by Frontinus
[129] “The consul Titus Quinctius Crispinus duly put the question to the people, and the people duly passed a vote in the Forum, before the Rostra of the temple of the Deified Julius on the thirtieth day of June. The Sergian tribe was to vote first. On their behalf, Sextus Varro, the son of Lucius, cast the first vote for the following measure: Whoever, after the passage of this law, shall maliciously and intentionally pierce, break, or countenance the attempt to pierce or break, the channels, conduits, arches, pipes, tubes, reservoirs, or basins of the public waters which are brought into the City, or who shall do damage with intent to prevent water-courses, or any portion of them from going, falling, flowing, reaching, or being conducted into the City of Rome; or so as to prevent the issue, distribution, allotment, or discharge into reservoirs or basins of any water at Rome or in those places or buildings which are now or shall hereafter be adjacent to the City, or in the gardens, properties, or estates of those owners or proprietors to whom the water is now or in future shall be given or granted, he shall be condemned to pay a fine of 100,000 sestertii to the Roman people; and in addition, whoever shall maliciously do any of these things shall be condemned to repair, restore, re-establish, reconstruct, replace what he has damaged, and quickly demolish what he has built — all in good faith and in such manner [as the commissioners may determine]. Further, whoever is or shall be water-commissioner, or in default of such officer, that praetor who is charged with judging between the citizens and strangers, is authorized to fine, bind over by bail, or restrain the offender. For that purposes, the right and power to compel, restrain, fine, and bind over, shall belong to every water-commissioner, or if there be none, to the praetor. If a slave shall do any such damage, his master shall be condemned to pay 100,000 sestertii to the Roman people. If any enclosure has been made or shall be made near the channels, conduits, arches, pipes, tubes, reservoirs, or basins of the public waters, which now are or in future shall be conducted into the City of Rome, no one shall, after the passage of this law, put in the way, construct, enclose, plant, establish, set up, place, plough, sow anything, or admit anything in that space unless for the purpose of doing those things and making those repairs which shall be lawful and obligatory under this law. If any one contravenes these provisions, against him shall apply the same statute, the same law, and the same procedure in every particular as could apply and ought to apply against him who in contravention of this statute has broken into or pierced the channel or conduit of an aqueduct. Nothing of this law shall revoke the privilege of pasturing cattle, cutting grass or hay, or gathering brambles in this place. The water-commissioners, present or future, in any place which is now enclosed about any springs, arches, walls, channels, or conduits, are authorized to have removed, pulled out, dug up, or uprooted, any trees, vines, briars, brambles, banks, fences, willow-thickets, or beds of reeds, so far as they are ready to proceed with justice; and to that end they shall possess the right to bind over, to impose fines, or to restrain the offender; and it shall be their privilege, right, and power to do the same without prejudice. As for the vines and trees inside the enclosures of country-houses, structures or fences; as to the fences, which the commissioners after due process have exempted their owners from tearing down, and on which have been inscribed or carved the names of the commissioners who gave the permission — as to all these, nothing in this enactment prevents their remaining. Nor shall anything in this law revoke the permits that have been given by the water-commissioners to any one to take or draw water from springs, channels, conduits, or arches, and besides that to use wheel, calix, or machine, provided that no well be dug, and that no new tap be made.”
[130] Utilissimae legis contemptores non negaverim dignos poena quae intenditur, sed neglegentia longi temporis deceptos leniter revocari oportuit. Itaque sedulo laboravimus ut quantum in nobis fuit, etiam ignorarentur qui erraverant. Eis vero qui admoniti ad indulgentiam imperatoris decucurrerunt, possumus videri causa impetrati beneficii fuisse. In reliquo
[130] I should call the transgressor of so beneficent a law worthy of the threatened punishment. But those who had been lulled into confidence by long-standing neglect had to be brought back by gentle means to right conduct. I therefore endeavoured with diligence to have the erring ones remain unknown as far as possible. Those who sought the Emperor’s pardon, after due warning received, may thank me for the favour granted. But for the future, I hope that the execution of the law may not be necessary, since it will be advisable for me to maintain the honour of my office even at the risk of giving offence.
The Biography
Aqua Marcia near Tivoli, the longest of the eleven aqueducts that supplied the city of ancient Rome — Frontinus was responsible for renovating the Aqua Marcia and an extension of its pipes to cover more of the city.
THE LIFE AND WORKS OF SEXTUS JULIUS FRONTINUS by Charles E. Bennett
Of the details of the life of Frontinus we are but scantily informed. His personality, as will be shown, stands out in his works in no ambiguous fashion, but the events of his career, so far as we can glean them, are few, disjointed and indefinite. Even the year of his birth is not known, but since Tacitus speaks of him as praetor urbanus in the year 70 A.D., we may infer that he was born not far from the year 35.
