A book of bridges

by Walter Shaw Sparrow

A FEW WORDS ON THE ROMAN GENIUS

I

What are we to think of the Roman bridges and aqueducts? Are we to be men in our attitude toward them? or shall we try to see them with the unfriendly eyes of Grecian supermen?

It seems to me that many Grecian supermen are terrible persons in their criticism of architecture. Often they are so cocksure in their contempt for Roman art that they write down their verdicts without any thought, and also in uncouth English, as if a slatternly habit of mind were a fit companion for their proclaimed belief in the supremacy of Greek masterpieces. Years ago, in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” one of these superlative judges told the world that Roman bridges and aqueducts “were really of a more engineering than architectural character, being in the main utilitarian.” What does this ungainly language mean? Was a Roman temple less utilitarian than a Roman aqueduct? less needful as a part of the national life? Why should a lover of Greek art write absurdly on the Roman genius? I am told, for instance, by another Grecian, that the Pont du Gard, a Roman masterpiece, three or four leagues from Nîmes, in France, has “rough masonry.” What next? A very strong man, a Sandow, in comparison with a Tom Thumb, is a man of rough muscle and sinew, and if Tom Thumb is to be our standard of symmetry and grace, then Sandow is a masterful error in proportion and vitality. To describe the Pont du Gard as “rough” is to be a pigmy in a very foolish attitude to Roman power; and it proves also that the critic has a defective appreciation of his own vaunted hobby, the might and magnificence of Greek architecture.

Does anyone know why British writers are reluctant to admire in art those virile gifts of the spirit that win victories and promise a great future? Why is it that our criticisms are honeyed with sweet phrases? We prattle about “tender sentiment,” and “exquisite refinement,” and “gracious and gentle tact,” as if these female qualities only and alone could make fame permanent in the arena of the centuries. Is a passion for “refinement” to turn us into valetudinarians? Surely the Roman genius, in a supreme monument such as the Pont du Gard, is the very tonic for which we ought to have an inborn care and liking? Yet some professors of taste, being devotees of the epicene, condemn it as a “rough” genius, just as bad climbers revile the Alps.

When J. J. Rousseau visited the Pont du Gard he was awed into silence by the immensity of the three arcades. For the first time in his life he understood the grandeur of the Roman spirit in adventurous achievement. “Le Pont du Gard,” he wrote in his “Confessions,” “était le premier ouvrage des Romains que j’eusse vu. Je m’attendais à un monument digne des mains qui l’avaient construit; pour le coup, l’objet passa mon attente, et ce fut la seule fois en ma vie. Il n’appartenait qu’aux Romains de produire cet effet. L’aspect de ce simple et noble ouvrage me frappa d’autant plus, qu’il est au milieu d’un désert où le silence et la solitude rendent l’objet plus frappant et l’admiration plus vive; car ce prétendu pont n’était qu’un aqueduc. On se demande quelle force a transporté ces pierres énormes si loin de toute carrière, et a réuni les bras de tant de milliers d’hommes dans un lieu où il n’en habite aucun? Je parcourus les trois étages de ce superbe édifice, [63] que le respect m’empêchait presque d’oser fouler sous mes pieds. Le retentissement de mes pas sous ces immenses voûtes me faisait croire entendre la forte voix de ceux qui les avaient bâties. Je me perdais comme un insecte dans cette immensité: je sentais, tout en me faisant petit, je ne sais quoi qui m’élevait l’âme, et je me disais en soupirant: ‘Que ne suis-je né Romain!’ Je restai là plusieurs heures dans une contemplation ravissante; je m’en revins distrait et rêveur, et cette rêverie ne fut pas favorable à Mme. W—-.... Elle avait bien songé à me prémunir contre les filles de Montpellier, mais non pas contre le Pont du Gard! On ne s’avise jamais de tout.”

