Sextus Julius Frontinus

Julius Frontinus was appointed by the Emperor Nerva to the post of water commissioner for the city of Rome in 97 CE. In On the Water-Rights of the City of Rome he documents his duties, responsibilities and accomplishments during his first year in office. He also sketches the history of the aqueducts and furnishes a wealth of technical data. This is the most authoritative edition of this work to be published to date.

Strategemata, or Stratagems, is a work by Frontinus, a collection of examples of military stratagems from Greek and Roman history, ostensibly for the use of generals. Frontinus is assumed to have written Strategemata towards the end of the first century AD, possibly in connection with a lost work on military theory. Frontinus is best known as a writer on water engineering, but he had a distinguished military career. In Stratagems he draws partly on his own experience as a general in Germany under Domitian. However, most of the (more than five hundred) examples which he gives are less recent, and similarities to versions in other Roman authors like Valerius Maximus and Livy suggest that he drew mainly on literary sources. The work consists of four books, of which three are undoubtedly by Frontinus. The authenticity of the fourth book has been challenged.