Toilets

Remains of a toilet house in Herculaneum, attached to the baths
(Photo by Author)

People’s body functions were no different in antiquity than they are today, and toilets were just as important then as they are now, despite many people’s wish to place the Roman’s on an inhuman pedestal. In fact, toilets were extremely important to Romans, who in about the first century BCE created a proliferation of public and private toilets not seen before. They became a key player in Roman infrastructure and served to help curb the human waste problems present in a city that large, and keep the streets in a more respectable condition.

                There are two main types of toilets, public and private. Public toilets were often large rooms that were lined with stone (or wooden) benches 43 cm high, a very comfortable sitting height. These benches had round holes in the top, spaced 56cm apart, with a keyhole shaped slit continuing on the front where a sponge tipped stick could be inserted for cleaning (like our modern day toilet-paper, just more environmentally friendly!). At the foot of the bench lay another shallow channel that archaeologists suspect were used for cleaning these sticks to provide some measure of sanitation. These bench holes would drop into a channel to a maximum of 380 cm, where waste water from the baths (or just water in general) would sweep away the refuse into the sewer. An intimate experience no doubt, but something that would have been normal in Roman minds.

Close up of the trough at the feet of the toilet in Herculaneum
(Photo by Author)

                The second type of toilet is a private one. Located in the culina, or kitchen, they were simple – usually single person toilets, used not only for bathroom needs, but also as a waste disposal for food scraps. These toilets were not like the public toilets in that they connected to the sewers (usually), but like modern day outhouses, that stood upon pits to be piled up with waste, and then emptied when reaching a state of filling. Human waste was actually considered a resource in Rome, and was sold to farmers to be turned into field fertilizer, if it wasn’t used by the master in his private gardens.

Bibliography

 Wald, Chelsea. "The Secret History of Ancient Toilets." Nature 533, no. 7604 (2016): 456-

          58. Accessed June 30, 2016.  doi:10.1038/533456a. 

Rome's Bridges

               

A Map of Rome Showing 10/11 Ancient Bridges
(http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/waters/bridges1.jpg)

 Even though Rome was situated primarily the right bank of the Tiber River during antiquity, they still required access the left bank for commercial purposes, and as time progressed for living purposes. By the fourth century CE Rome possessed eleven bridges to cross the Tiber, nine full spanning and two that connected to Tiber Island. Practically, these eleven bridges fell into four categories – local-public, private (or quasi-private depending on how you define them, but we’ll come back to that), foreign-public, and aqueduct.

The Pons Fabricius in Rome Today
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pons_Fabricius)

                Local-public bridges are by far the most popular bridges in ancient Rome. Making up six of the eleven bridges, they comprise more than half of all the bridges in Rome. These local-public bridges served the local urban population that needed the cross the river, serving mostly the daily labourers, those who were commuting for worship of the Gods, mostly on Tiber Island, and for distributing the grain supply. These bridges are the Pons Aelius, Pons Aurelius, Pons Cestius, Pons Fabricius, Pons Neronianus, and Pons Probi.

                The second type of bridge is a private or quasi-private bridge. Built and owned by a wealthy individual or family in the city, these bridges were used for their private endeavors. An example of this would be the Pons Agrippae, which was built to provide the family with access to their Transtiber tomb during the funeral. The interesting thing about these bridges is that the public used them when the family was not demanding use, hence the quasi-private categorization.

                The next category housed three different bridges in the city, the Pons Aemilius, Pons Mulvius, and Pons Sublicius. These foreign-public bridges served the people who were coming and going from the city from the major highways coming into the city. These were mostly used by traders and merchants who travelled to the city to peddle their wares.

                The fourth type of bridge was very rare, the aqueduct bridge, which served to bring the aqueducts channel over the river. The only instance of this is the Pons Traiani, which carried the Aqua Tranai to its outlet on the opposite bank.

Bibliography

 Taylor, Rabun. "Tiber River Bridges and the Development of the Ancient City of Rome." The         Waters of Rome, Occasional Papers, no. 2 (June 2002). Accessed June 29, 2016.        

        http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/waters/taylor_bridges.html. 

