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Roman aqueduct

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The ancient Romans constructed numerous aqueducts (Latin aquaeductūs, sing. aquaeductus) to supply water to cities and industrial sites. These aqueducts were amongst the greatest engineering feats of the ancient world, and set a standard not equalled for over a thousand years after the fall of Rome. Many cities, such as Segovia, still maintain and use the ancient aqueducts for their water supply even today.

The Romans typically built aqueducts to serve any large city in their empire, as well as many small towns and industrial sites. The city of Rome itself, being the largest city, had the largest concentration of aqueducts, with water being supplied by eleven aqueducts constructed over a period of 500 years. The methods of construction are well described by Vitruvius in his work De Architectura written in the first century BC. His book would have been of great assistance to Frontinus, a general who was appointed in the late first century AD to administer the many aqueducts of Rome. He discovered a discrepancy between the intake and supply of water caused by illegal pipes inserted into the channels to divert the water.

Construction

Several surveying tools were used in the construction of Roman aqueducts, one example being the chorobates. The chorobates was used to level terrain before construction. It was a wooden object supported by four legs with a flat board on top in which was engraved a half circle. When used the half circle was filled with water and the angle at which there was no water was measured. Another tool used in the construction of the aqueduct was the groma. Gromas were used to measure right angles. A groma consisted of stones hanging off four sticks perpendicular to one another. Distant objects could be marked out against the station of the stones in a horizontal plane.

Many aqueducts were built to supply water to industrial sites, such as gold mines, where the water was used to prospect for ore by hydraulic mining, and then crush and wash the ore to extract the gold. They usually consisted of an open channel dug into the ground, with a clay lining to prevent excessive loss of water. However, they were built just as carefully as the masonry structures, but often at a higher gradient so as to deliver the greater volumes needed for mining operations. The remains of such leats are visible today at sites like Dolaucothi in south-west Wales, and at Las Medulas in northwest Spain. These sites show multiple aqueducts, presumably because they were relatively short-lived and deteriorated rapidly. There are, for example, at least seven major leats at Las Medulas, and at least five at Dolaucothi feeding water from local rivers direct to the minehead. The palimpsest of such channels allows the mining sequence to be inferred.

Apparent Decline of Aqueducts

With the fall of the Roman Empire, although some of the aqueducts were deliberately cut by enemies, many more fell into disuse from the lack of an organized maintenance system. The decline of functioning aqueducts to deliver water had a large practical impact in reducing the population of the city of Rome from its high of over 1 million in ancient times to considerably less in the medieval era, reaching as low as 30,000. On the other hand, many continued in use, such as that at Segovia in Spain, and the skill in building aqueducts was not lost, especially of the smaller, more modest channels used to supply water wheels. Most such mills in Britain were developed in the medieval period for bread production, and used similar methods as that developed by the Romans with leats tapping local rivers and streams.

Lists of Roman Aqueducts

See also

References

  • Bossy, G., Fabre, G., Glard, Y., and Joseph, C. (2000), Sur le Fonctionnement d'un Ouvrage de Grande Hydraulique Antique, l'Aqueduc de Nîmes et le Pont du Gard (Languedoc, France), Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris, Sciences de la Terre et des Planètes, Vol. 330, pp. 769-775.
  • Chanson, H. (2002), Certains Aspects de la Conception hydrauliques des Aqueducs Romains, Jl La Houille Blanche, No. 6/7, pp. 43-57.
  • Coarelli, Filippo, Guida Archeologica di Roma, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, 1989.
  • Claridge, Amanda, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998.
  • Fabre, G., Fiches, J.L., and Paillet, J.L., L'Aqueduc de Nîmes et le Pont du Gard. Archéologie, Géosystème, Histoire, CNRS Editions, CRA Monographies Hors Série, Paris, France, 483 pages & 16 plates, 2000.
  • Gebara, C., Michel, J.M., and Guendon, J.L., L'Aqueduc Romain de Fréjus. Sa Description, son Histoire et son Environnement, Revue Achéologique de Narbonnaise, Supplément 33, Montpellier, France, 319 pages, 2002.
  • Hodge, A.T., Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply, Gerald Duckworth & Co, London, 2003.
  • Hodge, A.T., Roman Aqueducts & Water Supply, Duckworth, London, UK, 2nd edition, 504 pages, 2002.
  • Leveau, P. (1991), Research on Roman Aqueducts in the Past Ten Years, Future Currents in Aqueduct Studies, Leeds, UK, T. HODGE ed., pp. 149-162.
  • Lewis, P. R. and G. D. B. Jones (1970), Roman gold-mining in north-west Spain, Journal of Roman Studies 60 : 169-85
  • Mango, Cyril, The Water Supply' in Mango, C., and Dagron G., eds., Constantinople and Its Hinterland'', Variorum, Aldershot, 1995.
  • O'Connor, C., Roman Bridges, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 235 pages, 1993.

External links



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