CAMBRIDGE CLASSICAL TEXTS AND COMMENTARIES

EDITORS

J. DIGGLE N. HOPKINSON J. G. F. POWELL
M. D. REEVE D. N. SEDLEY R. J. TARRANT

42

FRONTINUS: DE AQUAEDUCTU
URBIS ROMAE

FRONTINUS

DE AQUAEDUCTU URBIS
ROMAE

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTARY
BY
R. H. RODGERS

Professor of Classics, The University of Vermont

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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© Cambridge University Press 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Baskerville 11/13 pt. System LATEX 2_e [TB]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Frontinus, Sextus Julius.
[De aquis urbis Romae]
De aquaeductu urbis Romae / Frontinus; edited with introduction and commentary by R. H. Rodgers.
p. cm. – (Cambridge classical texts and commentaries ; 42)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 83251 9
1. Water-supply – Italy – Rome – Early works to 1800. 2. Aqueducts – Italy – Rome – Early works to 1800. 3. Water-supply – Early works to 1800. 4. Aqueducts – Early works to 1800. I. Rodgers, Robert H. (Robert Howard), 1944–. II. Title. III. Series
PA6389.F4 2003
628.1′5′09376 – dc21 2003053181

ISBN 0 521 83251 9

TO
HERBERT BLOCH

CONTENTS

TABLES

MAPS

PREFACE

Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina;
 quam magni fueris integra, fracta doces. . . .
non tamen annorum series, non flamma, nec ensis
 ad plenum potuit hoc abolere decus.
Hildebert of Lavardin, c. 1100 CE

Metropolitan Rome, the domina orbis, can to this day point with especial pride to one of the gems in her imperial crown: a copious, ever-flowing supply of public water. And beginning at least with Strabo, visitors to the Eternal City have not failed to admire the architectural grandeur of the aqueducts. ‘Der schöne große Zweck, ein Volk zu tränken durch eine so ungeheure Anstalt!’ wrote Goethe in November 1786. ‘Diese Menschen arbeiteten für die Ewigkeit, es war auf alles kalkuliert, nur auf den Unsinn der Verwüster nicht, dem alles weichen mußte.’

    In the year 97 CE Julius Frontinus was appointed by the emperor Nerva to the post of curator aquarum for the City of Rome. Frontinus exemplifies the ideal of a high-ranking senator who works closely with his prince in service to the commonwealth. He sees the aqueducts under his charge as monuments of  Roman greatness, for their practical value more wonderful even than the fabled pyramids. In the present booklet, De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae, Frontinus sets forth his duties, responsibilities and accomplishments during approximately one year in office as curator. By the time he is writing, Nerva has died and Rome awaits the arrival of the new emperor Trajan, in whose accession Frontinus himself seems to have played no small role.

    Our author sketches the history of Rome’s aqueducts, furnishes a wealth of technical data on supply and delivery, quotes verbatim from legal documents and touches on a variety of other topics incidental to his administrator’s viewpoint. Yet he is not composing a treatise on the engineering of aqueducts, he barely concerns himself with fiscal aspects of management, nor does he compile what might comprise a comprehensive administrative manual of use to a successor. Scholars who are grateful for such information as he provides are nonetheless prone to consult this text rather than to read it. Frontinus, in consequence, has been alternatively under-rated and over-rated both as a technical writer and as an administrator. In plain truth we do not surely understand what purpose he might have intended for the De Aquaeductu and the work remains something of an enigma. Nothing quite like it is known, let alone survives, from the ancient world.

    This edition of the De Aquaeductu is the first in eighty years to be based on the single authoritative witness, that sadly blemished exemplar which Poggio discovered at Monte Cassino in 1429. ‘Authors surviving in a solitary MS. are by far the easiest to edit,’ wrote Housman. ‘They are the easiest, and for a fool they are the safest.’ But since Fritz Krohn in 1922, no editor has chosen the easy pathway of reliance on this unique manuscript, for all have been misled in vain attempts to retrieve an independent tradition amongst its fifteenth-century progeny. From the starting-point of the Codex Casinensis there is progress still to be made, I believe, especially by taking into account the idiosyncrasies of its twelfth-century scribe, Peter the Deacon of Monte Cassino, a man notorious for literary affectation but nonetheless an intriguing figure in the long process by which classical antiquity was rediscovered and appreciated.

    No full commentary on the De Aquaeductu has been written since Giovanni Poleni’s masterpiece of 1722, and the task is a daunting one – not least because his credentials were those of a hydraulic engineer and professor of mathematics. In the words of the late Pierre Grimal, ‘Plus que nul autre texte, le traité de Frontin impose à l’éditeur une compréhension minutieuse de chaque mot, chaque phrase, et oblige de dépasser la critique verbale pure et simple pour saisir les realia.’ Indeed, the realia of which he speaks are themselves richly varied. They encompass not only the stuff of history, archaeology and technology but extend to such matters as the exacting details of Roman law and the intricacies of fractions in Roman arithmetical computation. Under such circumstances, a commentator may perhaps be forgiven superficiality of a sort on the one hand and a certain speculative latitude on the other. I have done what I could to give appropriate attention to content and interpretation as well as to text and language.

