Frontinus on the Water Supply of Rome

The Author, the Manuscripts

As with most ancient authors, little is known of Frontinus, and the Loeb edition's introductory material, by Charles Bennett, is about as good as one can get. It also includes a fairly detailed discussion of the authorship of both the De Aquis and the Strategemata.

The manuscripts of Frontinus are covered separately by the same author.

Text and Translations on LacusCurtius

The Latin text used is that published by Loeb in 1925, in the public domain. It is that of Clemens Herschel with minor changes.

The English translation is that by Charles E. Bennett in the Loeb edition, 1925.

It is now in the public domain pursuant to the 1978 revision of the U.S. Copyright Code, since the copyright was not renewed at the appropriate time. (Details here.)

For citation purposes, the Loeb edition pagination is indicated by local links in the sourcecode.

I also looked at, and rejected, the translation by Clemens Herschel, Dana Estes and Company (Boston), 1899.

Other Translations Online

I know of only one other: the 2003 translation by Prof. R. H. Rodgers of the University of Vermont; with many useful notes.

Proofreading

As almost always, I retyped the text rather than scanning it: not only to minimize errors prior to proofing, but as an opportunity for me to become intimately familiar with the work, an exercise which I heartily recommend. (Well-meaning attempts to get me to scan text, if successful, would merely turn me into some kind of machine: gambit declined.)

At any rate, the text has been thoroughly proofed, and I believe it to be free of errors (but if there are errors, please do report them).

Apparatus

The apparatus criticus for the De Aquis is quite simple, since the work has come down to us thru a single medieval manuscript, to the text of which Renaissance and later scholars have made emendations.

I'm therefore in the process of including on this site the entire photostatic reproduction of the manuscript, as found in Clemens Herschel's edition of Frontinus's work, entitled The Two Books of The Water Supply of the City of Rome of Sextus Julius Frontinus (Dana Estes and Company, Boston, 1899). You will thus have some pretty good information on your screen in front of you. Each numbered paragraph of the Latin text is, or will be, linked to the manuscript, which opens in a photo window; eventually apparatus will be included.

See this interim sample (exact format still being worked out).

Search Constraints

For ease of searching, especially since it's not very long, the work is entered on a single webpage (about 160K).

For the time being, until I find and burn in a suitable dynamic Latin font, the following arithmetical symbols used in the manuscript cannot be searched for: I'm using images.

an alternate symbol for mille, thousand

1/12 (an uncia or ounce)

2/12

3/12

1/24 (a semuncia)

1/288 (a scripulum = 1/24 of an uncia)