Of his family and of his birthplace we know as little. His family name, Julius, and the fact that he held the office of water commissioner, which, as he tells us, was from olden times administered by the most eminent men of the State, would point to patrician descent. His writings on surveying, so far as we have knowledge of them, betray the teachings of the Alexandrian school of mathematics, especially of Hero of Alexandria, and it is not unlikely that he was educated in that city.
He was three times elected consul, first in 73 or 74, again in 98, and a third time in 100. After his first incumbency of this office, he was dispatched to Britain as provincial governor. In this post, as Tacitus tells us, Frontinus fully sustained the traditions established by an able predecessor, Cerialis, and proved himself equal to the difficult emergencies with which he was called upon to cope. He subdued the Silures, a powerful and warlike tribe of Wales, and with the instinct for public improvements which dominated his whole career, at once began in the conquered district the construction of a highway, named from him the Via Julia, the course of which can still be made out, and some of whose ancient pavement, it is thought, may still be seen.
From this provincial post he returned to Rome in 78, after which the next twenty years of his life are a blank. But to this period, from his forty-third to his sixty-second year, we attribute a large part of his writings. His treatise on the Art of War may have been written immediately after his return from Britain in 78. His Strategemata is assigned by Gundermann to the years 84-96. Within this period also his services as Augur doubtless began, an office in which the younger Pliny succeeded him at his death in 103 or 104.
In 97 he was appointed to the post of water commissioner, the office whose management gives him probably his best title to eminence, and during the tenure of this he wrote the De Aquis. The office of water commissioner he held presumably until his death.
The De Aquis is primarily a valuable repository of information concerning the aqueducts of Rome. But it is far more than that. It gives us a picture of the faithful public servant, charged with immense responsibility, called suddenly to an office that had long been a sinecure and wretchedly mismanaged, confronted with abuses and corruption of long standing, and yet administering his charge with an eye only to the public service and an economical use of the public funds. It is this aspect of the De Aquis which lends it, despite its generally technical nature and its absolute lack of stylistic charm, a certain literary character. It depicts a man; it depicts motives and ideals, the springs of conduct.
The administration of which Frontinus was a part was essentially one of municipal reform. Nerva and Trajan alike aimed to correct the
abuses and favouritism of the preceding régime. They not only chose able and devoted assistants in their new policy; they themselves set good examples for imitation.
In Frontinus they found a loyal and zealous champion of their reforms. Realizing the importance of his office, he proceeded to the study of its details with the spirit of the true investigator, displaying at all times a scrupulous honesty and fidelity. Were one asked to point out, in all Roman history, another such example of civic virtue and conscientious performance of simple duty, it would be difficult to know where to find it. Men of genius, courage, patriotism are not lacking, but examples are few of men who laboured with such whole-souled devotion in the performance of homely duty, the reward for which could certainly not be large, and might possibly not exceed the approval of one’s own conscience.
In Martial we have a picture of Frontinus spending his leisure days in a delightful environment. Pliny writes of appealing to him as one well qualified to help to settle a legal dispute. In the preface to an essay on farming which Frontinus wrote, it is stated that he was interrupted in his writing by being obliged to serve as a soldier, and it is thought that this may have been on the occasion of Trajan’s expedition against the Dacians in 99; this, however, is pure conjecture.
Near Oppenheim in Germany has been found an inscription dedicated by Julia Frontina, presumably the daughter of Frontinus; its date is supposed to be about 84. Another inscription near the ancient Vetera Castra is dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva in recognition of the recovery from illness of Sextus Julius Frontinus; and there is also a lead pipe, said to have been found near the modern Via Tiburtina, inscribed SEXTIULIFRONTINI.
Pliny has preserved for us a saying of Frontinus, “Remembrance will endure if the life shall have merited it,” and the truth of the words is most aptly exemplified in the case of their author. Rich and valuable as is his treatise, the De Aquis, in facts relating to the administration of ancient aqueducts, it is the personality of the writer that one loves to contemplate, his sturdy honesty, his conscientious devotion to the duties of his office, his patient attention to details, his loyal attachment to the sovereign whom he delighted to serve, his willing labours in behalf of the people whose convenience, comfort and safety he aimed to promote. We sympathize with him in his proud boast that by his reforms he has not only made the city cleaner, but the air purer, and has removed the causes of pestilence that had formerly given the city such a bad repute; and we can easily pardon the Roman Philistinism with which, after enumerating the lengths and courses of the several aqueducts, he inquires in a burst of enthusiasm, “Who will venture to compare with these mighty works the pyramids or the useless though famous works of the Greeks?” A thorough Roman of the old school, he has surely by his life, as revealed in the De Aquis, abundantly merited the remembrance which posterity has accorded and will long continue to accord him.
