On Doubling the Square and Other Phenomena

Abstract

Gnomonice, the construction of clocks, is the topic of Book 9 of Vitruvius’s ten books on architecture. This essay examines his inclusion of gnomonics as a “part” of architecture in terms of the triumphalist context that shaped the composition of De architectura, which Vitruvius wrote for Augustus Caesar in the early 20’s BCE, arguing that its author’s consistent appeal to Greek paradigms such as the origin of the Corinthian capital and Plato’s method for doubling the square is meant to enhance the imperial project by dignifying its culture of conquest with credentials appropriated from the Hellenic world Rome had annexed to its own a century earlier.