16 Facts About Roman aqueduct

Rome's first Roman aqueduct was built in 312 BC, and supplied a water fountain at the city's cattle market.

Cities and towns throughout the Roman Empire emulated this model, and funded aqueducts as objects of public interest and civic pride, "an expensive yet necessary luxury to which all could, and did, aspire".

Methods of Roman aqueduct surveying and construction are noted by Vitruvius in his work De architectura .

Notable examples of Roman aqueduct architecture include the supporting piers of the Aqueduct of Segovia, and the Roman aqueduct-fed cisterns of Constantinople.

Inevitably, there would have been rancorous and interminable court cases between neighbours or local governments over competing claims to limited water supplies but on the whole, Roman aqueduct communities took care to allocate shared water resources according to need.

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The new Roman aqueduct was meant to supply water to the highest elevations of the city, including the Capitoline Hill, but the decemviri had consulted Rome's main written oracle, the Sibylline Books, and found there a warning against supplying water to the Capitoline.

Territory over which the Roman aqueduct ran had to be carefully surveyed to ensure the water would flow at a consistent and acceptable rate for the entire distance.

Greek and Roman aqueduct physicians were well aware of the association between stagnant or tainted waters and water-borne diseases, and held rainwater to be water's purest and healthiest form, followed by springs.

Lead content in Rome's Roman aqueduct water was "clearly measurable, but unlikely to have been truly harmful".

Some Roman aqueduct conduits were supported across valleys or hollows on multiple piered arches of masonry, brick or concrete, known as arcades.

At Arles, a minor branch of the main Roman aqueduct supplied a local suburb via a lead siphon whose "belly" was laid across a riverbed, eliminating any need for supporting bridgework.

Full closure of any Roman aqueduct for servicing would have been a rare event, kept as brief as possible, with repair shut-downs preferably made when water demand was lowest, during the winter months.

Roman aqueduct claimed to know not only how much was stolen, but how it was done.

Rome's first Roman aqueduct discharged at very low pressure and at a more-or-less constant rate in the city's main trading centre and cattle-market, probably into a low-level, cascaded series of troughs or basins; the upper for household use, the lower for watering the livestock traded there.

The first was probably built in the next century, based on precursors in neighbouring Campania; a limited number of private baths and small, street-corner public baths would have had a private water supply, but once Roman aqueduct water was brought to the city's higher elevations, large and well-appointed public baths and fountains were built throughout the city.

Farmers whose villas or estates were near a public Roman aqueduct could draw, under license, a specified quantity of Roman aqueduct water for irrigation at a predetermined time, using a bucket let into the conduit via the inspection hatches; this was intended to limit the depletion of water supply to users further down the gradient, and help ensure a fair distribution among competitors at the time when water was most needed and scarce.