Roman Roads and Aqueducts

96 Pages·2014·42.802 MB·English

by  Don Nardo

Other titles in the History’s Great Structures series include:
Th e Eiff el Tower
Th e Great Wall of China
Th e Medieval Castle
Th e Palace of Versailles
Th e Panama Canal
Th e Parthenon of Ancient Greece
Th e Roman Colosseum
Shakespeare’s Globe Th eater
Stonehenge
Th e World Trade Center
Roman Roads
and Aqueducts
Don Nardo
®
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Nardo, Don, 1947–
[Roman Roads and aqueducts (ReferencePoint Press)]
Roman roads and aqueducts / by Don Nardo.
pages cm -- (History’s great structures)
Audience: Grades 9 to 12.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60152-635-9 (e-book)
1. Roads, Roman--Juvenile literature. 2. Transportation--Rome--Juvenile literature.
3. Aqueducts--Rome--Juvenile literature. 4. Water-supply--Rome--Juvenile literature.
5. Rome--Antiquities--Juvenile literature. I. Title.
DG28.N3725 2014
388.1'0937--dc23
2013031024
CONTENTS
Important Events in the History of
Roman Roads and Aqueducts 6
Introduction 8
Making a Great Empire Possible
Chapter One 13
To the Edges of the World
Chapter Two 28
A Wide Array of Conveniences
Chapter Th ree 41
Providing Life-Giving Water
Chapter Four 54
Flowing from Fountains and Faucets
Chapter Five 67
Eternal and Living Memorials
Source Notes 79
Facts About Roman Roads and Aqueducts 82
For Further Research 84
Index 87
Picture Credits 94
About the Author 96
IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE HISTORY
OF ROMAN ROADS AND AQUEDUCTS
272
ca. 500
s Th e
Romans
Th e Persians build their
begin
Royal Road, stretching
building
from what is now southern
another 18
Iraq to western Turkey.
aqueduct,
the Aqua Th e aqueduct today
Anio, to called the Pont du
ca. 753 supply Gard, created to bring
parts of water to what is now
Th e traditional date for the the capital the French city of
city of Rome’s founding. with Nimes, is completed.
water.
bce 750 500 250 ce
38–52
ca. 509–30
Th e years during
Th e years of the Roman
which one of Rome’s
Republic, in which Rome
most magnifi cent
is ruled by representatives
aqueducts—the Aqua
of the people.
Claudia—is built.
312
97
Work begins
Sextus Julius
on Rome’s fi rst
Frontinus becomes
major highway,
the city of Rome’s
the Via Appia.
water commissioner
Construction also
and overseer of the
starts on Rome’s
aqueducts. He begins
fi rst aqueduct, the
writing a detailed
Aqua Appia.
book about Rome’s
water system.
6
1988
Th e Italians dedicate
a picturesque
national park situated
along a stretch of the
206
ancient Via Appia.
Th e city of Rome
is now supplied by
1453
eleven aqueducts.
Pope Nicholas
1943
V renovates the
410
Aqua Virgo During World
Th e Romans are aqueduct, War II German
forced to abandon which serves armies march
their province of Rome. He down the
Britain, but the roads renames the Via Appia on
there subsequently structure the their way to
remain in use for Aqua Vergine. counterattack the
many years. invading Allies.
500 1000 1500 2000
1924
476
Italian composer Ottorino Respighi
writes Th e Pines of Rome, a large-
Th e last Roman
scale orchestral work that depicts
emperor is
events along the ancient Via Appia.
forced from
his throne, and
the Roman 2006
imperial
A major corporation grants
government
funding to repair and maintain the
ceases to exist.
imposing Roman aqueduct serving
the Spanish town of Segovia.
ca. 300
Th e Roman
Empire now has
some 370 paved
or partially
paved highways.
7
Introduction
Making a Great
Empire Possible
TT
oday when someone mentions ancient roads or aqueducts (chan-
nels that carry water to cities), most people think about the ones
built by the Romans, long-ago masters of the Italian peninsula. Th is
is only natural and fi tting. After all, these structures were among the
fi nest construction works that ancient Rome produced, and the Ro-
mans were far and away the greatest builders of the ancient world.