                

Rome's Sewer Systems

Fountain in Pomepii Overflowing
(Photo by Author)

                Water was used for more than just drinking and creating decorations in ancient Rome, in fact it had a major role to play in the sanitation of the city. With a population of over a million people, waste is created in massive amounts very quickly. And because there is no modern plumbing system, most Romans were left with containers full of waste that they had to dispose of. How? By dumping it in the street of course! This may seem counter-productive, but the sewer system of Rome was the most efficient of its time and the ability to transport sewage from the city to this level kept it clean and healthy, one of the major factors in allowing for it to reach the size that it did.

Outlet of the Cloaca Maxima to the Tiber
River
(http://ancientrome.ru/art/artworken/img.htm?id=65)

                How could they do this when a buildup of waste in the streets no doubt breeds disease? Well, the key features to remedying this are public fountains. Due to aqueducts stemming from non-stop natural water resources they cannot be turned off and on. That means if there is too much water in the system, the fountains will overflow. The frequent overflowing of the fountains from rain or from not enough use, generated wastewater that swept through the streets and took the refuse down the many drains into the sewers located under the city. The sewer pipes would then transport the sewage away from the city via the Cloaca Maxima, which emptied its contents into the Tiber – much like most of our modern sewer systems minus the treatment step.

                Though Rome had an operating system as early as the ninth century BCE, it is truly under the Emperors that the system sees its peak, as with most monuments. Many of them understood the importance of keeping the city clean and invested large sums of money into developing and maintaining the system.

Bibliography

Dodge, Hazel. "Greater than the Pyramids': The Water Supply of Ancient Rome." Edited by

Hazel Dodge. In Ancient Rome: The Archaeology of the Eternal City, edited by Jon Coulston, 166-209. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2000.

Nymphaeums

Ceiling of the nymphaeum in Nero's Domus Aurea,note the cave like stucco surrounding the main fresco
(Photo by Author)

Today the main areas of consumption of water in the private sphere is for the functioning of households, i.e. cooking, cleaning, bathing, and drinking among others. However, in Antiquity private lines from aqueducts, which could only be afforded by the rich, were not used for these mundane tasks, but for the supplying of nymphaeums in the villa.

Originally nymphaeums were a Hellenistic shrine or sacred place to the water goddesses, nymphs (hence the name nymphaeum) within natural springs and grotto’s. Worshiped almost exclusively in rural locations, nymphaeums were exceedingly rare within the city as they required the manipulation of natural architecture that is not found within cities. As time passes however, nymphaeums moved away a strictly religious function and became ornately decorated water feature and a place within the domus for Romans to enjoy the coolness brought by the water and recover from the day.

Nymphaeum off a Garden in a Pompeian Villa
(Photo by Author)

Because of the cost required to build these, they were not found in the typical town house, but as the Romans became more disconnected from the natural landscape and increasingly enamored with man-made architecture they do become more propagated inside the city. In addition, as nymphaeums shift indoors around the time of Augustus, they transform from their initial cave like design to the scaenae-frons style. This style was an elaborate semi-spherical structure based on the elaborately decorated backdrop of the Roman theatre, with small niches for the placement of statues or other items.

Slowly nymphaeums become a household symbol of refined luxury and hedonism, and by the late antiquity have no relation to religious matters at all. Becoming a slave to the decorative aspects of the domus, they become merely another aspect for the wealthy to display their wealth – especially due to the fact that they had to be privately supplied by a fistula.

Bibliography

Aken, A.r.a. Van. "Some Aspects of Nymphaea in Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia."

Mnemosyne 4, no. 1 (1951): 272-Iii. doi:10.1163/156852551x00309. 