I give this quotation in the original French because the flavour of Rousseau cannot be translated. As well try to keep the flavour of champagne by mixing this wine with water. Besides, I wish to contrast the elusive vanity of Rousseau with the alert and appealing manliness of Charles Kingsley, another ardent devotee of the Pont du Gard. In 1864 he wrote as follows to his wife:—[64]

“My first impression of the Pont du Gard was one of simple fear. ‘It was so high that it was dreadful,’ as Ezekiel says. Then I said, again and again, ‘A great people and a strong. There hath been none like before them, nor shall be again for many generations.’ As, after fifteen miles of the sea of mulberry, olive, and vine, dreary from its very artificial perfection, we turned the corner of the limestone glen, and over the deep blue rock-pool, saw that thing hanging between earth and heaven, the blue sky and green woods showing through its bright yellow arches, and all to carry a cubic yard of water to Nismes, twenty miles off, for public baths and sham sea-fights (naumachiæ) in the amphitheatre, which even Charlemagne, when he burnt the Moors out of it, could not destroy!—Then I felt the brute greatness of that Roman people; and an awe fell upon me as it may have fallen on poor Croc, the Rook, king of the Alemans—but that is a long story—when he came down and tried to destroy this city of the seven hills, and ended in being shown about in an iron cage as The Rook. But I doubt not when he and his wild Alemans came down to the Pont du Gard they said it was the work of dwarfs—of the devil? We walked up to the top, through groves of Ilex, Smilax, and Coronella (the first time I have seen it growing), and then we walked across on the top. The masonry is wonderful, and instead of employing the mountain limestone of the hills, they have brought the most splendid Bath oolite[65] from the hills opposite. There are the marks cut by the old fellows—horse-hoofs, hatchets, initials, etc., as fresh as paint. The Emperor (1864) has had it all repaired from the same quarries, stone for stone. Now, after 1600 years, they are going to bring the same water into Nismes by it. When we crossed, I was in a new world. Genista anglica, the prickly needle furze of our commons (rare with us), is in great golden bushes; and box, shrubby thyme, a wonderful blue lily, bee-orchis and asters, white, yellow, purple (which won’t dry, for the leaves fall off). Then wild rosemary, and twenty more plants I never saw. We went below into a natural park of ilex and poplar (two or three sorts), and watched such butterflies and the bridge, till C—— said, ‘This is too perfect to last,’ which frightened me and made me pray. And there was reason—for such a day I never had in my life of beauty and wonder ... and yet there is one thing more glorious and precious than the whole material universe—and that is a woman’s love....”

THE PONT DU GARD FROM ABOVE THE FIRST TIER; SHOWING BELOW THE MODERN BRIDGE FOR GENERAL TRAFFIC OVER THE GARDON

A classic tradition says that the huge stones in the Pont du Gard were joined together by iron clamps. Is this true? Each iron clamp, if any were used by the masons, connected a voussoir to an interior archstone.[66] From time to time the Romans employed iron rods bent at the ends and fastened into stones with molten lead; such rods have been discovered among the ruins of a Roman bridge over the North Tyne, at Chollerford, near Hexham. This was a bridge with a wooden superstructure, probably, as no voussoir has been found among the litter of pier-stones.

The Pont du Gard is very tall; it soars, and to a height that exceeds forty-seven metres. The first tier has six arches, the second has eleven, the third has thirty-five. In the middle tier the length is 257 m. 90 cm. Note, too, that the architectural centre of the design is determined by the rocky channel of the Gardon; we find it not in the centre of the bridge but on the north in the arch under which the river flows. It is the biggest arch of all, with a span of 25 m. 30 cm., while the neighbour on each side is narrower by nearly six metres. The other bays of the first arcade dwindle in span to 15 m. 75 cm.[67] As to the centre of the second tier, it corresponds with that of the first, for the largest vault is above the river; it carries four little arches of the third arcade, while its companions support only three. Some critics see nothing more than the unequal size of these arcades, when the real point is to find the architectural centre, whence the composition radiates, majestic and imperious. The topmost arches and their crowning dignify the whole structure with a completeness akin to that which is given to a long range of columns by a fine entablature and cornice.

And we must note the symbol of prosperity—a phallus—carved twice in low-relief on the Pont du Gard. On the western side it graces a springing voussoir in the third arch of the second tier; and there is another on the keystone of the greatest arch, where the river passes. Here the emblem is a double phallus, and when it is touched by sunlight it looks as young as hope, not as uncertain as prosperity.

