Approximately 2,025 years ago, an aged Roman architect named Vitruvius wrote down on ten scrolls everything he knew about architecture. He presented this work, known today as Ten Books on Architecture, to Emperor Augustus in the hope of changing what he perceived as a rampant lack of professionalism and educational rigor in the practice of architecture. The Ten Books, the most comprehensive architectural book written in antiquity and the only such work to survive, is a seminal volume in Western culture and continues to be an important and influential resource.