Naming the Tiber

The names of places and the stories that surround them are important for a historians understanding of the site’s earliest history. With the far-reaching history of Rome, it should be no surprise that the city’s Tiber River has one as well. Etymologists know that before the Romans were the Romans, when the Alban kings ruled the area, that originally called the river Albula or white, this is also where the Alban people took their name. This was due to the high sediment content of the river which causes the water to look milky and cloudy. In Roman antiquity the Tiber would often be nicknamed flauuis or Tiberius Flauuis, the Latin word for yellow, as an ode to this odd river colour.

Statue of the Tiber God outside the Capitoline Museum
(Photo by Author)

But how did the Tiber become the Tiber then? The most common legend states that the river changed names when the ninth Alban king Tiberinus Silvius fell in and drowned whilst crossing in the tenth century BCE. Although this creates an interesting story, etymologists believe that the name Tiberinus is a derivation of Tiber and not the reverse, and where the word Tiber comes from is, unfortunately, unknown. They do believe however, that it stems from the same root of the praenomen Tiberius, as well as its Etruscan equivalent.

 Eventually, the Alban king Tiberinus was converted into the Roman deity of the river, Tiber Pater, and was venerated and sacrificed to, especially on his festival day May 14^th, where a man bundle was thrown into the river as an allegorical sacrifice. His temple was, fittingly, on Tiber Island.

Bibliography

            Chase, George Davis. "The Origin of Roman Praenomina." Harvard Studies in Classical                            Philology 8 (1897): 103. doi:10.2307/310491. 

Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities, Volume I: Books 1-2. Translated by Earnest                       Cary. Loeb Classical Library 319. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937.

 

           

Part 2b: Rome's Imperial Aqueducts

8.       Aqua Claudia/Aqua Anio Novus

The Channels of the Aqua Claudia and
 Aqua Anio Novus in the Porta Maggiore
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porta_Maggiore)

The Aqua Claudia was begun at the same time as the Aqua Anio Novus, by Caligula in 38 CE, but upon his death would be finished by Claudius in 54 CE. It drew from the springs in the upper Anio Valley, and was considered the second best aqueduct in the entire city. The Aqua Anio Novus however, was derived directly from the Anio River, and though it had decent water, it was prone to pollution of mud during heavy rains. The water of the two lines were mixed before distribution (as we saw in the Julia and Tepula), which upset Frontinus as he believed it diminished the quality of the water. They distributed water to the Caelian, the Palatine, Aventine, and Transtiber areas. The magnificent Porta Maggiore was a part of the Claudia/Anio Novus line and would carry it across the busy Via Labicana and Via Praenestina.

It is here that Frontinus’s data ends, as the remaining two aqueducts were not built until well after he died. I will discuss briefly the final two aqueducts below.

9.       Aqua Traiana

The Aqua Traiana is unfortunately shrouded in a lot of mystery. We do know basic facts like that it originated in the northeast of Rome from a spring near Trevignano, and that the water quality was of a very high level. It supplied mostly the Transtiber district, which had grown rapidly by 109 CE, and was lacking in drinkable water sources, but also could be used as a back supply for the rest of the city due to its large output. It was the last of the great aqueducts built by emperors, and remains are sparse at best.

10.   Aqua Alexandria

Not much is to be said about the Aqua Alexandria other than it was built by Alexander Severus in 226 CE to supply his Baths of Alexander in the Campus Martius, and ran 16 km to its source from springs south of the city.

The Imperial aqueducts are much more numerous, in addition to being larger, but this is due to the cast conquests that will come under the reigns of these people. Regrettably, very few remains are left of any of the aqueducts and those within the city either have been destroyed or are inaccessible because of modern urban life.

Bibliography

Evans, Harry B. Water Distribution in Ancient Rome: The Evidence of Frontinus. Ann Arbor:

        University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Frontinus. Stratagems. Aqueducts of Rome. Translated by C. E. Bennett, Mary B.

       McElwain. Loeb Classical Library 174. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925.

Part 2a: Rome's Imperial Aqueducts

                Beginning from where we left off last post, the Imperial period of Rome saw not only a proliferation in monuments and temples, but in aqueducts as well. Below are listed the seven aqueducts built in the Imperial Period, of which we will explore with the help of Frontinus.

