Sextus Julius Frontinus

Sextus Julius Frontinus was a Roman senator and administrator, active in the late first century AD, who served three times as consul and as governor of Roman Britain before being appointed curator aquarum, supervisor of Rome's aqueducts, by the emperor Nerva in 97 AD. In that role he produced De Aquaeductu, an official two-book report to the emperor documenting Rome's nine aqueducts, their history, discharge rates and maintenance needs, which survives as the single most detailed primary account of Roman hydraulic engineering. The aqueduct network he administered was kept running by a large permanent maintenance workforce, whose individual members go unnamed in the surviving record even though Frontinus himself is well documented.