GREEK MODELS AND LITERARY SOURCES ON THE IMPORTANCE OF ITALY AS SIGN OF ITS BENT TO UNIVERSAL RULE IN DE ARCHITECTURA OF VITRUVIUS (VI 1, 1-11)

Abstract

The subject of importance of Italy, at the beginning of book VI of De Architectura of Vitruvius (30-20 B.C.) shows a significant change from a geo-climatic conception to a political and ideological one. With the contribution of Greek thought it is possible to say that in Vitruvius we can read about a traslatio of an idea of a country (Rome and no longer Greece) localized in the middle, privileged by climatic conditions, inhabited by an excellent people with an imperial mission in the world. Aristotelic thought and stoic pronoia join with the Augustan propaganda in particular way thanks to posidonian conception that wants to justify Roman imperialism. Posidonius, very influential thinker in the Roman culture of Late Respublica, put beside Rome and Italy to Greece and he was one of the most important philosophers who spoke to Roman nobilitas with Greek arguments. He thought that Pronoia (providentia or divina mens in Vitruvius) put Rome to play a leading role in the known world and to exercise power over other nations. Vitruvius, in his excursus of VI 1, 1-11, is the heir to an old cultural tradition between philosophy of history and political thought from Greek paideia inside of Mecenate’s circle.