144 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



compilation from earlier, and especially Greek, authors, and in 

 part original. Vitruvius uses for TT the value 3 J, less ac- 

 curate than that of Archimedes, but displaced later by the crude 

 approximation 3. Of Vitruvius's life and work almost nothing is 

 known, but no other ancient treatise of a similar technical nature 

 has had in its own field so much influence on posterity. 



FRONTINUS ON THE WATERWORKS OF ROME (c. 40-103 A.D.). 

 At about the end of the first century of our era, Sextus Julius 

 Frontinus, a Roman soldier and engineer, wrote a highly interest- 

 ing and valuable account of the waterworks of Rome. Frontinus 

 served as prcetor under Vespasian ; was afterwards sent to Britain 

 as Roman governor of that island ; was superseded by Agricola in 

 78 A.D. and was appointed in 97 A.D. Curator Aquarum, " an office 

 never conferred except upon persons of very high standing." 



ROMAN NATURAL SCIENCE AND MEDICINE. Among the Roman 

 workers and authors of importance in the history of natural science 

 and medicine only a few require more than passing notice. This 

 is the more remarkable when we reflect upon the vast extension of 

 the Roman empire and the novel and hitherto unequalled op- 

 portunities afforded for observation and collection in natural 

 history, and for the study of anthropology, geography, geology, 

 meteorology, climatology, zoology, botany and the like, not to 

 mention military surgery, and the hygiene and sanitation of camp- 

 life. 



LUCRETIUS (98-55 B.C.) is to-day regarded not only as a great 

 Roman poet but also as the most perfect exponent in his time of 

 the natural philosophy of the Greeks who preceded him. He was 

 a contemporary and a few years the junior of Cicero and Julius 

 Caesar. The first two books and the fifth of his De Rerum 

 Natura (On the Nature of Things) are of interest to the modern 

 scientific student, because of their dealing with problems of per- 

 manent importance to mankind. He was a disciple of Epicurus, 

 and apparently also well acquainted with the works of Empedocles, 

 Democritus, Anaxagoras, and many other of the great Greek writers 

 such as Homer, Hippocrates, Thucydides, and especially Euripides. 

 The title of his famous poem shows his interest in natural philos- 