We cannot put a date on this Roman masterpiece, because in this matter there are differences of opinion. M. Ménard, historian of Nîmes, attributes the work to Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus, who is said to have ordered its construction about nineteen years before the Birth of Christ. The architecture belongs to the Tuscan order. Its vaults are semicircular, and spring from ledges, or imposts, about 50 centimetres high, and as much in projection. There are four parallel rings of stone in the vaults of the first tier, and three in the second, while the third tier has either one or two. This Roman method of building the under surface of an arch, by laying stones in parallel bands or rings, side by side, but not bonded together, was copied in the Middle Ages ([p. 82]). One point more: the water channel of the aqueduct, placed on top of the third arcade, is 1 m. 30 cm. wide and 1 m. 60 cm. high; it is nearly blocked up with a thick deposit of lime, but when this substance is detached we find on the side walls a deep layer of cement coloured red. The bed of this channel is a solid floor, 22 cm. in thickness, and its component parts are small pebbles mixed with lime and gritty sand.

Like other antique monuments, the Pont du Gard has been ravaged by the brutality of mankind. At the end of the seventeenth century, for instance, during years of religious warfare, so called, the Pont du Gard was often crowded with fugitives and with troops, who made a footway for themselves along the upstream side above the first arcade by means of a strong platform corbelled out from new imposts. Over this road cavalry and artillery passed at full speed, not only shaking the bridge, but causing the topmost tier to develop a curve which is still noticeable. At last the province of Languedoc interfered, and in 1670 careful restoration was begun.

Years later, in 1743, the états généraux decided that a good highway should be built up against the eastern side of the Pont du Gard; and this new bridge, finished in 1747, was perhaps justified by its utility, though it harmed a classic monument. There have been a good many modern restorations, and one day the aqueduct itself may be brought into use again, in accordance with the wishes expressed by a great many persons.[68]

II

France happens to be rich in fine relics of Roman bridge-building. Among her antique monuments there are remains of three aqueducts, at Fréjus and Lyon and Luynes; and every pontist has seen photographs of the aqueduct at Lambèse, in the department of Constantine, Algeria. At Vaison, in Vaucluse, over the river Ouvèze, we find an important Roman bridge, built on two rocks, with a single arch not less than thirty metres in span; and along one embankment is a range of tall and narrow arches that start out from the abutment of the bridge. The Pont de Vaison is not in all respects representative of the best Roman work, for its voussoirs, instead of being rimmed and extra-dossed, are fitted into the spandrils ([p. 282]). I do not know the date of this bridge, but Vaison descends from a famous Roman town, Vasio by name, mentioned by Mela (ii. 5) as one of the richest towns of the Narbonensis.

It is common knowledge—or it should be—that the Romans adorned some of their bridges with a triumphal arch; and it happens, by rare good fortune, that France owns a small example of this Roman pride. It is the Pont Flavien at Saint-Chamas, which in a single arch, forty-two feet wide, spans the rocky bed of the Touloubre. At each entrance there is a triumphal arch seven metres high, flanked at each side by two Corinthian pilasters, upon the summit of which the entablature rests. There is a stone lion at each extremity of the entablature; it stands rampant and looks out into the open country, as if to symbolise for ever the wakeful power of Roman thoroughness. Only one of the four lions belongs to Roman workmanship; the others are much younger, and their proportions are bigger. This bridge, again, which I believe to be unique, bears an inscription, from which we learn that it was founded by a certain L. Donnius Flavus, a flamen of Rome and of Augustus. But the name Augustus was a title of veneration given by custom to all the Cæsars, so that Donnius Flavus and his bridge have uncertain dates.

And now we will take a devious walk along some Roman roads through Gard-Hérault, to see what we shall find in the way of antique bridges. From north-east to south-west the region is crossed by the Via Domitiana, which runs from Lyons to the Pyrenees, going over the Rhône at Arles, and passing by Nîmes, Pont Ambroise, Substantion, Saint-Thibéry, Béziers, and Narbonne. At Pont Ambroise the river Vidourle is partly spanned by the ruins of a very picturesque Roman bridge, but its points of interest belong to an earlier chapter ([p. 82]). Near Castelnau, or Substantion, the Via Domitiana crossed the river Lez by a bridge now wholly destroyed; its abutments can be seen when the water is low, but they add nothing to our knowledge of Roman masonry. In mediæval times this bridge was called the Pont Lairou, Lero being the Latin name of the river Lez.

