Humphrey, 'Water Distribution in Ancient Rome. The Evidence of Frontinus', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9507
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9507-humphrey-water
@@@@95.7.8, Evans, Water Distribution in Ancient Rome
Harry B. Evans, Water Distribution in Ancient Rome. The Evidence of
Frontinus. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994. Pp.
xii+168; 8 pp. of plates. $39.50. ISBN 0-472-10464-0.
Reviewed by John W. Humphrey -- The University of Calgary
jhumphre@ucdasvm1.admin.ucalgary.ca
Modern study of Roman hydraulic engineering has traditionally
focussed on the more obvious, spectacular, and easily accessible remains
of aqueduct lines outside urban centres, where they are generally better
preserved, and has pretty much neglected the matter of public water
distribution at least within Rome itself. Thomas Ashby seldom speculated
on much beyond the terminal castella, and even Trevor Hodge's
masterful study of Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply (London,
1992) avoids almost all discussion of the actual planning behind
urban water distribution in the capital.
So it was encouraging to read Harry Evans' short chapter in the
recently published collection of hydraulic papers (Future Currents in
Aqueduct Studies [Leeds: Francis Cairns Ltd., 1991], 21-27), in which
he issued a convincing call for more work to be done on determining just
what happened to the water once it passed into the city proper, something
more substantial and illuminating than the usual recourse to bald figures
from Frontinus ("1718 quinariae" for suburban distribution in
nomine Caesaris) and the Regionary Catalogues ("lacos clxxx"
in Regio XIV). With a trio of articles on hydraulics in the
neighbourhood of Rome behind him (all in AJA [1982, 1983, 1993]),
Evans, Professor of Classics at Fordham University, has himself given us
a good beginning to that study with the appearance of this volume.
The book's premise is simple: a description of what we know about
water distribution within the city of Rome, both before and during the
curatorship of Frontinus, with due acknowledgement of the recent
significant contributions to the topic by Bruun (whose Water Supply of
Ancient Rome: A Study in Roman Imperial Administration [Helsinki,
1991] is cited regularly throughout the text) and by the
Frontinus-Gesellschaft. The "Introduction" (1-12) sets the limits of the
volume: no analysis of hydraulic technology, the urban elements of which
are thoroughly laid out in chapters 10 and 11 of Hodges' work; no attack
on the intractable problem of quinaria and volume in Frontinus;
and no discussion of natural sources within the city or of distribution
in the suburbs. Instead Evans promises what amounts to a continuation of
Ashby within the city proper, based on a close study of the relevant
sections of Frontinus, supplemented by archaeological and topographical
evidence. So he begins with a useful examination of Frontinus' vocabulary
of water distribution, particularly of the divisions of usage (nomine
Caesaris, privati, and usus publici; and, among last,
the problematic castra, munera, and lacus). There
follows a translation of the complete text of the de Aquaeductu
(13-52), based on the forthcoming version of R.H. Rodgers, generally
clear and informative (though I suspect most readers will be thrown by
the translation of 91.3), and with useful notes to textual problems. In
his analysis of "Frontinus' 'Rule and Guide'" (53-64), Evans breaks no
new ground in concluding that the work "is hardly a comprehensive account
of the aqueduct system" (54, citing Bruun); despite Frontinus' own
statements to the contrary (especially 2.2-3), the "de aquaeductu
is intended for a general readership, making a statement that is at once
both public and self-promoting" (57); it is "a document presented to
celebrate its author and the policies of the emperor who appointed him"
(63). Fair enough, though it is never entirely clear how this relates to
the topic of this volume as closely as, say, Frontinus' use of maps
(58-61), where our author is at his best and leaves the reader wishing
for more.
