Taylor, 'Guide to the Aqueducts of Ancient Rome', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9512
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9512-taylor-guide
@@@@95.12.16, Aicher, Guide to the Aqueducts of Ancient Rome
Peter J. Aicher, Guide to the Aqueducts of Ancient Rome.
Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1995. Pp. xii + 183. $25.00.
ISBN 0-86516-282-4 (pb).
Reviewed by Rabun Taylor, CNES -- University of Minnesota
taylo006@maroon.tc.umn.edu
Peter Aicher has chosen an opportune time to produce a guide to
Rome's aqueducts. His book not only offers timely recognition of
the growth of interest in aqueducts within the field of Roman
studies, it is an overdue acknowledgement that ancient water
delivery systems have always fascinated legions of
nonspecialists. Until now, the amateur enthusiast was
hard-pressed to find a suitably detailed guide, even in Italian,
to the often elusive ruins of the eleven aqueducts that supplied
ancient Rome. The aqueducts are strangely underrepresented in
Filippo Coarelli's Laterza guides to Rome, Rome's environs, and
Lazio, and are usually treated perfunctorily in single-volume
travel guides to Rome. Thomas Ashby's and Esther Van Deman's
exhaustive studies from the 1930s can rarely be found outside of
research libraries, and they are not designed to serve as field
guides.[[1]] Moreover, as A. poignantly demonstrates, the Roman
campagna is not the sleepy rustic retreat that it was 60
years ago. Large areas in the valleys and plains have given way
to development, while the more mountainous regions have become
overgrown due to the decline in grazing over recent decades.
Part One, entitled "The Roman Aqueduct," is a brief introduction
to ancient Roman hydraulic systems. It explains in
straightforward terms the technology of ancient water delivery
systems, from surveying to distribution and drainage. This
section relies extensively on the work of Trevor Hodge;[[2]] for
instance, it accepts Hodge's contention that, whenever possible,
the Romans preferred aqueduct bridges over inverted siphons
because of the prohibitive cost of lead production and transport
(p. 17)--a defensible hypothesis, but one that still excites
disagreement among specialists. The administration, law, and
financing of the aqueducts of Rome also receive brief treatment
here (pp. 23-28)--perhaps too brief, given that almost everything
we know about Roman water commissions relates to the capital
city. On this subject, Olivia Robinson's work could have been
consulted with profit.[[3]] Part Two, "The Eleven Aqueducts of
Ancient Rome," gives a historical and geographical survey of each
of the ancient aqueducts in chronological order. Although the
treatment is necessarily concise, here A. turns to the more
specialized literature for his source material.[[4]]
Part Three, "Guide to the Ruins," is the heart of the book. It
offers a detailed survey of the remains of Rome's aqueducts
starting from the city and progressing to the sources in the
upper Anio Valley. (Since there is little to be seen of the
city's two ancient western aqueducts apart from a few sections of
the Aqua Traiana's specus along the Via Aurelia Antica, A.
concentrates his efforts on the eastern conduits. He does not
mention the recent investigations of the water mill, apparently
powered by the Aqua Traiana, that lies today under a street just
outside the American Academy.[[5]]) A. gives detailed and
up-to-the-minute instructions for finding the many remains that
are far off the beaten track. For example, he explains that one
section of the Aqua Alexandrina "has recently been made less
accessible by the location of an archery range on its north side;
an old farmhouse shares the south side with a Hare Krishna
compound" (p. 109). But sometimes a precise description is
impossible; occasionally, he concedes, only an exhausting search
through the underbrush in the general vicinity of some landmark
will yield results.
Once the ruin has been sought out, be it monumental like the
Ponte Lupo (pp. 118-22) or humble like the exposed well-shaft to
the Aqua Claudia along the modern Via Prenestina (pp. 114-15),
the reader is treated to a full discussion of its construction
and purposes. A. does not try to second-guess Ashby and Van
Deman, from whose books he distills most of his material. When
the two are in disagreement (as in their understanding of the dam
at Subiaco), or when the physical condition of the remains has
changed since they described them, A. duly reports the fact. In
some cases the disintegration of the physical remains is
distressing; the clearest instance of neglect in recent decades
was the collapse in 1965 of several arches of the Ponte S.
