Chapter III: Frontinus and Technical Writers

Career of Frontinus—A general’s prose anthology of
_Stratagems_—Who wrote the fourth book?—Frontinus’s treatment
of sources—The water-commissioner’s account of _The
Aqueducts_—His scheme—Belief in honest work—Glimpses of his
character—Latinity.

Professional writers of the Flavian age.

FRONTINUS

The works of Sextus Julius Frontinus[1243] originated largely in posts which he held during his public career. No one could have shown more of that thorough devotion to the details of official duty with which many of the best-born Romans ensured the greatness of the Empire. Frontinus was of good family, and his friend Martial alludes to a poetic vein discoverable in him during leisure hours at the coast.[1244] Since, however, his books are practical rather than literary, it looks as if the energetic general and water-commissioner found scant time for any play of fancy. On New Year’s Day A.D. 70 we meet him[1245] at a sitting of the senate, which he had summoned as city praetor, prepared presently to hand over his office to the young prince Domitian. His birth-date, then, may be guessed as about 40. In Britain his name is of historic interest; for as governor (75-78) he proved a worthy successor to the vigorous Cerealis, whose successes against the Brigantes of the North he equalled by victories over the Silures in the difficult territories of South Wales.[1246] It is likely that the Roman road from Bath and beyond the Bristol Channel westwards by Caerwent and Caerleon was engineered under his orders, even if it was not yet called the Via Julia. He was succeeded by Agricola in 78; but presumably saw further military service with Domitian in Germany against the Chatti in 83, since he makes specific allusions to the emperor’s tactics.[1247] Some time afterwards, we know from internal evidence,[1248] he was at work on a collection of stratagems in continuation of an earlier tactical manual, and at its outset he claims to be the solitary author to treat military science systematically.[1249] It was in 97 that Nerva, aware of much slackness and corruption in the administration of the water-supply for Rome, showed confidence in the ability and integrity of Frontinus by appointing him superintendent of the aqueducts (_curator aquarum_).

To the new commissioner’s determination never to rely upon subordinates for advice but to learn for himself everything of moment affecting his task[1250] we owe his immediate start upon the historical, topographical and statistical record which we possess in the _De Aquis_. Consul for a third time in the year 100, he held the position of augur until 103, the date of a letter by the younger Pliny[1251] acknowledging a correspondent’s congratulations on his own nomination by the emperor to the college of augurs in succession to Frontinus. We may therefore infer that he died in that year.

If all his writings had survived, they would have added still more to the technical and professional effect of those we have. He composed a work on land-surveying and land-laws, but of this gromatic treatise only excerpts have come down.[1252] His theoretical treatise on military science (_De re militari_) is lost; but in the extant _Strategematon Libri Tres_ we have a sequel for the use of officers,[1253] illustrating principles of war by stratagems chosen from Greek and Roman history. They are grouped as those for use (Book I) before battle, (Book II) during battle and after; (Book III) at sieges; and are again subdivided into sections headed “on concealing one’s plans,” “on finding out the enemy’s plans,” “on escaping from difficult positions,” and so on.

A fourth book, containing anecdotes of another sort, has come down with _The Stratagems_ and constitutes a problem. The preface acknowledges that the recorded instances illustrate military management rather than stratagems (_exempla potius strategicon quam strategemata_). They are treated in categories such as “discipline,” “restraint,” “justice,” “determination,” so that the ethical aspect forms a contrast to the three preceding books. The book has not lacked champions of its authenticity even in recent times.[1254] Whereas, however, the three books on stratagems bear marks of common authorship with the _De Aquis_,[1255] there are considerations that tend to isolate the fourth book. These include differences in thought between it and the undoubtedly genuine parts of the prefaces, and, throughout, differences in build of sentence, in turn of expression and use of words.[1256] Equally tell-tale are traces of a change of tone in the latest preface; besides there is no clear explanation of the departure from the author’s express resolve to write three books.

Yet the Latinity of Book IV does not appear to be demonstrably so much more post-Augustan than that in Books I-III that critics need put it as late as the fourth or the fifth century.[1257] Expressions quoted against it like _de uariis consiliis_ are not decisive. Gundermann[1258] passed a more discriminating judgement upon its Latin by referring it to a date close to Frontinus’s own, early in the second century. Schanz’s hypothesis claims that the author was contemporary with Frontinus, and that he recorded an actual experience of his own in the surrender of the Lingones in A.D. 70 to himself.[1259] It is difficult to believe in this unknown officer, who for this one occasion betrays his personal experience and in several other places relies upon Frontinus’s instances. The hypothesis in any case has to assume that a third person combined this book with the genuine three, and, to effect a plausible deception, not only wrote a fictitious preface for the later book, but also foisted a passage, ostensibly by Frontinus, into the original introduction to the earlier work.[1260] But it is not an unnatural supposition that the fourth book was written by an imitator impressed with Frontinus’s example and responsive to Roman interest in military literature, and that he paid his model the compliment of incorporating material from him.[1261] If this author pretended to write as Frontinus, the episode of the surrender of the Lingones may have been an insertion by him to lend verisimilitude to his forgery; if not, it was due to a subsequent interpolator, who, on all the theories, seems a necessary postulate to account for certain intrusions and repetitions in the text. The borrowings are not all made by the author of Book IV, for some of his work is found interpolated in the earlier collection.[1262] And what sort of interpolator or editor must we picture when we find instances repeated even within the space of the opening book?[1263]