The core of the monograph is a line-by-line study of the
aqueducts of Rome, arranged (in Ashby's tradition) chronologically by
construction date, from the Appia to the Claudia/Anio Novus (65-128),
with a brief chapter on the two lines built after Frontinus, the Traiana
and Alexandriana (129-133). The organization of material within each
chapter is generally linear: the route within city, the location of the
terminal castellum, and the water's distribution from there, both
before and during Frontinus' time. Some variety of treatment is
introduced for a few routes, like the Anio Vetus: original course,
original distribution, later course, later distribution. There is,
wisely, no attempt to determine absolute flow in any of this: Evans
instead uses Frontinus' quinariae figures only to determine an
aqueduct's relative capacity and delivery in relation to the total urban
supply, which really is a more useful measure than speculative attempts
to relate ancient with modern rates of consumption. Finally, a brief
Conclusion (135-147) includes summary data from Frontinus, presented
earlier, but brought together here according to the uses to which the
water was put: the percentage (by aqueduct) of consumption by imperial,
private, and public functions.
The great challenge for Evans is to reconstruct the lost
channels, cisterns, and fountains of a complex urban water distribution
system--in outline, if not comprehensively--on a foundation of such
peripheral and scattered evidence as we have available, even with
Frontinus' first-hand account and some important recent archaeological
work. He himself observes that, "although most of Rome's aqueducts can be
traced to terminal reservoirs within the city, there is almost a total
lack of archaeological evidence as to what happened to their water after
that point" (3). And what physical evidence exists is inconsistent
between lines: for some (the largely subterranean Appia is the most
obvious), there are few vestiges of their course within the city or of
their terminal castella; the route of others like the Anio Vetus
can be partially traced "through physical remains of its channel and
cippi" (75); but only the course of the long-lived Virgo can be
known in detail. Evans himself, and others like Robert Lloyd, have added
much through their careful study of the urban topography and of the
literary evidence, but to suggest that these recent analyses "can yield
significant results" (3) holds out rather more promise than can be
delivered: to back up his claim, Evans here cites only four such
published studies between 1979 and 1986 (beginning with Lloyd's article
on the aqua Virgo in AJA 83 [1979], 193-204), though elsewhere he
is frequently able to supplement these with recent archaeological
evidence that may not yet have found its way into specific studies.
The problem of siphons within the city is a good illustration of
just how poor our evidence is, whether literary, archaeological, or
topographical: their existence in Rome is almost entirely speculative,
usually postulated to account for otherwise insurmountable topographical
changes along the (sometimes still conjectural) routes of the aqueducts
and their branches. Evans has done well to give us a useful list of the
most likely locations--to carry the Marcia's water to the Palatine (90)
and over the shoulder between the Capitoline and Quirinal (later removed
for Trajan's Forum) (86, and n. 19), for the original Palatine extension
of the Claudia (121), along the Capitoline branches of the Tepula (which
may have been abandoned by Frontinus' time) and the Julia (97, 100), and
perhaps for the Caelian branch of the Julia (100-101)--but beyond that
they are as elusive as the castella and lacus that we know
were out there and were equally essential to urban distribution of water.
To his great credit, Evans is persistently conscious of the limitations
of his evidence, which for example makes it nearly impossible to
determine the pre-Frontinus distribution within neighbourhoods. But he
still manages to squeeze more information out of his obstinate material
than I would have believed possible; his comments on the aqua Appia and
early Circus Maximus (70ff) are perhaps the best example of this. And his
familiarity with even the minutest bits of evidence means that not much
gets past him: his short note on the anecdote in Martial about a boy
killed by an icicle falling vicinaIVipsanis porta may be right in
pointing to the Marcia, rather than the generally accepted Virgo (86, n.18).
But if a comprehensive understanding is still out of reach, there
is much in this volume that is useful and often uniquely perceptive.