Not far from Saint-Thibéry the Via passed over the Hérault at that point where, in the seventeenth century (about the year 1678), the river was split into halves by a great flood, which formed the Île des Bénédictins; the Roman bridge is on the western branch of this divided river. Four arches exist, but originally there were nine, with spans ranging from ten to twelve metres. The piers have cutwaters both upstream and downstream, with circular bays nearly two metres high for the relief of spate water. The facing stones are long, and the filling is local volcanic rubble. This bridge was wrecked by a flood before the year 1536.

The Via Domitiana was carried over the Orb, and then, following the ancient road of Colombiers, it crossed the Capestang by a Roman viaduct called the Pons Selmis or Pontserme, which in 1430 was repaired with 500 quarters of stone 2½ pans long by 1¼ pans thick and wide. It was a tremendous viaduct, its length being 1500 metres; the width did not exceed three metres. In the sixteenth century it fell in for want of repair. At the present time only an isolated arch remains, with fragments of two others. In a document of A.D. 782 this bridge is called Pons Septimus.

Another Roman road left Nîmes in the direction of Larzac, and near Lodève apparently it joined the ancient road from Saint-Thibéry to Millau; at Sommières it crossed the Vidourle by a magnificent Roman bridge which had no fewer than seventeen arches. To-day only eight arches are visible, the others having been buried under a great accumulation of soil on both banks.[69] Yet the Pont de Sommières, though deprived of nine arches, has a high place among the Roman monuments.

I have now to mention a Roman byway that branched out from the main road on the right bank of the Vidourle, at a little distance from Sommières; it ran toward Substantion, passing by Castries and joining the Via Domitiana near Vendargues. At Boisseron it crossed the river Bénovie, a small tributary of the Vidourle, by a bridge which to-day is extant, though disfigured by modern work. It has a shelving parapet and road, but we cannot describe it as a gabled bridge ([p. 27]). There are five arches of unequal size, the piers on the upstream side have cutwaters, and rectangular bays above the cutwaters ease the pressure of floods.

Frank Brangwyn has drawn for us the wreck of a Roman bridge over the Loire, at Brives-Charensac, in the neighbourhood of Puy; and the big arch, which springs from water-level, is particularly interesting because it has a double ring of voussoirs. The smaller arch belongs to the Middle Ages, for it has a pointed shape.

RUINS OF A ROMAN BRIDGE OVER THE LOIRE AT BRIVES-CHARENSAC, FRANCE

We pass on to Spain, which has been called the land of bridges and aqueducts. A pontist may live there for many years and be happy all the time. Even a hurried author, who visits the antiquity of Spain as a mere journalist, and who mimics vainly the travel books of Alexandre Dumas, finds that the many bridges put some thoroughness into his own work, acting as a drag on the far-sought and dear-bought liveliness with which the million may be charmed. There is the case of S. R. Crockett, who was commissioned to be lively and daring among the Spaniards, so he published in 1903 “The Adventurer in Spain,” a poor copy both of Borrow and of Dumas. “I would like to write a book—copiously illustrated—upon Spanish bridges alone,” he told his readers in a moment of zeal, adding briskly, “that is, if I thought anybody could be found to buy it.” In one passage thought and enthusiasm very nearly broke loose from the discipline of “a popular style”:—

“Many bridges, too, there were—wonderful in a country where, as in Spain, there are neither roads to travel upon nor waters to cross—nor even, it may be added, travellers to cross them. Yet in our first hour we had passed, we five apprentice Carlists, at least as many admirable bridges—clean-shaped, practical, suited to the place and to the landscape as a becoming dress fits a pretty woman. This is a rare thing in bridges, and one which is almost never to be found in new countries, where a bridge is invariably an outrage upon the surrounding scenery. Queer bridges we found—triangular bridges, unnecessary bridges, of wood and stone and straw and stubble—but never ugly bridges.”

