Vitruvius wrote De architectura, the Latin treatise known in English as The Ten Books on Architecture. The Roman architect and engineer probably composed it during the late first century BC and dedicated it to the emperor Augustus.
The work is the only major architectural treatise from classical antiquity to survive substantially intact. Its ten books discuss temples, town planning, building materials, machines, water systems, astronomy, construction, and the education expected of an architect. Vitruvius combined practical advice with ideas inherited from earlier Greek and Roman writers.
He is especially famous for describing architecture through the three qualities firmitas, utilitas, and venustas: strength, usefulness, and beauty. Renaissance artists and architects rediscovered the treatise, making it highly influential. Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man was inspired by Vitruvius’s discussion of human proportion, although Leonardo did not write the ancient book.