Vitruvius (wrote in 20s BCE)

Written by Julia Schulz

Biography

Fig. 1:  Vitruvius presenting De Architectura to Augustus according to Sébastien Le Clerc.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (fig. 1) was a Roman architect and military engineer. He was born ca. 85 BCE in Fundi, Campania in Italy and died in 15 BCE. Vitruvius worked mainly under Caesar designing war machines and published 10 books on architecture, mathematics and astronomy called De architectura.1 His knowledge did he draw from a wide range of books on architecture, history, philosophy, astronomy and the like which is explains in his introduction to book VII. One of these must have contained a description of the river Nile and his passing by of Elephantine and Syene.

His account on “Elephantis and Syene”2

In his report, Vitruvius, like many other travelers to Syene3, describes the flow of the Nile. The passage is embedded in an account of several big rivers from other parts of the world like the Ganges, the Tigris or the Euphrate:

“[…] It surrounds Meroë, which is a kingdom in southern Ethiopia, and from the marsh grounds there, winding round by the rivers Astansoba and Astoboa and a great many others, it passes through the mountains to the Cataract, and from there it dashes down, and passes to the north between Elephantis and Syene and the plains of Thebes into Egypt, where it is called the Nile.”4

Sources

  1. Stinson 2010, 1131. Vitruvius wrote the De Architectura in the 20s CE (Stinson 2010, 1131). Online available at Perseus Digital Library (Latin/English). ↩
  2. Vitr. VIII, 2.6. ↩
  3. See also Herodotus (ca. 440 BCE). ↩
  4. Vitr. VIII, 2.6. ↩