María Laura Zúñiga
Mr.Young and Mr.Duff
Ancient Civ. E
Eng. A/ Lit. F
May 31, 2013
The Ancient Roman Aqueducts
Aqueducts started to be used in 140 B.C.E. and where used for about 500
years afterwards. An aqueduct is a man made tunnel or arch that carries water from
one place to another. These are large looking arches with half circles in the middle.
There where 200 cities in Rome that depended in this great system of clean water.
Aqueducts are a major influence in modern day society because without aqueducts we
would not have baths or toilets with clean water. Aqueducts have given been
instrumental to the development of irrigation and transport of water as we know it
today. The aqueducts give humans a real sense of how hard life would be without
them. Imagine yourself without water. What would it be like?
There where 11 aqueducts working in Ancient Rome. Imagine how big was
Rome to really have and need all this many aqueducts. That’s about sixty miles of
aqueducts with water flowing. This water was for the privileged and the poor.
Wealthy people could actually pay to have water going into their house as in modern
days and poor people could still drink clean water from the fountains all over Rome
without even having to pay. To test water, not having our technology, Roman citizens
observed whether people who drank it daily got sick or died. Clean water was not
only used for drinking but also for public baths and toilets. One of the biggest
aqueducts was the Porta Maggiore, which carried water from Anio to Rome each day,
traveling about sixty-eight kilometers. This major water system carried two thirds of
Rome’s clean water. This system was really important because with no aqueducts
there health issues would have lead to sickness and even death. There were three
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types of major aqueducts: the masonry conduits, lead pipes, and earthenware pipes.
Today the Pont du Gard at Nimes, and Segovia’s aqueduct in Spain are still in use. In
modern days aqueducts are still providing many people all around the world with
clean, fresh water. There are still utility payments to have water go to people’s homes,
but today people can usually afford it. Ancient Roman aqueducts influenced modern
aqueducts like the aqueduct in Los Angeles. This aqueduct is 223 miles long and
takes water from the Owens River in The Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains to Los
Angeles, California. In conclusion water was one of the most important resources in
Ancient Rome.
Romans used lead pipes to build these water systems, which lead to diseases
so they changed the lead pipes to thick, gray, big, cement and clay pipes. Lead and its
diseases weren’t the only problem: lead pipes were very expensive and the
government donated money to build some of them. Cement was first made by mixing
small amounts of white limestone powder, water and pieces of fine-grained broken
tile. Then Romans discovered this wasn’t waterproof so they added ashes to the
mixture. Paid laborers, slaves, and legions built this amazing piece of history. If the
legions built a new colony of fort, they were completely responsible for providing
their own water. Today we often use steel pipes for building modern aqueducts but
we also make tunnels out of stone, brick, wood or metal made by engineers and
architects.
There were one million people living in Rome and aqueducts delivered one
cubic meter of water to each. There is another type of Roman aqueduct, which was
build in a trench on a hill, which kept the water cool, clean and fresh. Water traveled
through big tunnels through large valleys, and the arches were usually beautifully
ornamented with images of people, animals, and food, running thirty miles above the
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surface. Today we use arches, bridges, and tunnels in architecture all over the world.
One of the examples is the Arc de Triumph, France built as a homage the ones who
fought in the Napoleonic Wars in 1836 and still have written all the names of the
generals and solders in the top. Architects have used bridges, arches and tunnels
extensively and for all types of constructions from the Roman period to modern days.
The Ancient Roman aqueducts yielded 190,000 m3 per day to all Roman
cities. That’s more than some modern aqueducts carry. Roman aqueducts were used
entirely upon gravity. People in the low area would get water very easily while people
in high, steep hills or mountains had a hard time getting water. Later in 144 B.C.E.
Romans invented a new type of aqueduct that could take water to high lands. To make
these aqueducts, engineers used an underground siphon, which is a vast dip it the land
that causes the water to drop so quickly it had enough speed and force to make it
uphill. These siphons were used to flush toilets too. Today we continue to use the
siphon method and others like underground aqueducts that were originally invented
by the Romans. However we also use more modern methods such as pumps if the
water needs to go up hill. Aqueducts have a very complicated but useful way of
carrying water.
Aqueducts where a symbol of Roman strength to other cities. When Ancient
Rome crumbled, the aqueducts fell with it. This was when the Goths attacked Rome
in 537 A.D. After many years of incursions and war, they finally render the
aqueducts unusable. Later in the 1950’s, modern Romans rebuilt eight wonderful,
long aqueducts, which are in use today and still provide water supply to the
inhabitants of Rome. Incredibly, the Goths were not able to entirely destroy this great
system.
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Imagine having to go to a river to bring water to your homes and waste more
than half a day while at it, and plus, you would not be certain that the the water is
even safe to drink. Feeling the hot sweat going down your face. This is totally unlike
today. The health issues where a really big problem before the aqueducts and Romans
could get sick or even risk death. Then they built the aqueducts, which lead to another
problem: lead pipes. This where also getting Romans sick, so they replaced them with
cement pipes, which were waterproof and more sanitary. Today, people had learned
not to use lead pipes thanks to our Roman ancestors.
As it is the case with modern aqueducts, roman ones required a great deal of
maintenance to remain operative. Romans usually repaired leaks, caused by heat or
frost, or breaches. At a certain point along the great lengths they cover, sedimentation
tanks were placed in order to remove impurities from the water. In other sections,
holes were carved into the water system so maintenance workers could get in the
pipes. One way the engineers facilitated maintenance was by running two pipes
alongside each other and diverting water between the two so men could get inside one
pipe at a time. The person who was in charge of maintaining the aqueducts was the
Curator Aquarum who cleaned the water system. Water needed this treatment because
of twigs, animal droppings and dirt that accumulated during the water’s long journey.
Even the smallest of accumulation could then lead to contamination of the water, and
to the spreading of illnesses. To this very day, we continue to use the cleaning and
repairing techniques in our modern aqueducts as they were used by Romans hundreds
of years ago.
One custom that were enabled by the existence of aqueducts, and that was
central to Roman culture were the baths. Baths, “thermae” or “baleneion” as they
were called by the Romans, where used by many people daily in Rome and were
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places of rest and relaxation. Public baths were beautiful, fancy and clean. They had
hot and cold pools, clean towels, servants or slaves to take care of you, hot steam
rooms, fancy saunas, exercise rooms, fine hair cutting salons, and even reading rooms
and quiet libraries. Such places were sometimes more of a giant mall with baths;
having also shops where romans could purchase goods. There was about nine hundred
baths in Rome that could each hold from three hundred to a thousand five hundred
people, and were places were one could hear al type of gossip about almost any
subject. The bath complex needed great engineering skills because they where heated
by furnaces and the hypocaust system, which carried the heat around the tubs so they
never get cold. This baths where so big they needed to be filled with water by six
hundred and forty kilometers of aqueducts. It is from this custom in ancient Rome
that modern day people take a daily bath, reducing the incidence of illnesses. Roman
baths has also influenced how humans now go to the mall and connect in social
communities around certain places in every town. News, social skills, where also
being use and it also opened the ideas of exercising a lot and playing sports. Baths
affected almost everything we know.
In conclusion, the amazing use and the level of sophistication the Romans give
to aqueducts have greatly influenced our modern life. Imagine not having water in
your homes and had to bath in a river and boil water to drink it; this would be
human’s life now without aqueducts. Thanks to aqueducts we can bath, go to the
bathroom, drink water, fill pools, water the plants, clean things and much more. The
Romans where very intelligent and impressively conquered the need of water in all
cities of the great Ancient Rome.
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