionary one. The present book, it seems to me, does not aim at breaking completely new ground, but rather at contributing to several of the current discussions about Vitruvius and De architectura by engaging closely and carefully both with the scholarship and with the text itself.
O.'s strengths are, in my view, in the close analysis of some key passages, particularly but not exclusively the prefaces, which are identified as prime evidence for Vitruvius’ authorial self-representation. O. manages to find new observations and nuances in texts that might seem well known; in the case of the Caryatids, for instance, he suggests that Vitruvius creatively reworks previous, Greek-inflected narratives to fit into the specific Augustan moment he is living in, but also points to future audiences for whom architecture and architectural ornamentation serve the function of monumental narratives (‘textual’ monuments, in his own chapter subtitle). Again, while O. may not be the first scholar to put Vitruvius in a dialogue with Cicero, his analysis is consistently rigorous at a linguistic level, well supported by the evidence and generally persuasive. His proposal that one of the foils for Vitruvius’ carefully constructed persona is Ennius, and specifically the model of the ‘Ennian friend’ (ch. 1) is novel and intriguing. O. takes the reader through the subtleties of the original text in a way that I found remarkably clear, although the reader with little or no Latin may find some passages daunting.
One issue emerging from the book, which deserves further discussion, is the distinction between Vitruvius the presumed historical figure, and Vitruvius the author constructed by the text. This contrast is mirrored by one between real architects and the ideal architectus; between architecture as it was practised and the architecture described in the text (4). The distinction is implicitly picked up later (10) when O. describes De architectura as ‘a rhetorical performance of expertise rather than an invitation to practice’. O. seems to imply that Vitruvian scholarship has concentrated on finding the ‘real’ Vitruvius rather than understanding the author. Indeed, his ch. 1 laments that socio-cultural readings of Vitruvius ‘tend to override, if not negate, the literary and rhetorical capacity of the text to represent its author’ (35). However, rather than representing a genuine ‘third way’ (36), I think that the current volume reiterates a certain dualism, by focusing on Vitruvius the author, while effectively abdicating on the possibility of expanding our knowledge of Vitruvius the historical figure. It shifts, rather than addressing, the question of whether we can, and how we should, historically contextualise ancient authors. On the one hand, the specific social, political, geographical, temporal perspectives germane to an author ought not to determine, or over-determine, the meaning of their text. One of the lessons learnt from reception studies is that the text only acquires meaning through its audiences, rather than from authorial intention. On the other hand, however, all ancient texts are historical documents and testimonies of the world which they inhabited. In the case of the so-called technical texts, this element is all the more precious because they can throw light on corners of ancient society which would otherwise be left opaque. Thus, this extremely readable volume constitutes an important contribution to scholarship, not least because it indirectly raises an important question: by concentrating on Vitruvius the literary author at the expense of Vitruvius the historical figure, by moving him from the margins to the centre of the canon, is his potential for disrupting our view of ancient culture lost?
