De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae
De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae
Managing Rome's water supply properly requires a precise technical and legal record of every aqueduct's history, capacity, and abuses, and publishing that record openly is itself a check against the corruption that had crept into the system.
- technical catalog of Rome's aqueducts as an instrument of governance
- written by the official directly responsible for the water supply
- exposes fraud and illegal tapping by earlier administrators
- major surviving source for Roman hydraulic engineering
Written by Frontinus shortly after his appointment as curator aquarum, the official in charge of Rome's water supply, this two-book technical report catalogs the city's nine aqueducts then in operation, their length, construction, sources, and delivery capacity, alongside the relevant laws governing water rights and a candid account of the fraud and illegal private tapping that officials before him had allowed to go unchecked. Unlike literary works composed for a broad public, the treatise reads as an administrative document, precise and numerically detailed, evidently meant partly to educate his own successors in the office, making it one of the best surviving sources for Roman hydraulic engineering and municipal administration.
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