AQUEDUCTS OF ITALY

Cue (NZERS), Issue 29, 15 August 1945, Page 18

AQUEDUCTS OF ITALY

BESIDES free "'bread and games”, D the citizens of Rome in the days of the emperors expected baths to be provided by their rulersalso without charge. As the corn for the free bread was ground by water power, the items of bread and baths alone called for a tremendous quantity of water in the city. The need was met by conveying water from various sources, several .of them more than fifty miles ■ away, into the city by means of aqueducts, remains of which still exist. Rome has always been a wellwatered city. Even 2.000 years ago the supply per capita of water was as generous as that in many modern cities. Historians have estimated that in the first century A.D. the total water delivered by the aqueducts was about 130,000,000 gallons a day. Before the time of Christ nine aqueducts had been built to bring water to Rome. The, first was constructed in 312 B.'C. by Appius Claudius Caecus, the constructor of the Appian Way. His aqueduct, known as the Appia, formed a covered tunnel for most of the ten miles of its length. The water was drawn from a source to the east of Rome. Subsequent aqueducts brought water from rivers, lakes and springs near the city. The longest, the Marcia, was built in 145 8.C., and was fifty-eight and a-half miles in length. An even fall had to be kept in the channels, which were

supported by arches when they crossed valleys and dips in the ground. At one point near the city walls three aqueducts were formed one above the other on the same line of arches. A great proportion of the length of these aqueducts was covered, and the actual waterway was of masonry. One, built in 127 8.C., included a quantity of concrete in its construction. The shape and size of the conduits varied, some of them being eight feet high and four or five feet wide. A three-mile tunnel through a mountain, - carrying water from the Anio River, shortened the route of one of the later aqueducts. Before the end of the first century A.D., the aqueducts came under the control of Sextus Julius Frontinus. ’’Will anybody compare the idle Pyramids, or those other useless though much renowned structures of the Greeks with these many indispensable aqueducts?” once said Frontinus, forerunner of the modern Public Works engineer. In Rome’s water system, he found that numerous ’’rackets” were being worked. . The aqueducts were being surreptitiously bled en route by owners of adjacen properties. At the city the water awis measured into distributing tanks by a few bronze meter orifices of ,^ ar ® capacity, and distributed out again J a large number of small orifices to various purchasers. The waterme , by making the inlet orifices larger - m

the nominal diameter and' the outlet orifices smaller, were -enabled to balance the quantities received , and distributed while having a considerable actual surplus which they sold on their own account. Many of the citizens also were not -averse to tapping the state mains supplying the public institutions and fountains. During the Dark Ages most of the aqueducts supplying Rome fell into decay, but some of them have been incorporated in later schemes. The -most impressive remains are the stretches of arches which still stand, indicating in monumental fashion the vast extent of the ancient structures provided for the conveyance of the high level supply across the last broad depression of the campagna to the city. The system of bringing water into the city by means of aqueducts had its disadvantages during a siege, as the attackers generally stopped the supply by cutting the aqueducts. This 'happened to Rome in the sixth century A.D., when the city was be-sieged by the Gothic king, Vitiges. It is recorded that ’’great discontent was aroused among the commons of Rome when the cutting of the aqueducts by the enemy deprived them of their baths, and stopped the water mills for grinding corn. Their two great privileges, free baths and free corn, x were taken from them’’. Belisarius, the Roman defender, succeeded in using the current of the Tiber for grinding corn, placing mills in the river, where they continued to be a feature of the river scene until quite recent times. Aqueducts figure largely in the life and history of most towns in Italy. The one great disadvantage of living at Ravenna, then a large naval base, in the time of the Emperqr Augustus, was the, scarcity of water for drinking purposes. Martial writes:

I'd rather at Ravenna have a cistern than a vine, ■ ? Since I could sell my water there much better than my wine ; and again: That landlord at Ravenna is plainly but a cheat, I paid 'for wine and water, but he served wine to me neat. This weakness was overcome by Trajan, who built an aqueduct nearly twenty miles long, Which was restored and repaired several times in the next few centuries. This aqueduct, of which some arches remain in the bed of the Ronco, seems to have run, following the course of the river, from near Forli, where there still remains a village called $. Maria in Acquedotto, to Ravenna. A ’’circular letter” sent out by order of King eodor (circa 500) to farmers gives instructions for the maintenance of the Ravenna aqueduct. ’’The Aqueducts are an object of our special care. We desire you at once to root up all the shrubs growing in the Signine channel, which before long will become big trees scarcely to be hewn down with an axe and which interfere with the purity of water in the Aqueduct of Ravenna. Vegetation is the peaceful overthrower of buildings, the battering-ram which brings them to, the ground', though the trumpets never sound for siege. Now we shall have Baths again that we may look upon with pleasure; water which will cleanse not stain; water after using which we shall not require to wash ourselves again; drinking water too, such as the mere sight of it will net take away all appetite for food.” The Fontana Aqueduct, which brought water from Serino to Naples, -has played an important part in the history of the latter town. The same Belisarius who defended Rome against the Goths laid siege to Naples, then

a Gothic stronghold, in 536 ' Np remembering the discomforts he • i suffered in Rome when the water supply was cut off, he lost no time in doing the same to the defenders o Naples. The Goths, however, held on until Belisarius 'began to despair of success. He was on the point of raising the siege when an Isaurian sold discovered a possible means of entering the city through the northern wall by means of the dry aqueduct. A storming party penetrated through it into an empty reservoir in the heart of the city and, rushing to* the ramparts, joined hands with those who were waiting with scaling ladders. The city was soon in the hands of the Byzantines. A few red' arches, known as the Ponti Rossi, a little below the Palace of Capodimonte, are the remains of the aqueduct that caused the fall of the city. Nor was this the last time Naples was stormed via the aqueducts of the city. Alfonso, King of Aragon and Sicily, ejected the Frenchman, Rene of Anjou, in 1442. Alfonso effected an entrance through an aqueduct, but not the Aqueduct of Fontana. This was the ’’della Bolila”, which brought the water ftom Monte ,Somma, and entered through the eastern wall.

Modern Italy furnishes one of the most remarkable water supply systems of the world in the Apulian aqueduct which conveys water from the moist western slopes of the Apennines to an area of 8,000 square miles of semi-, arid territory in the south-eastern corner of Italy. Water is delivered to a population of nearly four million in 266 communities by a system of 841 miles of main and branch pipes and 550 miles of distribution pipes. The aqueduct took nine years to build, and was completed in 1915. The districts served previously had no> water supply, and their dryness may be judged from the fact that often water had to be brought by train from Naples. The intake of the Apulian aqueduct is at the perennial Caposile springs, so 1 that, as in the case of the aqueducts of ancient Rome, a storage reservoir is not required. The main conduit, which has a capacity of about 110.000,000 imperial gallons a day, is carried through the ridge of the Apennines in a nine and a—half mile tunnel, and extends westward and southward for 152 miles, terminating at Taranto. Altogether some sixtyseven miles of the conduit were formed in tunnel, a typical cross-section having a horseshoe shape eight feet nine inches wide and nine feet five inches high.