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Roman Roads and Aqueducts PDF

96 Pages·2014·42.802 MB·English
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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 ® San Diego, CA © 2015 ReferencePoint Press, Inc. Printed in the United States For more information, contact: ReferencePoint Press, Inc. PO Box 27779 San Diego, CA 92198 www.ReferencePointPress.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, web distribution, or information storage retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher. 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

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