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Focusing on the study of three testimonies of different origins and dates (Josephus’ description of Herod’s royal basilica at Jerusalem, an inscription from Mons, Algeria, several accounts by Lucian of Samosata on the architecture’s particular value), this article detects several typologies, techniques and concepts that appear to be direct inheritances or transcriptions of Vitruvius’ De architectura. Although these indications do not permit an exact identification of the place of this work in the now-completely-vanished web of late Hellenistic and early Imperial treatises, they allow detailed hypotheses on the modes of transmission of several Vitruvian principles or outlines and on the role played by the Latin theorist in the updating of some shapes.