Map of Rome's Aqueducts
(https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL174/1925/pb_LCL174.493.xml)

5.       Aqua Julia

The Civil Wars that plagued Rome in the late 2^nd c. BCE and most of the 1^st c. BCE stopped all work on the Aqueducts. It is only when Octavian beings to consolidate his power in 33 BCE is Agrippa, his right hand man, able to build the Aqua Julia. Agrippa brought water to Rome all the way from the Alban Hills (near the source of the Tepula), and had it mixed in with the Tepula water in the piscina outside the city. After the mixing, it travelled in the same conduits and was delivered to the same places of the Tepula, though other lines were installed to expand the distribution even further into the eastern districts.

6.       Aqua Virgo

The Aqua Virgo is the most well preserved of all the aqueducts, despite being built in 19 BCE by Agrippa, and therefore not even being on the of the younger aqueducts. It supplied mainly the Campus Martius, most importantly The Baths of Agrippa located there. It entered the city from the city from the north and was the complimentary line to the Tepula/Julia supplying the area’s they did not. It is important to note that this is the point where the position of curator aquarum is created (Agrippa is the first one) and aqueducts become highly organized from this point forward, working on increasing the area of distribution, as well as the quality of water provided.

7.       Aqua Alsietina (Augusta)

The Aqua Alsientina, also known as the Aqua Augusta, was the most specialized of the all aqueducts as it worked solely to supply the naumachia (a place for mock naval battles) in Region XIV, in addition to the Transtiber estates on the western bank. It was supplied by two lakes northwest of Rome, the Lago di Martignano and the Lago di Bracciano. Unfortunately, due to the heavy pollution of the water it was useless for drinking, of which Frontinus continuously complains about throughout his treatise. It would fall out of use upon the completion of the Traiana.

Bibliography

Evans, Harry B. Water Distribution in Ancient Rome: The Evidence of Frontinus. Ann Arbor:

        University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Frontinus. Stratagems. Aqueducts of Rome. Translated by C. E. Bennett, Mary B.

       McElwain. Loeb Classical Library 174. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925.

Part 1: Rome's Republican Aqueducts

                Just as is today, in Antiquity the larger the city the more vast their support systems were required to be. Rome, being the largest city in the world during its Empirical peak, obviously needed a system large enough to supply its civilians with water. Though many towns in the Roman Empire were lucky to even have an aqueduct feeding it, Rome with its million plus inhabitants required eleven to operate, in addition to private wells. Frontinus, the curator aquarum (water commissioner and caretaker of the aqueducts) of Rome under the reign of Nerva, gives us a completely unique text in his De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae by providing us with statistics and information about the first nine of Rome’s water channels that are found nowhere else. This post will be exploring the first four of Rome’s aqueducts, aka those which were built in the Republic, via Frontinus’s information.

1.       Aqua Appia

Built in 312 BCE by Appius Claudius Caecus, the Appia was a primarily underground aqueduct running for 16⅙ km from its underground springs east of the city. It served mainly the commercial district of the Forum Boarium and Porta Trigemina, travelling under both the Caelian and Aventine hill to reach its termination point near the Tiber River. As the first aqueduct of Rome it was a stunning architectural innovation and achievement.

2.       Aqua Anio Vetus

Coming from the Appian Valley north of the city, the Aqua Anio Vetus was constructed around 272 BCE and travelled a much longer distance (81 km) than the Appia to its terminal in Rome, the Porta Esquiline. It’s source was the  surface level Anio River, and thus had lower quality waters than the Appia due to silt accumulation, but produced more water and had a wider reach within the city, especially eastwards – indicating growth in that direction of Rome.

3.       Aqua Marcia

Rome’s third aqueduct is not built for another 130 years after the Anio Vetus in 144 BCE because of massive strains on water resources, especially after the Second Punic War. The Aqua Marcia was therefore constructed to have an even larger extent and output than the Anio Vetus. Coming from an underground spring even further up the Anio Vally, it travelled over 91 km before supplying the Capitoline, Palatine, Caelian, and Aventine hills from its various terminals. The Marcia was well renowned for its cold, clean water and was often the preferred aqueduct of the city, until the imperial period.