Any collection of anecdotes pure and simple, even in the lightest vein, is apt to pall: so one tires of the concentrated essence of stratagem in campaign or siege administered in tabloid doses without comment. While Macaulay can thrill in relating “how well Horatius kept the bridge,” Frontinus’s bald account is Livy with all the _lactea ubertas_ squeezed out.[1264] Here and there, however, points of interest arise. Some of his examples of Machiavellian diplomacy or astute _ruses de guerre_ prove that everything may be held fair in war. When we read about a screen of prisoners (_captiuos lateri euntium praetexuit_, I. iv, 1: _cf._ 2), or about poisoning an enemy’s water-supply (_aquam hellebore corruptam_, III. vii, 6), we recognize that unchivalrous devilry in military operations is not a peculiarity of any one period; while an instance of premeditated disregard of a covenant (III. iv. 6) anticipates the doctrine that treaty obligations must yield to military necessity. If such examples are abreast of modern ruthlessness, the author himself appears hopelessly antiquated in his naïve confession that he sees no prospect of improving engines of war.[1265]

Frontinus took the majority of his examples from Greek and Roman history before the Empire. Occasionally we find something later, like an allusion to the _Variana clades_ of A.D. 9, or to Corbulo’s fighting in Armenia during Nero’s reign, or to Domitian’s campaigns; but his main sources are Caesar, Sallust and Livy. No stress need be laid on the two passages where Livy is cited by name (II. v. 31 and 34); for both are possibly interpolations. On the whole, Frontinus is free in his rehandling of originals, as may be seen if one compares passages in Livy with his adaptations.[1266] If, further, one compares passages in Livy with the adaptations by both Valerius Maximus and Frontinus,[1267] one will find that the latter does not show the almost slavish dependence upon Valerius which characterizes the author of Book IV.[1268] Sometimes indeed Frontinus is free to the extent of carelessness and inaccuracy. He is capable of confusing occasions and individuals. Thus he misrepresents Livy’s Diodorus as Diodotus (III. xvi. 5); turns a device used by Cincinnatus against the Volscians into one by Capitolinus against the Falisci (II. viii. 3); alters to Cimbrians Livy’s Celtiberians (II. v. 8), having in the preceding section (II. v. 7) called Viriathus “dux Celtiberorum,” though he is “dux Lusitanorum” elsewhere (II. xiii. 4). The trick ascribed to Manlius as a means of encouraging his men against the Etruscans (II. vii. 11) appears, on comparison with Livy and Dionysius, to involve a mistake between two colleagues. In such cases Frontinus’s memory may have played him false amidst the multitude of names with which he had to deal.

The _Strategemata_ belongs to Domitian’s reign. The more famous treatise _De Aquis Vrbis Romae_, in two books, was begun under Nerva, but not finished until Trajan had succeeded him.[1269] Only those without historical sense will dismiss as totally unreadable his description of aqueducts once vital in their utility and still in ruin imposingly picturesque. Undertaken in the conscientious spirit of mastering his business and instructing successors,[1270] the author’s labour was lightened by belief in the value of his duties; for, in his eyes, the maintenance of the aqueducts gave “a signal testimony to the greatness of the Roman Empire” (_cum magnitudinis Romani imperii uel praecipuum sit indicium_, 119). He had to contemplate a state of things very different from the old times when for 441 years Rome had been content with water from the Tiber, wells, or springs. Springs, he allows, may have healing virtues, and are still the objects of veneration (_fontium memoria cum sanctitate adhuc exstat et colitur_, 4); but his concern is now a practical one, directed upon nine or ten majestic conduits bringing water for miles over stone arches into the city.

