Frontinus technical treatises in close-up and in context

This research project (which will result in a monograph, to be published by CUP) examines the surviving works of Julius Frontinus, both for their own sake and as a window onto his world. It aims to develop our understanding of Frontinus’ concerns and credentials as a writer, and to expose the extent of his impact upon Roman literary, social and political life. In the process, it will make significant contributions to the study of ancient ‘technical’ writing, ancient categories of knowledge, Domitianic, Nervan and Trajanic politics, and elite identity and aspirations during that period.

In his lifetime, Frontinus reached political heights which few contemporaries could boast of, becoming consul three times and one of Nerva and Trajan’s closest associates. References in Martial, Tacitus and Pliny reveal that he also became a benchmark against which other men and standards of behaviour could be weighed up. And he wrote a number of treatises on themes central to the administration and ideology of the Roman empire: land surveying, military tactics, and Rome’s aqueduct network. Yet despite his fame in his own day, his interaction with well-known contemporary figures, and the highly charged subject matter of his writings, Frontinus still languishes in the footnotes of Flavian and Trajanic scholarship, referenced in passing but rarely examined for his own sake or on his own terms.
The monograph I am writing aims to change this. My primary objective is to present new readings of his three surviving texts. His military and land surveying works have been very little explored; and while his aqueduct treatise has been the subject of a number of publications, there is still scope for further analysis of its stylistic aspirations, deployment of technical data, political concerns and personal agenda – and especially for a discussion which can bring these strands together. In presenting detailed analyses of all three texts in one volume, I will bring them into proper dialogue with each other for the first time. And in reading them alongside other contemporary texts, I will expose the extent of Frontinus’ engagement with contemporary issues and people.
This will introduce wider themes. Through its examination of Frontinus’ literary experiments, my book will address questions of genre and challenge widely held assumptions about ancient ‘technical’ writing. It will shed new light on the functioning and currency of different types of knowledge in the ancient world, from practical know-how to theorised science. In illuminating Frontinus’ engagement with successive Roman emperors, it will deepen our understanding of Flavian, Nervan and Trajanic policies and rhetoric, and of the role played by writers in representing and shaping them. And my examination of Frontinus’ social and political aspirations and interaction with his peers will sharpen the picture we already have of elite life in the period, in particular the challenges and opportunities facing the senatorial class in the wake of Domitian’s assassination and the start of a ‘new’ era. This monograph aims to make significant contributions, then, to the social, political and literary history of imperial Rome, as well as presenting a holistic and fully contextualised account of the life and works of one of its most interesting characters.
I will draw on a wealth of research that has grown out of the study of ancient science over the last three decades. One particular strand has exposed scientific and technical writing to new scrutiny. Traditionally mined for the information they preserve, works on mathematics, architecture, medicine, astronomy, geography and rhetoric have begun to be approached from a more literary angle. Studies have explored their organisational tactics and rhetorical strategies, their authors’ personae and the relationships they construct with their readers, and their social, cultural and political embeddedness. A number of collaborative projects (including some with which I have been involved) have brought many of these texts into contact with each other, exposing common features but also the huge range of styles and agenda (for example, C. Nicolet (ed.), Les littératures techniques dans l’antiquité romaine (Geneva, 1996); C. Santini, I. Mastrorosa & A. Zumbo, Letteratura scientifica e tecnica di Grecia e Roma (Rome, 2002); J. König & T. Whitmarsh, Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2007); L. Taub & A. Doody, Authorial Voices in Greco-Roman Technical Writing (Trier, 2009); and a Leverhulme Trust funded research project into Science and Empire in the Roman World based at the University of St Andrews).
Frontinus’ De Aquis has found its way into some of these projects, but his military and land surveying works have yet to benefit (only one article on the De Arte Mensoria stands out: Cuomo’s ‘Divide and rule: Frontinus and Roman land surveying’, SHPS 31, 189-202). My book aims to put this right, by bringing recent developments in the study of ancient scientific and technical writing properly to bear on all three texts. But I will also draw on – and contribute to – other areas of scholarship. My analysis of the De Arte Mensoria, for example, will engage with work on ancient physical and conceptual geography, exploring the text’s attempts to re-order landscape (both real and ideological) as well as its re-ordering of different categories of knowledge. I will build on recent research into Latin didactic and the exempla tradition in my discussion of the Strategemata and its combative relationship with its readers and with other military, historical and compilatory texts. And my reading of this text and the De Aquis will engage with a raft of recent publications on Flavian and Trajanic literature and politics. Although the political background to Frontinus’ De Aquis has often been discussed, the overlaps between its political agenda and those of authors like Tacitus and Pliny have yet to be exposed; and, with the exception of one article (Turner, ‘Frontinus and Domitian: laus principis in the Strategemata’, HSCP 103, 423-49), the politics of the Strategemata remain largely unexplored. Frontinus is rare in having written and published under both Domitian and Trajan (a point often overlooked); I will argue that he has as much to tell us about both periods as other, better known contemporary authors.
Cambridge University Press has agreed to publish this book, which should guarantee it a wide circulation. It is aimed primarily at scholars and postgraduates, but I aim to make it accessible to undergraduates and non-specialists too. It comprises five chapters, each divided into several thematic sections. This should enable readers to dip in and out or read through, as they require, and should also foster the sense which this book is keen to promote, that Frontinus can be approached from many different angles and is relevant – and important – to the study of many different fields.