Conduits for the Aqua Marcia and Aqua Tepula by the Porta Maggiore
(Photo by Kevin Veitenheimer)

4.       Aqua Tepula

              There is little to say about the Aqua Tepula as it was primarily a line built to supplement the Aqua Marcia only 19 years later. Unfortunately, Frontinus is not very interested in the Tepula and so there is very little literary evidence for it. Combined with the utter lack of archaeological sources, the length is unknown. We do know that it delivered to the same regions as the Marcia, and considering the lack of distance between the building times and distribution area’s it can be inferred that Rome was having massive population spikes at this point in time. 

The majority of aqueducts were built during the Imperial Period. The remaining seven of these will be explored in a subsequent post. 

A Map of Rome's Aqueducts. The Green, Yellow, and Purple are the Republican Channels
(http://aquaduct.hobbysite.info/romead350.html)

Bibliography

Evans, Harry B. Water Distribution in Ancient Rome: The Evidence of Frontinus. Ann Arbor:

               University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Frontinus. Stratagems. Aqueducts of Rome. Translated by C. E. Bennett, Mary B.

McElwain. Loeb Classical Library 174. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925.

Rome's Water Distribution System

            

Diagram of the Roman's Water Distribution System
(https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201411/aqueducts-roman-engineering/)

          As creatures of a modern first world country, we think little more about the water than how much our monthly bill is going to be. The long journey and various treatment stages that water has to go through to come out of our taps is rarely a thought that crosses people minds, and yet it is so important to our society that when some something happens to it all havoc breaks loose. If you asked most people, I’m sure they would think the whole system is relatively new to us – after all indoor plumbing really wasn’t a thing until our great-great-great-great-great grandparents time. But, maybe surprisingly (or maybe not, these are the Romans after all), ancient Rome had a water distribution system that wouldn’t be surpassed until the nineteenth century.

            It all begins with a reservoir far outside the city. This could be either an above ground source, such as a river or lake, or a below ground source such as an aquifer. This water is transferred from the source to the city via gently (but accurately) sloped brick and concrete channels called aqueducts. These were mostly underground, because being buried protected them from attacks and most extreme weather phenomena that wreak other buildings. Occasionally they would be forced to leave the ground and travel on bridges to span valleys or other gaps of land.

            Once it reached the outskirts of the city, it entered into the settling tanks – called piscinae. It is here that the water is filtered through a series of dropping chambers that allowed for the silt in the water to exit, and produce cleaner, more desirable water. Frontinus states in his book Of Aqueducts that this is especially important for aqueducts from above ground sources, as they were more easily contaminated with physical impurities than the protected underground reservoirs.

Exposed Lead Fistula in Pompeii
(Photo by Author)

            The water then traveled from the piscinae to the castellum, a.k.a. the distribution tank. It used a three section system to divide water up for public, private, and imperial use – but more importantly acted as a reservoir for the city. From here the water was transported to it’s destination by lead fistulae pipes that were buried under the ground.

Unfortunately, due to the inability to excavate properly and discover archaeological remains, as well as the extensive damage to them from modern pipes and power lines and such, the castellum and anything past it is uncertain. There could be other steps in this process that we are unaware of at the moment, but this brief description is currently our best understanding of Rome’s water distribution system. To do this, historians and archaeologists use not only the remains in Rome itself, but also those in Ostia and Pompeii. It is important to note though, that like many aspects of Roman life, the water distribution system was not a set-in-stone step-by-step network, and that there was adaptation to each city to fit its individual needs.  

Bibliography

Evans, Harry B. Water Distribution in Ancient Rome: The Evidence of Frontinus. Ann 

            Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Kleijn, Gerda De. The Water Supply of Ancient Rome: City Area, Water, and Population.

Amsterdam: Gieben, 2001.