Mr. Crockett did not understand the rivers of Spain, many of which after a storm leap from their dry beds into raging torrents, and give rough-and-tumble lessons to bridge-builders. From Roman times to our own, these freakish waterways have inspired noble work, that cannot well be rated at too high a level. At Mérida alone a pontist can dream over the past for several months, not only studying the remains of three Roman aqueducts, upon which storks hold their parliaments, but making friends with two Roman bridges, one of which puts the Roman genius in scale with the Guadiana. It is a huge structure, not less than 780 metres in length, with sixty-four arches of granite. Books of reference mention eighty-one arches, but this number includes the relief bays for floods tunnelled through the piers above the cutwaters. Some writers believe that the greater bridge at Mérida was built under Trajan, while others give it to Augustus, who founded Mérida as a home of rest for the veteran soldiers of his last campaign. In 686 the Visigoths restored this bridge; in 1610 it was repaired by Philip III; in 1812, during the siege of Badajoz, seventeen of the arches were wrecked in order to close the river. At the northern end we find a Roman castle, now in ruins, so we are able to study a battle-bridge dating from those times when Rome turned wars into colonies.

The Roman bridges of Spain may be divided into five classes:—

1. Those which are low and many-arched, as at Mérida and Salamanca.

2. Those which have two or three arches with shelving parapets and roads, as at Alcantarilla[70] and also near Villa del Rio;[71]

3. One or two with a single arch, as at Ronda;

4. Several in which Roman and Moorish masonry are combined, as at Córdova; and

5. There is one Roman bridge so lofty that its parapet is separated from the river-bed by a distance of more than fifty-nine metres. I refer to the famous Puente Trajan over “the melancholy Tagus” at Alcántara. This herculean masterpiece has six arches, his length is a hundred and eighty-eight metres, and the roadway is eight metres wide and quite level. A triumphal archway thirteen metres high stands in the middle, but I regard its Roman origin as doubtful, as the design is not quite in scale with the majesty of the bridge.

Who can say how many writers have tried to describe the Puente Trajan? No description can summon up before the mind an image of his marvellous power and nobility, for these qualities produce a feeling of awe and take from us the wish to write. That he came from an architect and was put together by common masons, huge stone after huge stone, is a fact very hard to believe, as only two things in this bridge mark the littleness of man: one is the archway, that fails to triumph with a Roman spirit, and the other is an arch of modern workmanship. Everything else recalls to my mind a good saying that fell from Marshal Ney when he noticed in the aqueduct of Segovia the startling difference between the craft of modern masons and the ancient Roman art in thorough construction. In the fifteenth century some vaults of the Segovian aqueduct were destroyed by wars, and Isabella the Catholic had them rebuilt in the most careful manner. Yet the work was not careful enough, for in less than three hundred years the reconstruction had to be renewed, while the Roman art remained youthful and immovable. In 1808 Marshal Ney was greatly impressed by these facts, and, pointing to the first arch of the modern portion, he said: “C’est ici que commence le travail des hommes.” Even the people of Segovia feel that their soaring aqueduct has in it something far beyond their reach, something grand enough to be called superhuman. Custom has deadened their admiration, of course, has enabled them even to build silly little houses amid the shadows thrown by their antique monument; but yet they doubt the human origin of such perfect masonry and give it to the Evil One, who comforts himself with a tremendous deed of architecture whenever he is greatly bored by the feeble gullibility of mankind.

THE ROMAN AQUEDUCT AT SEGOVIA IN SPAIN, WITH MODERN HOUSES CLUSTERED AROUND ITS BASE

Nothing is more difficult than to express in words this unhuman character of the best Roman bridges, which reveal eternal manhood and courage in the work done by the men of a day. For instance, here is the Alcántara over the rocky gorge of the Tagus. He was erected for Trajan by Caius Julius Lacer; and we know that Lacer was buried quite close to his bridge, and that his tomb remains on the left bank. These facts are trite and tame, but when we turn from them to the supreme bridge we pass from bald history into a creation that seems miraculous.

“It is long before the eye can learn to grasp his[72] full dimensions; all around him is rock and mountain, there is nothing to give scale. We are warned of this ... by the camera, for the lens will not look at so wide an angle.... Presently, as we peer over the parapet into the depths of the gulf below us, we realise that there is a man down there walking by the waterside, with a dog that seems to bark though we cannot hear the sound. Slowly our eyes measure the voussoir above which we are standing; it is a twelve-ton block of granite; and the huge vault with its eighty such voussoirs seems to widen and deepen beneath us as we gaze; for the brook that it spans is the river Tagus, whose waters have their source three hundred miles away.

