Vitruvius
POLLIO, a Roman architect of the age of Augustus; celebrated as the author of the only Latin treatise on architecture which has come down to modern times. Of the details of his life but little is known, and that little is due to incidental allusions in his own work.
That he was fairly well acquainted with Greek and Latin literature; that he served as a military engineer in Africa; that he obtained the direct patronage of the reigning emperor (Augustus, according to the consent of modern scholars, but Titus, according to an older opinion advocated by Newton); and that he composed his treatise in his old age to guide the judgment of his patron in matters of architecture are the principal facts that are thus preserved. The "Architecture" was probably completed 14 B. C. Besides the subjects strictly included under the title, it treats of water and aqueducts, sundials and machines.
The style is a very bad one; at times perplexingly diffuse, and again as perplexingly curt, with an almost total absence of true literary grace; but the matter is of great value as being largely an epitome of treatises by Greek architectural writers. The authoritative tury and the Gordianus of the 11th. The MSS. are the Harleian of the 9th first edition was by Sulpicius at Rome between 1484 and 1492; and the best of recent editions is by Reber (Stuttgart, 1864).