The Architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

"The materials for a life of Vitruvius are only to be found in his own Treatise. Among the antient authors he is merely mentioned by Pliny, as one of those writers from whom he compiled ; and by Frontinus, in his Treatise on Aqueducts, as the first who introduced the Quinarian measure. Though practising in Rome, and in the service of the emperors, living in Rome, and writing the subjoined work in that city, there appears nothing that can lead us to assert that he was a native of the place. Maffei, a Veronese, strove to prove the author his countryman, and in corroboration adduced an inscription which existed on a triumphal arch in Verona as hereunder"