“Thus hint by hint we have pieced together the astonishing conclusion that the span of each of the two great central arches is rather wider ... than the interior of the dome of St. Paul’s; and that the height of the railway lines above the Firth of Forth is twenty feet less than that of the road above the Tagus! What must the scene be like in winter, when the waters are foaming against the springer stones one hundred and forty feet above their summer level! How vast the strength of these massive piers which for eighteen hundred years have defied the fury of the floods!

“Where now is the great Via Lata that ran from Gades to Rome? Where are the famous cities which it threaded on the way? The vine and olive grow in the forum of Italica, and the Miracles of Mérida are a dwelling for the stork. But here at the wildest point of all its wild journey our eyes may still behold a memorial which nature has assailed in vain: ‘Pontem perpetui mansurum in sæcula mundi’;—the monument of Caius Julius Lacer, more enduring even than Wren’s.”[73]

Many persons believe that Wellington’s troops, in 1809, blew up one of the smaller arches, but this is untrue. The history of the ruined arch has been given by Larousse. It was cut on two occasions. In 1213 the Saracens destroyed it, and Charles the Fifth rebuilt it in 1543. Two hundred and sixty-five years passed, and then the French in 1808 were compelled by the policy of war to wreck the same arch, and I have already described how Wellington bridged the gap with a netting of ropes—a suspension bridge of ships’ cables—covered with planks ([p. 16]). This temporary work was displaced by a wooden arch, which in 1818 was burnt down; and between this date and the Carlist wars no restoration seems to have been attempted. “The Spaniards were long content with a ferry,” says Mr. Wigram. But now they have renewed the arch “in its native granite, a feat of which they are justly proud. Only, seeing that no cement at all was used in the original building, it was really a little too bad of them to insist upon pointing all the joints!” True; but the workmen were modern, not Roman, and it was humility on their part to advertise their cement, their most evident strength.

THE BRIDGE AT ZARAGOZA, PARTLY ROMAN

The Moorish words Al Kántarah mean THE BRIDGE, and we know that the Titanic masterpiece of Julius Lacer has but few rivals. Let us put it side by side with the most stately bridges at Isfahan in Persia, whose august charm is not so masculine ([p. 268]); then we do honour to the finest pontine architecture in the world. The Alcántara is a King, a Cæsar, while the two Persian achievements are Amazon Queens.

Several bridges in Spain have the honorary title of being Roman, either because they exhibit a combination of Roman and Moorish masonry like the sixteen-arched example at Córdova, or because they may have in them some Roman workmanship, like the Puente de Piedra over the Ebro at Zaragoza, which has seven arches and six very massive piers, far too ungainly to be Roman. Indeed this bridge dates from 1437, but it was built on a classical site, and on Roman foundations. Some houses give interest to the upstream side of the piers, but their roofs do not rise above the level of the parapet.

As for the bridge over the Guadalquivir at Córdova, it is more Moorish than Roman, for most of the Roman arches were destroyed by the eighth century, and they were reconstructed by the Arabs, who established themselves at Córdova in 711. Recently this bridge has been so much repaired that it looks almost new. A big tower, very Moorish in style, the Calahorra, keeps guard at the end remote from the town; and the city entrance has a worn classic gateway and an elevated statue of Saint Raphael, the patron saint of Córdova.

THE HUGE DEFENSIVE BRIDGE AT CÓRDOVA IN SPAIN. ORIGINALLY ROMAN, BUT REMODELLED BY THE MOORS IN THE NINTH CENTURY, RECENTLY SO MUCH REPAIRED THAT LOOKS ALMOST NEW

III

A few remarks must be made on the technique of Roman bridges and aqueducts. Vitruvius mentions a method known as opus quadratum in which stones were put in regular courses of headers[74] and stretchers[75]; they were big stones, about two feet by four feet and two feet high, as in the Marcian Aqueduct dating from B.C. 145.[76] Each stone was bordered with a draft cut one and a half inches wide, and the middle surface was roughed with a pick. This technique may be studied in the aqueducts at Segovia and Tarragona. The arches were set back at their springing behind the imposts, leaving ledges upon which the scaffolds rested.

