Dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

AQUAEDUCTUS. AQ UAEDUCTUS. 309
sity that led to the invention ff aqueducts, in very existence of their numerous fountains; as a deorder to bring pure water from a considerable cisive ocular demonstration, we have given above a
distance, from the hills, in fact, which surround the section of one of the many fountains still existing
Campagna. The date of the first aqueduct is as- at Pompeii. Another reason assigned for the
signed by Frontinus to the year A. U. c. 441, or construction of aqueducts by the Romans is their
B.c. 313 (De Aquaed. Urb. Romn. 4, p. 14, ed. wanlt of the materials, and the manufacturing skill,
Adler); and the number of aqueducts was gra- to make pipes of a sufficient size; combined, on
dually increased, partly at the public expense, and the other hand, with the love of magnificence and
partly by the munificence of individuals, till, in the the ostentatious disregard of expense, by which
time of Procopius, they amounted to fourteen; the architectural works of the empire are chaand, even before they were all erected, they might racterised. Some weight should doubtless be aswell excite the admiration which Pliny expresses signed to these considerations, although, in fact,
with respect to the Claudian aqueduct, in the fol- the Romans made use of pipes as well as aqueducts:
lowing passage (H. N. xxxvi. 15. s. 24): -" But but the great point is, that it has been too hastily
if any one will carefully calculate the quantity of assumed that the aqueduct is an unscientific mode
the public supply of water, for baths, reservoirs, of conveying water to a large city from distant
houses, trenches (ezsripi), gardens, and suburban sources; or that it is peculiar to the ancients.
villas; and, along the distance which it traverses, London itself is chiefly supplied by an aqueduct,
the arches built, the mountains perforated, the for such is the New River in principle, although
valleys levelled; he will confess that there never the country through which itflows is such as not
was any thing more wonderful in the whole world." to require arches and tunnels like those of the
But why did the Romans waste so much Roman aqueducts; and the remark would apply to
money and labour on works, the purpose of which several other great cities. The whole matter is a
might have been effected much more scientifically question of the balance of advantages. On the
by the simple plan of laying pipes along the one hand there is the expense of the aqueduct:
ground? Of course, it is easy to give the unthink- on the other, the enormous pipes which would be
ing answer, that they were ignorant of the laws of required for the conveyance of an equal quantity
hydrostatics, and did not know that water finds of water, their liability to get obstructed, and to
its own level! It is truly marvellous that such yield at the joints, the loss by friction, especially
an absurd notion should ever have been enter- in the bends, and the unequal pressure of the
tained, and yet it is the common explanation of water. In fact, the most recent feat of engineerthe fact of their building aqueducts instead of ing science in this department is exactly a return
laying down water-pipes. If it were at all neces- to the Roman aqueduct, which has been preferred
cessary to prove that a nation, so far advanced in to any other plan for conveying water in large
civilisation as the Romans, or indeed that any in- quantities a considerable distance, over great individual arrived at years of discretion, had dis- equalities of ground: we refer to the aqueduct,
covered that water finds its own lavel, the proof begun in 1837 and finished in 1842, by which
might be supplied from passages in Latin authors *, the water of the river Croton is conveyed a disfrom the whole arrangements for the distribution tance of forty miles, for the supply of New York,
of the water of the aqueducts, and from the and which is thus described: -" An artificial
channel, built with square stones, supported on
solid masonry, is carried over valleys, through
/ 9 rivers, under hills, on arches and banks, or through
tunnels and bridges, over these forty miles. Not
a pipe, but a sort of condensed river, arched over
to keep it pure and safe, is made to flow at the
rate of a mile and a half an hour towards New
York." A more exact description of an ancient
a l A Wt9\\\\. - Roman aqueduct could not easily be given. (See
Illustrations of' the Croton Aqueduct, by F. B.
Tower, 1843.)
The detailed description of the arrangements of
the aqueduct will be better understood, after an
enumeration of the principal aqueducts by which
water was conveyed to Rome across the Campagna.
~They were fourteen in number; and only four
of them belong to the time of the republic, while
five were built in the reigns of Augustus and
Claudius. Our knowledge of the subject is derived almost entirely from the treatise De Aquaea, a, The ascending pipe. dauctibus Urbis Romae, by S. Julius Frontinus, who
b, b, The basin, made of blocks of travertine. was curator aqzlaum (keeper of the aqueducts)
under Nerva and Trajan. It should be observed
* Vitruvius not only expressly states the law that the Aquaeductus is often called simply Aqua.
(viii. 6, s. 5), but describes one form of the aque- 1. The Aqua Appia was begun by the censor
duct in which it was practically applied (viii. 7. Appius Claudius Caecus (to whom also Rome was
s. 6), as will be seen below. Pliny also, in de- indebted for her first great road), in B.c. 313. Its
scribing the passage of water through pipes, states sources were near the Via Praenestina, between
the law in these very distinct terms:- -" Subit the seventh and eighth milestones, amid its teraltitudinem exortus sui." (I. N. xxxi. 6. s. 31.) mination was at the salinae, by tme Porta Trigamina.