Frontinus was a Roman soldier and writer, whose work was widely read both in his own time and later. The works of Frontinus are also referred to in several later treatises on tactics, for instance Aelian's Tactica, in which Aelian writes that the works of "Frontinus, a man of Consular dignity in our time, are to be read." Vegetius Renatus states in his Epitoma rei militaris that his own work is derived from, among others, Frontinus. Frontinus continued to be read throughout the Middle Ages.

Frontinus' three books of the Strategematicon, probably first published in AD 84, forms a collection of examples of military stratagems from Greek and Roman history. The Strategematicon, as it has come down to us, also includes a fourth book, the plan and style of which is somewhat different from the first three books. The fourth book lays more stress on discipline and similar aspects of war.

The fourth book is therefore generally regarded as the work of another writer, known as Pseudo-Frontinus. Frontinus claimed that his Strategematicon was the first Roman attempt to reduce the art of war to a science. He also wrote two other, now lost, works on tactics and the art of war, one of them an essay about the tactics used in the times of Homer.

The present translation, from 1811, begins with a rather tedious life of Frontinus, of whom little is in fact known. Frontinus was born about AD 32 (or 35), perhaps in Sicily. In 70, he was city praetor. About five years later he succeeded Petillius Cerealis as governor of Britain. There he subdued the Silures, in present south-east Wales. He was superseded by Agricola in 78.

Frontinus, a friend of Pliny the Younger, died around AD 106 (or 103). He also wrote on agriculture, roadworks, and aqueducts.Several of the anecdotes provided by Frontinus, for his work is fundamentally a collection on anecdotes on military science, are of interest also for times much later than Frontinus himself.

One anecdote describes how the consul, C. Duilius, when finding himself on a ship blocked by a chain drawn across the mouth of the port of Segesta, caused his troops to assemble on the poop, to force it down into the water, and proportionally to raise the prow, which by an impulse from the oars then advanced upon the chain. The consul then passed the soldiers rapidly to the prow, and their weight impelling the vessel, caused it to glide gradually over the chain, and out of the port.

Exactly the same method was reportedly used by the Norwegian Viking King, Harald Hardraadi, when still a young man in Byzantine service. If my memory does not fail me, the method is also described in the Nibelungenlied. The question is, did the chroniclers of those events report what their heroes had actually done, or did they merely embellish their stories with an anecdote lifted from Frontinus? Or if they reported true incidents, had their Germanic heroes learnt about this method from the work of Frontinus? We may never know.

Frontinus also provides a short section on military intelligence and espionage, titled 'Discovery of the Designs of an Enemy'. Here we find Scipio Africanus disguising "the most intelligent of his tribunes" as slaves when on a diplomatic mission to the enemy camp. There they let loose a horse and, under the pretence of retaking him, run through every part of the camp.

In another anecdote we find the consul, Q. Fabius Maximus, sending his brother, who understood the enemy language, dressed in enemy garb, on a reconnaissance mission into enemy territory. In yet other anecdotes, the Carthaginians send spies far and wide; Roman troops are sent on a mission to capture enemy soldiers for interrogation purposes; a sealed letter is used to determine whether an unreliable ally would open it and divulge the contents to the enemy; the rapid flight of birds from a forest or hill is taken as a sign that enemy soldiers are hiding in it, preparing an ambush; and it is explained how reports on the fatigued condition of horses and the tanned expression of men after a long sunny, march have been used for intelligence purposes.

It should be pointed out that Frontinus is also translated in the Loeb series, where his works (The Stratagems and the Aqueducts of Rome, translated 1925) are collected in one volume. I have not had the chance to compare the two translations, but as older translations generally are less reliable, although often more complete, I advise caution. The biography of Frontinus in this early nineteenth-century work also disagrees with some contemporary biographies, but I cannot say which is correct, if any. Another curious detail is that Gareth has titled the book "Strategimaticon & Strategicon", although it should more properly be called the Strategematicon. Nonetheless, "Strategimaticon & Strategicon" provides plenty of information and certainly suggests a large number of scenarios for wargamers.

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