Customer Reviews

Frontinus: Stratagems. Aqueducts of Rome. (Loeb Classical Library No. 174)

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The Strategems is a little-known work that is filled with cunning tricks used by ancient generals. Unfortunately Frontinus' other work, the "Art of War" doesn't survive. But the Strategems is still a very interesting piece of literature, reminding me of Sun Tzu in many ways. Also look out for Aeneas Tacticus, Onasander and Asclepiodotus in Loeb, for other military manuals from ancient times!

I was first directed to Frontinus on the basis that the "Aqueducts" section was one of the earliest recordes of project management practice. That is absolutely incorrect; one could stretch it to say that it discusses some early program-level management considerations. What it is in fact is a remarkable picture of the complexity of the engineering and political arrangements that brought water from a wide distance to serve a city whose population was likely nearly equal to the entire rest of the Italian peninsula at that time. There is no question that such a feat would be impossible in the USA in 2012 due to regulations alone, and one wonders whether the construction competence exists either.

"Aqueducts" is the last quarter of the book. The first three quarters, "Strategems", does not offer much really to anyone with even a rudimentary military background. A lot of the strategems are very much localized tactics or means of dealing with rather small bodies of troops, in many cases with at least one side under the control of someone with little or no military experience and/or common sense - i.e. an aristocrat sent out to lead the troops off to a battle, with no "boot camp" but plenty of often-dangerous concepts of "honor". Remember that at the time, even in Rome most military generals were inexperienced politicians who put up with a general's appointment as a required step on the ladder to the Senate, and as the opportunity to build an actual treasure chest through campaign booty (takes the concept of campaign funding to a new level, or maybe not). The experienced generals became governors and eventually Emperors; most of the rest died as a result of early critical mistakes. So, how to gain the experience needed at least to survive, except natural talent or sheer luck? It is for these amateurs that Frontinus has prepared his compendium of "what other military leaders did successfully in typical situations". Regardless of the quality of the actual suggestions, many of which required conditions that would be unlikely to recur even in those days, this little book represents an astounding feat of scholarship, pulling details from military actions across the then-known world [not just Roman engagements] over a period of some five hundred years [roughly 400 BC to 75 AD].

In short, this short book is quite fun and very illuminating. Give it to your favorite historian or engineer!

The famous quote of Frontinus, commissioner of public water works under Trajan:
"With such an array of indispensable structures carrying so many waters, compare, if you will, the idle Pyramids or the useless, though famous, works of the Greeks!" Perhaps the Aqueducts of Rome, with its scientific shortcomings, does not have the audience of the Strategems. But it shows that those Romans knew how to get things done: a city of one million had a water supply comparable to a metropolis today. The famous quote recalls the effort of the Romans to distinguish their culture by outdoing all others in utility and sheer size.