This article argues that Vitruvius’ description of Julius Caesar's ‘discovery’ of the larch (larix, De arch. 2.9.15–16), previously read as a journalistic account of the author's first-hand experience in Caesar's military entourage, should instead be interpreted as a highly crafted morality tale illustrating human progress thwarted. In the passage, the use of larch wood to construct a defensive tower renders the Alpine fortress at Larignum impregnable to assault by fire; only the fear aroused by siege provokes the inhabitants (...) to surrender to Caesar and his troops (2.9.15–16). Nevertheless, the outcome of this discovery is not a complete victory, because the logistics of importing this remarkable timber to Rome are as yet insurmountable (2.9.16). Once the siege of Larignum is recognized as a diptych to Vitruvius’ narrative of the origins of civilization, in which fire and wood likewise play essential roles (2.1.1–7), and compared with similar aitia and source histories across the De architectura, it becomes clear that Larignum and its resources emblematize obstacles to a Vitruvian conception of imperial success, in which the city of Rome catalogues and indexes architectural knowledge amassed throughout the empire. (shrink)

Larche equals person and individual, and there comes his misunderstanding of Zizioulas. He does not understand that person is a word for relation,and that way staying among the borders of classic scholastic thought. In the other hand, he understands the nature to be a realistic different entity in whichpersons participate. Because, the Fathers that Larche mentions in many places are directly opposite to Larches thought, he is forced to stretch his interpreta-tion, and is forced to come up with contradictory statements, (...) of many whichwe have shown. (shrink)

When I began to reflect on the ways of how I might begin this article, I remembered that, a little while ago, I had annotated a small book that I had found all the more interesting because it did not have the slightest scholarly pretensions. I had opened it more or less mechanically and found in it a passage, already underlined in pencil by myself, that seemed to me to offer an almost perfect approach for developing what was in my (...) mind: “ … i Veneziani, sopra i pali di larice, hanno edificato chiese e palazzi.” In fact, I could hardly have dreamed up a better metaphor, and in any case a more than adequate one, than that of those larches. They were produced in an Alpine environment and now, sunken into the lagoon, they served as the foundation of one of the most astonishing urban cultures that men ever conceived and built. (shrink)