    My engagement with the text of Frontinus began a quarter century ago in conjunction with a seminar in Latin epigraphy at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978, and the initial stages of my work were supported by grants from that university’s Committee on Research and from the American Philosophical Society. I profited enormously from the resources of the Harvard College Library during a term as Visiting Lecturer in 1980, and in 1986 I enjoyed the congenial hospitality of the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. The edition and commentary took on a preliminary form during the year 1986–7, the period for which I was honoured to be a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow. The Foundation’s generosity made possible a trip to Italy in May 1987, with the opportunity for study in the Vatican Library and to re-examine the codex unicus in the abbey library at Monte Cassino. As a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in 1996 I discovered that the architecture and topography of Rome constitute an unadvertised strength of its library. In the final throes of preparation I received welcome subsidy for cartographic assistance from the dean’s fund for professional development in the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Vermont. To all these institutions, and to the supportive band of colleagues and friends who comprise them, I express sincere and lasting gratitude.

    Both text and commentary are by their very nature tralaticious endeavours, and far beyond reckoning are the debts I owe to my predecessors. That I specially admire the accomplishments of Poleni and Bücheler should be apparent on every page of this edition, and to the loving labours of Thomas Ashby I have felt the keenest attraction. The bibliography will reveal some at least of the crucial help I have garnered from women and men who represent an extensive range of scholarly expertise over a period of more than five centuries. Of closer friends those to whom I can no longer render thanks in person include Arthur and Joyce Gordon, Peter Marshall, George Goold and John D’Arms.

    For help and support of various sorts over many years I respectfully acknowledge Crawford Greenewalt Jr, W. Kendrick Pritchett, Richard Thomas, John Humphrey, Bruce Frier, Ruth Scodel, Christina Kraus, John Peter Oleson, James Clauss, Robert Arns, Andrea Salgado, Francis Newton, Z. Philip Ambrose, Peter Aicher, William Mierse, Jane Chaplin, Jacques Bailly, Cyrus Rodgers, Audrey Hunt, Eleanor Rodgers, Jonathan Huener and Lutz Kaelber. Among those who patiently criticised discrete parts of this work I owe special thanks to Charles  Murgia, Harry Evans, Trevor Hodge, Michael  Crawford, Christer Bruun, Rabun Taylor, Roger Cooke and Michael Peachin. It goes without saying that none of these persons is responsible for any follies in which I have persisted.  Helena Fracchia and Maurizio Gualtieri accompanied me on pleasant outings among the remains of the aqueducts and will attest that I was totally unprepared for their breathtaking majesty.

    Don Faustino Avagliano, librarian and archivist, graciously received me on two separate visits to Monte Cassino. Long and pleasant hours were spent in great libraries at Harvard, Ann Arbor and Berkeley; in many cases I found rewarding resources in their numerous branches, notably the Houghton Library at Harvard and the Bancroft Library at Berkeley. Amongst individual librarians, I am specially indebted to Irene Vaslef and Mark Zapatka (Dumbarton Oaks), Jean Hannon (Harvard Law School) and Luminita Florea (Robbins Collection, Boalt Hall, Berkeley). My own library at the University of Vermont has proudly maintained a strong collection in classical studies; for books not available here I am grateful to Connell Gallagher in Special Collections for an occasional purchase, and to Nancy Rosedale, Lisa King, Barbara Lamonda and Daryl Purvee in the interlibrary loan department for constant labours on my behalf.

    The map showing the extra-urban courses of Rome’s aqueducts is based upon a similar map in Peter Aicher’s Guide to the Aqueducts of Ancient Rome (1995), with permission of Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. That for the network within the City is based upon one appearing in Harry Evans’ Water Distribution in Ancient Rome: The Evidence of Frontinus (1994), with permission of the University of Michigan Press. For expert cartographic modifications to these and for the map showing piscinae I acknowledge the cheerful collaboration of my colleague Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux. It was a welcome relief when Christer Bruun agreed to let me include his discussion on the value of the quinaria (appearing here as Appendix C), for it spared me the frustrating task of covering the same dreary ground.

    Professor Michael Reeve has awaited the final version of this book with far more patience than I deserve. For his careful scrutiny, gentle corrections and wise suggestions I am more grateful than I can say. Staff of the Cambridge University Press have been consistently helpful: among those who merit special thanks are commissioning editors Pauline Hire and Michael Sharp and production editors Neil de Cort and Alison Powell. Copy-editor Linda Woodward bent to her task with a singular diligentia by which she has deserved well of Frontinus.

    My wife Barbara Saylor Rodgers has had to hear all of my thoughts from their first tentative expressions, for I rely constantly upon her ability as an historian and a Latinist. Her steady encouragement has been, I hope, to good effect, and for my faults she can bear no blame. Warmest of all is my heartfelt appreciation for the long, unselfish and never lessening interest of Professor Herbert Bloch: that I am still his disciple is a special joy.