Stratagems and The Aqueducts of Rome

Frontinus gave Rome two extraordinary gifts: the wisdom to win wars, and the vision to sustain a city. This volume gathers his two surviving works, revealing a mind that moved as easily between aqueduct calculations as between battlefield stratagems. The Stratagems collects cunning military maneuvers from Greek and Roman history, which Frontinus annotated through his own experience as a general in Germania. These are the stories Roman officers studied: not just brute force, but deception, timing, and psychological insight. Then comes De aquaeductu, his official report to the emperor on Rome's water supply. Here Frontinus becomes an engineer and administrator, cataloging the nine aqueducts that fed a metropolis of one million, detailing their construction, the laws governing their use, and the quality of water each provided. It is the earliest surviving technical treatise on urban infrastructure, a blueprint for how empires manage the impossible: keeping a city alive. These texts endure because they capture Roman power at its most practical: the calculated move on the battlefield, and the aqueduct that never stopped flowing.