74[1] again in 98,[2] and a third time in 100.[3] After his first incumbency of this office, he was dispatched to Britain as provincial governor.[4] In this post, as Tacitus[5] tells us, Frontinus fully sustained the traditions established by an able predecessor, Cerialis, and proved himself equal to the difficult emergencies with which he was called upon to cope. He subdued the Silures, a powerful and warlike tribe of Wales, and with the instinct for public improvements which dominated his whole career, at once began in the conquered district the construction of a highway, named from him the Via Julia, the course of which can still be made out, and some of whose ancient pavement, it is thought, may still be seen.[6]
From this provincial post he returned to Rome in 78, after which the next twenty years of his life are a blank. But to this period, from his forty-third to his sixty-second year, we attribute a large part of his writings. His treatise on the Art of War[7] may have been written immediately after his return from Britain in 78. His Strategemata is assigned by Gundermann to the years 84–90.[8] Within this period
- ↑ C. Nipperdey, Opuscula (Berlin, 1877), p. 520 ff., places the date of his first consulship in 73.
- ↑ C. I. L. iii. 2. p. 802; Mart. x. xlviii. 20.
- ↑ C. I. L. viii. 7066; vi. 2222.
- ↑ His exact tenure of office there is uncertain. Cf. E. Hübner, Die römischcen Legaten von Britannien. Rhein. Mus. xii. (1857), p. 52; Nipperdey, Opuscula, loc. cit.
- ↑ Agricola, xvii: sustinuitque molem, Iulius Frontinus, vir magnus, quantum licebat, validamque et pugnacem Silurum gentem armis subegit, super virtutem hostium locorum quoque difficultates eluctatus.
- ↑ Cf. Wm. Camden, Britannia, iii. p. 113; D. Williams, History of Monmouthshire, p. 36 ff.
- ↑ Cf. p. xviii.
- ↑ Cf. p. xx.