Despite the paucity of evidence, Evans makes some revealing deductions
and comments, from the relatively minor but interesting--the size of the
single castra fed by Appia, derived from the small percentage of
water distributed to it (73), and his identification of the arcus
stillans mentioned by the Scholiast to Juvenal 3.11 (87-88)--to the
unsettling observation that 13% of water within Frontinus' city found its
way to lacus, basins that served almost all of the populace, while
fully three times that amount went to private users: "These are telling
statistics. Aqueducts in his time were certainly a key element in making
possible higher standards of living for the privileged few" (141). Most
useful of all, Evans' detailed analysis enables him to show how the
gradual development of new lines and branches was planned to complement
the distribution from earlier aqueducts (78, 107), to attend to a growing
urban area (83, 147: "a capsule history of the city's growth can be had
from the evidence of the system built to serve its water needs, as the
statistics presented by Frontinus permit us to reconstruct it"), and most
notably to serve special needs. It is useful to be reminded that the
Julia and Virgo were planned largely to serve the hydraulic requirements
of specific structures in Augustus' building programme (102-109), but
more suggestive is his observation that, unlike the later Claudia and
Anio Novus, which he concludes "were not specialized linesI[but]
furnished water for a wide variety of uses" (126), the lofty Anio Vetus
was largely devoted to supplying privati in residential quarters
in the higher reaches of the eastern hills of the city, as was the Marcia
for other areas (80, 92).
The few minor errors in the text are insignificant, though two
are worth correcting: a wrong date ("first century" for second century
[71]) and a mistyped citation ("92-92" for 90-92 [75]). More substantial
are three matters that make this volume less valuable than it should be.
First, the translation of Frontinus' full text seems hardly
necessary, especially given the impending appearance of Rodgers' version.
Less than half the de Aquaeductu is relevant to--and cited
in--Evans' discussion of urban water distribution (chapters 5-15
[history and general course of each aqueduct], 17-22 [elevation of
lines], 64-76 [delivery of individual lines], 77-86 [distribution by
line], and 90-93 [contamination]). It seems an unnecessary nod to
comprehensiveness to include the rest (particularly the complex data on
pipe sizes that Evans has rightly chosen to ignore elsewhere), especially
in view of the regrettable omission of other, more perinent material.
While the line-by-line analysis is useful and logical--it is how
Frontinus organized his data--we really do need somewhere a synthesis of
this material presented region by region, in a considerably more thorough
fashion than is attempted in the cursory chart that is Figure 15, which
simply lists which regions were serviced by which aqueducts. A discussion
of water distribution by neighbourhood, with the help of the Regionary
Catalogues, however problematic, would have made a good concluding
chapter, especially since the existing Conclusion adds almost no new
material (as the absence of citations indicates) and no new way of
interpreting what has already been said. Evans' three-page summary of his
earlier line-by-line chapters (136-138) would not be much missed if he
were to have given us instead a synthesis of what little we do know about
water distribution geographically by region, drawing together details
scattered throughout his earlier chapters on specific lines, adding
figures from the Curiosum and Notitia, and integrating assumptions based
on our knowledge of land-use patterns within each region. There are two
real advantages to this kind of synthesis: first, it would help focus our
attention on the consumers of the water more than on the hydraulic
engineers and town planners; and second, it would have compelled the
publisher to include decent maps and plans.
Mirabile dictu, in a volume that treats such complex
topographical problems as this one does, readers are given two plans,
fitted on a single page among the plates, and both problematic. Figure 1
purports to show the termini of the aqueducts, but in fact is a
rather coarse map of the lines near and within the city; here, grey
shading indicates high land, though there is no indication of what that
elevation is. In Figure 2, intended to simplify the complex convergence
of lines near the porta Praenestina, the same grey shading denotes not
altitude but land outside Aurelian's wall (which itself is not indicated
in Figure 1). There is no useful indication of topographical variation
and no attempt to include branch lines (except the arcus Caelimontani),
springs and streams, thermae, or any of the other pertinent
remains; and there is some serious and misleading confusion in Figure 2
at the intersection of the Claudia/ Anio Novus and the Marcia/ Tepula/ Julia.
There is, then, a sense of imbalance that seems to affect the
volume as a whole. It is very good analysis of a discouragingly difficult
subject, and is a valuable contribution to our growing library of
hydraulic studies. But with more judicious editing, some innovative
reorganization of the material, and a little more care given by the Press
to the reader's need for greater visual assistance, it could have been
even better.