Not all the Roman aqueducts were of stone. The one named after Nero was in brickwork of the finest kind; and another, the Alexandrine, that brought water to the Thermæ of Alexander Severus, was faced with bricks over concrete. At Minturnæ, a town of the Volci, a decorative effect was given to the wall surfaces by means of coloured tufa arranged in geometrical patterns. This is enough to show that the virile conservatism of Rome did not stereotype building methods.

Many persons believe that the Romans built aqueducts because they were unacquainted with the hydraulic principle that water in a closed pipe finds its own level. Yet Vitruvius gives an account of the leaden pipes that distributed water in Roman towns; and Pliny says that this piping was used very often for rising mains to carry water to the upper floors of houses. But lead pipes might burst, and they were costly; it was cheaper to build aqueducts, for their materials belonged to the State and slave labour was in vogue.[77]

Finally, we should pay attention to the Roman aqueducts because they were an apprenticeship in the building of lofty and daring arches. In the Anio Vetus, for example, which dates from about the year B.C. 272, some of the arches rise to a height that exceeds ninety feet. And any architect who conceived and brought to completion a fine aqueduct, such as the Pont du Gard, or the wonderful structure at Segóvia, deserved to take rank with Caius Julius Lacer. No problem of bridge construction would have baffled his matured knowledge.

It is said that the earliest vaulted bridge of the Romans was erected under the elder Tarquin, about six hundred years before the Birth of Christ. Emiland Gauthey says, for example, “Pont Salaro, à Rome, sur le Teverone. Cet ouvrage, composé de trois arches en plein cintre, de 16,6 à 21 mètres, et de deux arches plus petites, de 6,8 mètres, fut élevé sous Tarquin l’ancien, six cents ans avant J. C.” Yet there is no evidence to justify this dogmatism. The bridge may have been a timber one, like the Pons Sublicius. It carried the Via Salaria over the Anio (Teverone) about two and a half miles from Rome, and was called usually the Pons Salarus. Livy speaks of it under another name, Pons Anienis, and makes it the theatre of an immortal fight, the one between Manlius and a gigantic Gaul, B.C. 361. In single combat Manlius killed the barbarian, and took a chain (torques) from the dead body, and put it around his own neck, as a proof of his victory, winning by this act the surname of Torquatus.

The Pons Salarus does not appear again in early history. By the year B.C. 361 it may have been made into an arched bridge of stone, though it was not till B.C. 313 that the first aqueduct to Rome was constructed. In any case, however, we learn from an inscription, which Sir William Smith accepted as authentic, that the Pons Salarus was rebuilt in the sixth century A.D., by Narses, general and statesman, in the reign of Justinian. If in this reconstruction any earlier work was preserved, we must look for it in the smallest arches described by Gauthey, for we find narrow spans in the earliest Roman aqueducts. Those of the Marcian are only eight metres. The Ponte Salaro existed till 1867, when it was blown up during a panic caused by Garibaldi’s march to Rome. A fortified castle stood above one side of the central arch, rising from the footway, whose width was more than eight metres. The bridge was about a hundred metres long, and its vaults were built with exceedingly heavy stones remarkable for their bossage work. A woodcut of this late Roman bridge is given by Professor Fleeming Jenkin, but it differs from the illustration in Emiland Gauthey’s “Traité de la Construction des Ponts,” Paris, 1809-16, Vol. I.

PONTE ROTTO AT ROME, ANCIENTLY THE PONS PALATINUS OR SENATORIUS

There has been so much controversy over the antique bridges at Rome that the steadiest head becomes giddy while reading Palladio, Becker, Bunsen, Piranesi, Sir William Smith, and other experts. Perhaps we may be on safe ground when we step delicately on tiptoe into the historic environment of the Pons Palatinus, a bridge which seems to have been erected in the year B.C. 179.[78] A good part of this bridge was rebuilt in the time of Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85), but in 1598 it was wrecked by a terrible flood, and people began to speak of it as the Ponte Rotto, or broken bridge. From Palladio’s book on architecture, printed at Venice in 1570, we learn that the Pons Palatinus, or Senatorius, was known also as the Ponte Santa-Maria, so Rome must have been horrified when a classic bridge recently dedicated to the Virgin was overthrown by a spate, which spared the Pons Cestius and the Pons Fabricius.

