author
Sextus Julius Frontinus
d. 104
Best remembered for turning Rome’s water system into a subject worth writing about, this practical-minded Roman also built a reputation as a soldier, senator, and master of military strategy. His surviving works give a rare, direct look at how the Roman world managed war, engineering, and public infrastructure.
2 Audiobooks
Les stratagèmes
by Sextus Julius Frontinus
L'art de chevalerie selon Vegece
by de Pisan Christine, Honoré Bonet, Sextus Julius Frontinus, Flavius Vegetius Renatus
About the author
Born around the middle of the 1st century CE, Frontinus rose high in Roman public life as a soldier, administrator, and writer. Ancient sources and modern reference works describe him as a successful general who served in Britain and later held senior offices at Rome.
He is especially famous today for two works that have outlasted his political career: Strategemata, a collection of military examples and tactics, and De aquaeductu urbis Romae, his account of Rome’s aqueduct system. That second work is one of the clearest surviving windows into how the Romans organized, maintained, and regulated a vast urban water supply.
Although the exact year of his death is not certain, it is usually placed around 103 CE, with some sources giving 104 CE. What makes him memorable is the combination of talents behind the books: he was not only writing about strategy and engineering, but doing so from firsthand experience in government and public works.