jason carr Written M.A. Examination for B. Lackner Discuss and analyze the contributions of Frontinus and Vitruvius. Describe structures and curious particulars. Are there some ritual functions of ancient Roman waterworks? Finally, list some secondary material (works, journals). Discuss and analyze the contributions of Frontinus and Vitruvius. The two major primary sources on Roman water supply are Vitruvius and Frontinus. While Vitruvius is the better known to classicists both deserve careful consideration of their contributions to history, if not to engineering. Vitruvius' commentary on water supply is largely confined to Book VIII of his treatise on Architecture. Although the work is in some places fantastic, an overview of some content is instructive. Beginning with a spirited and fanciful discussion of the importance of good water to a people, Vitruvius mentions mythical waters that cure, waters that kill by drinking and some by bathing, and waters that feminize. Concerning the latter, the author tells the story of a conquering band of barbarians who take over a small city, but who are softened by a local tavern owner. The barkeep secretly puts the feminizing water into the barbarians' drinks and renders them weak enough to drive out of the city. This belief in the magical or qualitative nature of various waters will figure into later discussion. Vitruvius then launches into a mostly-useless discussion of where one should get water (e.g. from the north face of a mountain) depending on prevailing ill or august winds. Immediately, though, the author follows with an accurate and useful description of how to find underground water supplies. Counting on higher moisture content in the ground immediately above an aquifer, Vitruvius suggests burying pots upside-down and covering lightly; if there is condensation in the morning water is nearby. The same role can be performed with a fleece which is wrung out to check for moisture. Next Vitruvius turns to actual hydraulics and the mechanics of water delivery. He notes the existing aqueducts, their sources, and their patrons. He seems to have a decent understanding of hydraulic theory (as limited as Roman hydraulic theory was), and a familiarity with the works of Hero of Alexandria. The most specific portion of Book VIII is the complex description of the castellum, or what is now called a terminal castellum. The castellum serves a double or perhaps even triple purpose, discussed below. Vitruvius description of a tripartite castellum divided up into private, public, and bath supply lines was largely accepted as true (or at least useful) until the 1990s. Since then, contemporary authors such as Evans and Hodge (discussed below) have challenged the usefulness of the description. Careful attention to Vitruvius' description of this element reveals unresolvable internal conflicts. These conflicts lead modern critics to believe that not only was Vitruvius was proscribing an ideal installation but also that Vitruvius was confused or, as Hodge bluntly states, "Vitruvius was wrong." The influence and importance of Vitruvius, then, regarding waterworks is most felt in a literary or mythic sense. He may be most useful as a cultural touchstone, a source that helps us understand what others have believed to be factual. Frontinus' work, Aqueducts, is more technically stringent but no less problematic. Frontinus, water consul under Trajan, wrote extensively about the duties of that consulate. Chapters are devoted to the logistics of keeping up the water supply, the associated economics, and legal issues. The main obstacle to using Frontinus as a primary source for a discourse on waterworks is the profoundly different concept of the commodity in Roman times. An emphasis on metered usage and conservation gives the modern reader a curiosity for metrics: How much water came through the various channels? How many gallons were used by homes? By the baths? Who got water in times of drought or disruption? The Roman model, contrary to modern sensibilities, is built upon a concept of a never-ending, always-flowing supply of clear, good water. Thus Frontinus spends a good deal of time talking about the various interconnections and redundant supplies and the varying qualities of the lines. Also critical is income realized (or not) by the state for a given supply. Reformation of the current bureaucracy and a crack-down on non- or under- paying water cheaters constitute a major portion of the work. Curiously absent from a modern point of view is an absolute lack of volume statistics. Frontinus does not mention the volumes of water delivered, due likely to a lack of standardized or accurate means of measuring time and volume. The contribution of Frontinus, then, is mainly anthropological or cultural: through him we glimpse a profoundly different concept of commodity management and the bureaucracy that governed it. Describe structures and curious particulars. The aqueduct in popular imagery and in reality are quite different. The picturesque arcades of the Pont du Garde and other extant above- ground installations are misleading. Some 90% of all channels were roughly at ground level, usually covered with a meter or so of earth. The long channels were necessary not to ensure good water though the Romans preferred clear, although heavily mineral- laden groundwaters to murky but minerally lighter waters. The mountain waters were necessary because of their elevation; the gradients required in an unpressurized, open-channel system required a distant starting point if higher portions of the city were to be served. Oddly, the insistence on clear karstic waters lead to a massive and permanent problem: limestone continually precipitated out and narrowed the walls of the channels. This accretion incurred extensive and constant maintenance, perhaps the most expensive part of maintaining the water supply. After a transport of as little as a few miles to as great as thirty-five or so, the channeled waters pierced the city walls and were dumped into a castellum. This structure served as a settling tank, a distribution point, and also as a billboard where the aqueducts patron could proclaim his service to the city and citizenry. From here the water was directly channeled off or, more commonly, off to secondary castellum (watertower-type structures) which would distribute the water outwards. Larger installations, like larger baths (Caracalla, etc) required dedicated aqueducts, minimizing the function of the public castellum. Are there some ritual functions of ancient Roman waterworks? As Mona Ozouf has noted, any breach in a city border requires a ritual response. This function is in place in the case of visiting dignitaries (who might be met at the gate and presented ritually with permission to enter), triumphal re-entries, and it may also apply to the piercing of Roman walls. Particularly because Roman walls were afforded a sacerdotal nature, the castellum as entry point may have served as a ritual delimiter for the aqueduct. Sponsorship by a prominent patron lent extra credibility to the idea that the breaching was intentional and controlled. Note that the concept of aqueduct-as-intrusion is not altogether fantastic: Procopius notes the successful use of old aqueducts for Roman troop movements in combating Goths in the sixth century. Finally, list some secondary material (works, journals). Current scholarship on hydraulics tends to be largely ahistoric and technical, leaving historical journals to dabble in the subject. The Journal of Urban History has given attention to the problem of water supply as it applies to urban infrastructures. The most important full-length treatments of the subject, other than Ashby's work in the 1930s, are Trevor Hodges' Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply from 1992 and Harry Evan's Water Distribution in Ancient Rome: the Evidence of Frontinus. Hodges work is an exhaustive (and, at $175, expensive) compendium of what is know about Roman water supply. It has set the standard for modern hydraulic histories. Evans' work dissects Frontinus' treatise in light of archaeological evidence. Evans concludes that Frontinus is more useful as a study of a bureaucratic official justifying his appointment, and as a way to reconstruct Agrippa's Commentarii which likely served as its model. http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/