A Contemplation upon Vitruvius

I just had this meditation when I was reading Vitruvius’s treatise De architectura. (For those who did not know Vitruvius, he was a Roman architect and engineer who lived during the time of Emperor Augustus of Rome.) I was about to read the Book IX of the monumental architectural tract when the introduction of the said book suddenly absorbed my thought. The introduction was a little digression on intellectualism versus athleticism.  

Vitruvius presenting his treatise to Emperor Augustus. An engraving by Sebastian Le Clerc (1684). Taken from Wikipedia.org.

        In the digression, Vitruvius takes note of the ancestors of the Greeks who give more honours to “famous athletes who are victorious in the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean games”* than “authors whose boundless services are performed for all times and for all nations.” He notes that the victorious athletes “are not only greeted with applause as they stand with palm and crown at the meeting itself, but even on returning to their several states in the triumph of victory, they ride into their cities and to their fathers’ houses in four-horse chariots, and enjoy fixed revenues for life at the public expense.”

          But Vitruvius did not live long enough to know that the same happens today. Most Valuable Players or MVP’s are more famous and idolized than writers and intellectuals like Lourd de Veyra and Lualhati Bautista. Varsity students are even granted allowances, free daily load, condominiums and cars than scholar students.

          It was even our mentality that the member schools of the UAAP and NCAA are the “higher schools.” I was quite irritated by this. Just because your school is a member of the UAAP or NCAA doesn’t mean your school is higher than those who are non-members. I mean, come one, the UAAP or NCAA was just a part of a school’s extracurricular activities. In fact, there are some non-UAAP and non-NCAA schools that are academically higher than some UAAP and NCAA schools, like, for example, the Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro.

A caricature of intellectualism versus athleticism by German cartoonist Thomas Nast. Taken from Wikipedia.org.   

          I’m not here to hate the UAAP or NCAA or any athlete. I just want to remind people that these athletic associations are not the basis on how high a school is. I also want to emphasize here that intellectual powers are far more superior to physical strength. Vitruvius explained this when he described intellectual men as “men whose researches are an everlasting possession, not only for the improvement of character but also for general utility,” and the fame of the athletes as a thing that “declines with their bodily powers.”

*passages are from Morris Hicky Morgan’s English translation of the treatise De architectura by Vitruvius.