The works of Frontinus are all of a technical nature, written, as he tells us, partly for his own instruction, and partly for the advantage of others. The first of these was probably a treatise on the Art of Surveying, of which fragments are extant. It consisted originally of two books, and the excerpts, collected by Lachmann, treat the following subjects: de agrorum qualitate, de controversiis, de limitibus, de controversiis agrorum. The work is known to us principally through the codex Arcerianus at Wolfenbüttel, dating probably from the sixth or not later than the seventh century, which appears to have been a book used by the Roman State employees and contains treatises on Roman law and land surveying, including some pages of Frontinus. Various citations in other authors from this work of Frontinus point to the latter as a pioneer in this practical work of the Roman surveyor, and to his writings as the standard authority for many years.
The composition by Frontinus of a military work of a theoretical nature is attested first by his own words in the preface to his Strategemata, and also by statements of Aelian, a late contemporary, and of Vegetius, who wrote on the Art of War some three centuries later. This treatise is wholly lost, except in so far as Vegetius may have incorporated it in his own work.
The Strategemata, presumably following the lost work on the Art of War, which it was designed to supplement, narrates varied instances of successful stratagems, which illustrate the rules of military science, and which may serve to foster in other generals the power of conceiving and executing like deeds. As it has come down to us, the work consists of four books, three of them written by Frontinus, the fourth by an author of unknown identity. These four books were still further increased by additional examples, interpolated here and there throughout the work.
Such is Gundermann’s conclusion, resulting from his own investigations added to those of Wachsmuth and Wölfflin. From internal evidence Gundermann places the composition of the first three books between 84 and 96, basing this inference upon references to Domitian, who is repeatedly called Germanicus, a title not given to him until after his expedition against the Germans in 83, and who is nowhere called divus, as is Vespasian in the Strategemata, and Nerva in the De Aquis, so that the composition of the work evidently fell within the lifetime of Domitian. The dating of the fourth book is a matter of conjecture. Wachsmuth assigned it to the fourth or fifth century, believing it the work of a ludi magister, who compiled it when seeking examples suitable for declamationes or controversiae. Wölfflin saw no reason to dissent from this conclusion. Gundermann, while admitting that there is no argument to prove that it was not written then, — except that if this view is correct, the pseudo-Frontinus must have imitated the purer speech of Frontinus summo studio, — thinks that its composition belongs rather to the beginning of the second century, and that its author was a student of rhetoric who lived not long after Frontinus, a dull man who did not weigh the value of his sources in his compilation. Gundermann cites IV.III.14 to support his theory, but Wachsmuth would transpose this example to the second book as being applicable to Frontinus himself. Schanz enters into the controversy and says that the language of the fourth book conclusively refutes Wachsmuth’s view; he submits instead the theory that the author of this book was a contemporary of Frontinus, the officer to whom the Lingones submitted in 70 A.D., who drew his examples from Frontinus and other sources, and that a third person joined the two works, wrote a preface to the fourth book, and added to the preface of the first book. This hypothesis, he thinks, removes the troublesome problem of duplicates, which could easily creep in with a third reader somewhat superficially handling new material.
The points of dissimilarity between the first three books and the fourth are treated in detail by Wachsmuth, and even more exhaustively by Wölfflin. The two works differ first of all in the plan followed by their respective authors. Frontinus in his preface outlines the arrangement which he proposes to follow in presenting examples: in the first book he will give illustrations of stratagems employed before the battle begins; in the second, those that refer to the battle itself and that tend to effect the complete subjugation of the enemy; the third will contain stratagems connected with sieges and the raising of sieges. To this arrangement the titles of the chapters in the first three books conform, whereas the headings of the chapters in the fourth book give no suggestion of historical stratagems, but belong rather, as Wachsmuth says, to a militarisches Moralbüchlein. Stewechius, for this reason, conjectured that this fourth book might be Frontinus’s theoretical work, but its preface controverts this idea.
In his further proof of the spurious character of the fourth book, Wachsmuth points out that of the duplicate illustrations found throughout the entire work, all but one occur in Book IV; he notes also that the examples in this book are drawn much more largely from Valerius Maximus than are those of the earlier books, and that several of its titles correspond to titles employed by Valerius Maximus, and he further proceeds to cite thirty-two passages, which he claims are taken almost verbatim from that author. He contrasts the use of such words as traditur, fertur, dicitur, which he claims are found in no genuine example in the fir
st three books, with the constat of the true Frontinus, who would regard illustrations of unsafe tradition as of little benefit to the generals whom he wished to instruct.
Wachsmuth finds traces of the pseudo-Frontinus in the fourth paragraph of the preface to Book I, which are designed to pave the way for the fourth book, where the στρατηγικὰ outnumber the στρατηγήματα, and where the writer has a distinct preference for dicta.