F
F ⇒ T
M. Cetius Fauentinus (ca 300 CE?)
Authored a late antique manual on private architecture, usually known in the MSS as De
Diuersis Fabricae Architectonicae, but more properly titled M. Ceti Fauentinus artis architectonicae
priuatis usibus adbreuiatus liber. The material is almost completely a reduced recension of
V, with some additions from the author’s own experience, and explicitly states
that its goal is to make Vitruuius more accessible.
The text proceeds in logical manner, eliminating Vitruuius’ “scientific” explanations. It
opens with Vitruuius’ “principles,” then it discusses winds, finding and conducting water
including building wells, cisterns and water pipe sizes, mortar, bricks, timber, siting com-
ponents of a villa and a town house, major rooms and baths, vaults and pavements, stucco
finishes, heating, pigments and the use of the square, and two sun-dials pelecinum (double axe
with gnomon) and hemicyclium. The work, representing practices of a later period than
Vitruuius, features critiques and modifications of Vitruuius’ formulae; opus testaceum is taken
for granted, and the author recommends higher, more open hypocausts and a different
formula for mortar for cisterns: one part of lime to two of sand as opposed to two of lime to
five of sand.
H. Nohl, “Palladius und Faventinus in ihrem Verhältnis zu einander und zu Vitruvius,” in Com-
mentationes Philologae in honorem Theodori Mommseni (1877) 64–74; H. Plommer, Vitruvius and the Later
Roman Building Manuals (1973).
Thomas Noble Howe
Fauilla (?) of Libya (ca 30 BCE – ca 90 CE)
A P. in G, CMLoc 9.2 = 10.1 (13.250 = 341 K.), cites her for two
aromatic anti-sciatic ointments, the first her preparation of A’ terebinth-based
recipe, the second containing white pepper. The apparently Latin name (“Ashe”) may
conceal a writer on cosmetics (cf. O, Ars 3.203), or could perhaps be Berber; cf. also
Pha(o)ullos (LGPN: rare in this period), or even Baphullos/B?
Fabricius (1726) 158.
PTK