Front page of Decem libri by Vitruvius. His position was indicated by the term “Magister Fabrorum” that literally means master of the smiths but the term more precisely means officer of the Corp of Engineers.
His treatise was published between the 26 and the 14 A.D. and came to us complete; this probably because of the great notoriety it had during the Middle Ages.
Scholars are not unanimous about the evaluation of the treatise from a scientific or technical point of view: undoubtfully Vitruvius was a good architect of the Augustean Age but some scholars note that most of the devices he describes are taken by Greeks inventors (that Virtruvius honestly cites) so that they consider Vitruvius as a mere “encyclopedist”, unable to critically evaluate the sources.