His scheme embraced an account of the builders of the aqueducts, dates of construction, direction, length of channels, elevations, measurements of pipe-capacity and of volume at intake and delivery, as well as a list of curators up to his own day. Statistical details of wastage and of the amounts of water distributed by the several aqueducts in the several wards are certain—and the author knows it—to be complicated as well as dull (_non ieiunam tantum sed etiam perplexam_, 77); but he prescribes a cure in judicious skipping (_licebit transire leuiora_). We soon weary of the _quinaria_, the official unit of measurement, which Di Fenizio has recently calculated to have equalled 0.48 litre per second or 41.5 cubic metres per 24 hours. Yet even a cursory perusal yields instructive items. We read about the limpid drinking water that came from the Marcia; about unnecessary blending with turbid waters which spoiled the best; about fraudulent tapping of the supply; about the system of repairs; and topographical facts which illuminate features of the landscape near Rome to-day. A good deal is not literature but archaeology or engineering. All the same, it is a human document presenting an unvarnished picture of scrupulous and observant fidelity in the control of an essential public service, where there had been slackness and dishonesty. Through its unpretentious style shines a personality with a true conception of civic virtue, determined to aid Nerva and Trajan in undoing the abuses of the previous reign. For a man of culture it must have entailed some self-sacrifice to settle down upon the dry _minutiae_ of the water-supply. Still, he was rewarded by a satisfaction in work well done which justified his proud reflection that his reforms had, under imperial auspices, made Rome a salubrious city:

The Queen and Mistress of the globe realizes from day to day
the care bestowed by our devoted emperor Nerva, her ruler;
still more will the health of this same eternal city realize it
in the increase of reservoirs, waterworks, fountains and tanks.
No less benefit is distributed among individual consumers
owing to the increase in the emperor’s private grants: those
also who nervously used to draw an illegal water-supply are
now relieved from anxiety and enjoy it by imperial bounty.
Not even waste-water is lost: the look of the city is clean
and improved: what we breathe is purer: and, as regards the
unwholesome atmosphere, the causes which gave to the air of
Rome its bad name have been removed.[1271]

The old-fashioned practical Roman of limited outlook speaks through the disdainful self-complacency of his exclamation:

With such a number of indispensable structures for all these
waters you are welcome to compare the idle Pyramids or all the
futile, though renowned, works by Greeks.[1272]

This, however, is a note of national _hauteur_. As an individual he was the reverse of boastful, and his modesty is illustrated in Pliny’s story about his forbidding any monument to be erected to himself, because, as he pithily put it, “Our memory will last if deserved by our life” (_memoria nostra durabit si uita meruimus_).[1273]

The composition of the _De Aquis_ involved, besides personal observation and inquiries, research among records and business documents. Part of its material is based on reports from surveyors and engineers. Senatorial decrees affecting the aqueducts are recited.[1274] Among Roman writers quoted are Fenestella, Ateius Capito and Caelius Rufus.[1275] It was characteristic of the man that his style should be straightforward in its freedom from artifice. He liked parade in composition as little as he did in the performance of duty. Dispensing with the attendants decreed to a water-commissioner on official business outside Rome, he declares: “for myself, when on my rounds inspecting the conduits, my own honesty and the authority given by his Majesty will serve for lictors” (101). So, too, he wisely refrained from pomp or epigram on such a subject as the water-supply. Very occasionally there is a sly hit, like that at the honesty required from masons on the wall “in accord with a law more honoured in the breach than in the observance” (_secundum legem notam omnibus sed a paucis obseruatam_, 123). But his belief, as we have learned from Pliny, that a man’s surest memorial is a worthy life makes a complete _apologia_ for the absence of literary refinements.

His Latinity has been just glanced at in connexion with the problem of a pseudo-Frontinus. The “Silver” mark is unmistakeable in such usages as _citra_ meaning “without,” _circa_ meaning “about” or “over,” _quamquam_ with subjunctive or participle, and future participles with a notion of purpose.[1276] A reader can tell his whereabouts in the history of the language, when three lines in the preface to Book III give him _hucusque_, _praelocutione_ and _attentione_ (used absolutely, as in Quintilian). Many such typically post-Augustan words as _sequelae_ (II. iv. 8) occur, or at least words, as we should expect remembering the main source of the _Strategemata_, that are Livian but otherwise mainly post-Augustan, like _exasperatus_ (II. i. 11), _praeualere_ (II. i. 8) and _subinde_ (I. iii. 10, iv. 13; II. iii. 23, ix. 1; III. ix. 7). There are poetic epithets like _inrequietum_ (II. ix. 1) which prose took over from Ovid, and there are phrases like _bello adfusus_ (I. i. 8) and _profunda siluarum_ (I. iii. 10) that have a Tacitean ring. _Annuntiare_ (= _nuntiare_, I. ix. 2) is one of the words common to Frontinus with the elder Pliny and Apuleius which passed through the _sermo cotidianus_ and ecclesiastical Latin into the Italian _annunziare_ and the French _annoncer_.

We have had occasion to point out resemblances between the _Strategemata_ and the _De Aquis_ in their Latin. The latter is nowhere more obviously post-Augustan, or non-Ciceronian, than in its employment of the superlative _piissimus_ (_De Aq._ 88). Used by Mark Antony and condemned by Cicero as impossible,[1277] it was accepted by Curtius, Seneca, Tacitus and Florus. Resemblances between Frontinus’s Latin and that of