Gregorio, a Hadrianic rerouting of the Anio Vetus across the
Valle della Mola.
Speaking as one who must constantly consult maps in his research
and who too often finds them lacking the information sought or
promised, I must express my satisfaction with the simple but
well-conceived series of maps drawn for this guide. Several maps
of the entire aqueduct system are included; sites of particular
complexity, such as Romavecchia and the ravine crossings south of
Tivoli, are given schematic plans with modern landmarks, many of
them not featured on ordinary regional maps.
This book will remain the vade mecum of specialists and
nonspecialists alike for some time to come. In the full
expectation that it will be kept up to date, I offer the
following minor corrections to A.'s introductory material:
Armenia is in eastern, not western Turkey (p. 2); Nero's branch
was part of the Aqua Claudia, not the Aqua Marcia (p. 14) and
extends southwest, not southeast from the Porta Maggiore (p. 61);
Diocletian came at the end of the third, not the fourth century
(p. 28); the Salinae of Rome were probably saltworks, not salt
flats (p. 34); Lucullianus should be Lucullus (p. 71); Salvi was
a sculptor, not a sculpture (p. 72). On page 35, A. follows
Ashby's hypothesis that the terminus of the Aqua Appia was 15 m
above sea level (only 2 to 3 m above ground level at the
riverbank), whereas on p. 165 he suggests the more plausible 20
m.
Somewhat more troubling is the claim on p. 18 that no traces of
inverted siphons exist in Rome. While it is true that there were
no siphons in the delivery system outside the city, the bulk of
the intramural distribution system necessarily comprised inverted
siphons made of pressure pipes, as in any other Roman city
supplied by aqueducts. In 1880 Rodolfo Lanciani exhaustively
catalogued the pipes found in Rome, and Christer Bruun has
recently reexamined them along with more recent finds. Since
Rome's urban water distribution system was undoubtedly the most
complex in the ancient world (all of the hundreds of fountains
under Frontinus' tutelage had at least two alternative water
sources), surely the many surviving pipes, found all over Rome
and at many levels, provide a persuasive document of its extent.
Rome may have had no mighty siphons like those outside Lyon or
Aspendos, but its dazzling web of smaller distribution siphons
constitutes the greater achievement.
The foregoing, I must note, is a scholarly quibble with a book
that consciously tries to avoid scholarly pretensions. In
general, A. presents the state of our knowledge accurately and in
due proportion, while focusing his efforts on producing a useful
field guide; and in this he succeeds admirably. For those who
wish to investigate the aqueducts further, he provides a full
bibliography.
NOTES:
[[1]] F. Coarelli, ed., Guide archeologiche Laterza, 14
vols. (Rome and Bari, various dates), esp. F. Coarelli,
Rome (1995), Dintorni di Roma (1993), and Lazio
(1993); T. Ashby, The Aqueducts of Ancient Rome, ed. I.A.
Richmond (Oxford 1935); E.G. Van Deman, The Building of the
Roman Aqueducts (Washington, D.C. 1934).
[[2]] See esp. A.T. Hodge, Roman Aqueducts and Water
Supply (London 1992).
[[3]] O.F. Robinson, "The Water Supply of Rome," SDHI 46 (1980)
44-86; eadem, Ancient Rome: City Planning and
Administration (London and New York 1992).
[[4]] For example, L. Quilici, "Sull' acquedotto Vergine dal
monte Pincio alle sorgenti," Quaderni dell'Istituto di
topografia antica della Universita di Roma 5 (1968) 125-6; A.
Liberati Silverio, "Aqua Alsietina," in Il trionfo dell'acqua:
Acque e acquedotto a Roma, IV sec. a.C. - XX sec. (Rome
1986), 72-79.
[[5]] M. Bell, "Mulini ad acqua sul Gianicolo," Archeologia
laziale, vol. 11, ed. S. Quilici Gigli (Rome 1993) 65-72;
idem, "An Imperial Flour Mill on the Janiculum,"
L'Italie meridionale et le ravitaillement en ble de Rome et
des centres urbains de debuts de la Republique jusqu'au Haut
Empire (Naples and Rome 1994) 73-89.