Status, Pay, and Pleasure in the De Architectura of Vitruvius

This article seeks to show the effect that Vitruvius' probable social status had on the contents of the De Architectura. The education proposed for the architect, the receipt of a wage, and pleasure all shape the treatise in significant ways. The article supplements these discussions with a close reading of a section of the De Architectura hitherto neglected in the secondary literature: the cameo appearance of Aristippus in the preface to Book 6. Vitruvius arguably uses the figure of Aristippus, the pleasure-loving philosopher whom Vitruvius offers to the reader as a stand-in for the architect, to focus and negotiate further the issues of status, pay, and pleasure.