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Description

Rare map of the area around Cremona, depicting the work of the mileage recorder Vitruvius, miltary engineer under Julius and Augustus Caesar. Vitruvius is often referred to as the World's First Engineer and inventor of the odometer.

The map illustrates the measurement of distances along the Po, Ada and Olio Rivers in the Territory of Cremona.

The map appeared in Allesandro Capra's rare La Nuova Architettura Famigliare Di Alessandro Capra, Architetto, e Cittadino Cremonese Divisa in cinque Libri corrispondenti a'cinque Ordini, cioè Toscano, Dorico, Ionico, Corintio, E Composito. All'illustrissimo Signor Co. Givseppe Filippo Calderini. , published in Bologna 1678. This remarkable rare work consists of 5 books, one of which is a treatise on the measurement of distances, etc.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio; Vitruvii; (born c. 80-70 BC, died after c. 15 BC) was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. Vitruvius served as a Ballista (artilleryman), the third class of arms in the military offices. He likely served as chief of the ballista (senior officer of artillery) in charge of doctores ballistarum (artillery experts) and libratores who actually operated the machines.

Little is known about Vitruvius' life. Most inferences about Vitruvius' life are extracted from his only surviving work De Architectura, though he appears to be known to Pliny the Elder through his description of constructing mosaics in Naturalis Historia, he is not actually named. Frontinus, however, refers to "Vitruvius the architect" in his late 1st century work On Aqueducts .

As an army engineer he specialized in the construction of ballista and scorpio artillery war machines for sieges. It has been speculated that Vitruvius served with Julius Caesar's Chief Engineer Lucius Cornelius Balbus. The locations where he served can be reconstructed from, for example, descriptions of the building methods of various "foreign tribes". Although he describes places throughout De Architectura, he does not say he was present. His service likely included north Africa, Hispania, Gaul (including Aquitaine) and Pontus.

Vitruvius is the author of De architectura, known today as The Ten Books on Architecture, a treatise written of Latin and Greek on architecture, dedicated to the emperor Augustus. This work is the only surviving major book on architecture from classical antiquity. This text "influenced deeply from the Early Renaissance onwards artists, thinkers, and architects, among them Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72), Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), and Michelangelo (1475-1564)." The next major book on architecture, Alberti's reformulation of Ten Books, was not written until 1452.

Vitruvius is famous for asserting in his book De architectura that a structure must exhibit the three qualities of firmitas, utilitas, venustas - that is, it must be strong or durable, useful, and beautiful. According to Vitruvius, architecture is an imitation of nature. As birds and bees built their nests, so humans constructed housing from natural materials, that gave them shelter against the elements. When perfecting this art of building, the Ancient Greek invented the architectural orders: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. It gave them a sense of proportion, culminating in understanding the proportions of the greatest work of art: the human body. This led Vitruvius in defining his Vitruvian Man, as drawn later by Leonardo da Vinci: the human body inscribed in the circle and the square (the fundamental geometric patterns of the cosmic order).

Vitruvius is sometimes loosely referred to as the first architect, but it is more accurate to describe him as the first Roman architect to have written surviving records of his field. He himself cites older but less complete works. He was less an original thinker or creative intellect than a codifier of existing architectural practice. It should also be noted that Vitruvius had a much wider scope than modern architects. Roman architects practised a wide variety of disciplines; in modern terms, they could be described as being engineers, architects, landscape architects, artists, and craftsmen combined. Etymologically the word architect derives from Greek words meaning 'master' and 'builder'. The first of the Ten Books deals with many subjects which now come within the scope of landscape architecture.

The reference to Vitruvius relevant to this map is likely with respect to the believe tht Virtuvius also developed one of the first odometers, consisting of a wheel of known circumference that dropped a pebble into a container on every rotation.