Th eir roads and aqueducts, several of which remain in amazingly
good condition, are a testament to the genius of that vanished people.
More than anything else, many historians have suggested, a
strong tendency toward practicality characterized the inherent Ro-
man genius. Th at is, their remarkable talent for solving practical
problems—both simple and complex—was the driving force behind
much of what they achieved. In this view, the true Roman artist was
not a sculptor, painter, actor, or poet. Instead, the chief Roman art
was engineering. “Roman genius was called into action by the enor-
mous practical needs of a world empire,” the late, renowned scholar
Edith Hamilton stated. She added that Rome met these needs in part
by creating an enormous system of roads. “Th e mighty Roman road,”
she wrote, was “a monument of dogged, unconquerable human ef-
fort.” Th is, indeed, was “the true art of Rome.”1
8
Earlier Road Systems
Th e Romans did not actually invent roads and aqueducts. Nor did
they originate religious temples, palaces, town halls, racetracks, the-
aters, or many other monumental, or large-scale, structures they
erected across their vast realm. Various earlier peoples had such struc-
tures well before the Romans arrived on the scene.
Large-scale roads, for example, were fi rst engineered by the As-
syrians. A warlike people who dwelled in Mesopotamia, what is now
Iraq, they built a network of roads in the late second millennium (the
1000s) BCE. Th at was several centuries before Rome’s traditional
founding date of 753 BCE.
Th e Assyrian roads were composed mainly of hard-packed earth.
A number of short stretches, however—those leading up to temples
and other key buildings—were paved. Th e method of this paving was
to lay down a layer or two of kiln-fi red bricks
and to place on top of them thick slabs of
Words in Context
polished limestone.
monumental
A few centuries later, when Rome was
Built on a large,
still a small, dirty town with no paved roads,
impressive scale.
another Middle Eastern people, the Per-
sians, ruled Mesopotamia along with their
homeland—what is now Iran. Th e Persians wisely maintained and
over time expanded the existing Assyrian roads. One of these expan-
sions was Persia’s famous Royal Road. It ran for more than 1,600
miles (2,575 km) eastward from the Mediterranean coast to the Per-
sian capital of Susa. Th e fi fth-century-BCE Greek historian Herodo-
tus actually traveled on the Royal Road. In his book, the world’s fi rst
known history text, he described it, saying, “At intervals all along the
road are recognized stations, with excellent inns, and the road itself
is safe to travel by, as it never leaves inhabited country.” About the
highway’s length, Herodotus wrote:
If the measurement of the road in parasangs is correct, and if
a parasang is equal, as indeed it is, to 30 furlongs [about 3.8
9
The Height of the Roman Empire, 117 CE
BRITANNIA
Atlantic GAUL Black Sea ARMENIA
Ocean M
ITAALdYriatic SeAaCEDONIA Aegea AEuphrates River
SPAIN SICILY n S IR
Tyrrhenian Sea ea YS
Mediterranean Sea
EGYPT Red
AFRICA Sea
Nil
e
Ri
v
er
miles or 6 km], then the distance from Sardis [a city in what is
now Turkey] to the palace [in Susa]—450 parasangs—will be
13,500 furlongs [about 1,688 miles or 2,704 km]. Traveling,
then, at the rate of 150 furlongs [about 19 miles or 30 km] a
day, a man will take just ninety days to make the journey.2
Dwarfed by Rome
Th e Greeks and some other ancient peoples also constructed roads, as
well as aqueducts. But for quality—and especially in sheer numbers—
all of the pre-Roman road systems and water channels were quite liter-
ally dwarfed by those of Rome. As they did in so many other areas, the
Romans borrowed the best ideas of their neighbors and predecessors.
Th ey then skillfully combined them with their own native concepts
and abilities to create things that were extremely practical, effi cient,
10