The arches of this bridge were rather more than twenty-four metres in span, and their large archivolts were boldly prominent. The piers, about eight metres thick, were protected by angular cutwaters, and above each cutwater was a tall niche flanked by pilasters whose capitals touched the broad cornice that framed the spandrils in a vigorous manner. Each spandril was ornamented with a sea-horse carved in relief; and this decoration was foiled by the plain, deep parapets whose horizontal lines were diversified here and there by a projection. Brangwyn’s drawing of the Ponte Rotto gives all the architectural character, and we see that this bridge was a great Roman citizen, manly and brave and noble. Further, when we speak of any bridge as virile as this one arch, we have a right to use masculine pronouns, “he” and “his” and “him.” The trivial word “it” is a feeble neutrality that belongs to a great many bridges, both ancient and modern; but a Cæsarian achievement like the Pons Palatinus, or the Pont du Gard, or the Puente Trajan at Alcántara, takes rank among the rare deeds that do honour to a splendid manhood; and this we should recognise in our pronouns.

Palladio says that in his time, from 1518 to 1580, three other bridges over the Tiber, at Rome, were in good preservation. Let us take a glance at them:—

1. The Pons Ælius, called then, as now, the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, built by Ælius Hadrianus, who reigned from A.D. 117 to 138, and who erected his bridge as a passage over the Tiber to his own mausoleum, which forms the groundwork of the present castle of St. Angelo. An earlier bridge connected the Vatican and its neighbourhood with that part of the city which Caligula and Nero had beautified with gardens; and remains of it still exist near S. Spirito. The date of its disappearance I do not know, but in the days of Procopius, the sixth century of the Christian era, the Pons Ælius was the only communication between the city and the Vatican district. Either legend or truth says that the Ælius had a bronze cover upheld by forty-two pillars. If this gleaming roof ever existed (and writers should be afraid of pretty details in ancient history), it must have been damaged very much when the parapets were broken down in the fifteenth century. This accident was caused by a great crowd that lost control of itself on the bridge, when thronging to St. Peter’s to receive the Pope’s benediction. At last the parapets gave way, and ninety-two persons were either drowned or crushed to death. Long afterwards, as we know, Giovanni L. Bernini (1598-1680) designed balustrades of iron and stone, but dwarfed them with ten huge statues commissioned by Pope Clement IX ([p. 324]). The figures of St. Peter and St. Paul at the city entrance were put up by Clement VII. The bridge itself—or himself, shall we say?—has a technical inspiration akin to that of the Pons Palatinus; but there is less ornament, and above the cutwaters, instead of tall niches, we find rectangular pillars with plain capitals, upon which Bernini erected pedestals for his “breezy angels.”

2. The Pons Fabricius, connecting Rome on the city side with the Insula Tiberina. In very early times this island in the Tiber was united to each bankside by a bridge, and hence it was called Inter Duos Pontes. The present Pons Fabricius was either founded or restored by L. Fabricius, curator viarum in B.C. 62, as appears from the inscription on it, and from Dion Cassius. It is mentioned by Horace as a bridge very attractive to suicides:—

... jussit sapientem pascere barbam

Atque a Fabricio non tristem ponte reverti.

Since Palladio’s time, if not from a much earlier date, the Pons Fabricius has been known as the Ponte Quattro Capi, because its entrance from the left bank has a protective emblem, a quadrupled head of Janus, the guardian deity of gates, and a divinity with many other occupations, all very alert and troublesome. So we must add this pagan emblem to the other symbols of religious faith with which bridges have been sanctified. In 1680 the Pons Fabricius was repaired by Pope Innocent XI. There are two arches, each with a span of 25, 34 metres; and there used to be two other arches, only 3, 50 metres wide, pierced through the abutments, but they have disappeared among the houses on each bankside. The bridge in its greatest width measures a little more than 15 metres. It has a bold cornice ornamented with mutules, and its relief bay for spate water is flanked by pilasters. M. Degrand says of the Pons Fabricius: “C’est le premier pont dans lequel les têtes des voûtes ne forment pas des demi-circonférences: l’intrados est un arc de cercle de 25 m. de rayon et de 20 m. de flèche.” Here we find a starting-point for the lovely arch invented at Avignon by Saint Bénézet ([p. 81]).

3. The Pons Cestius, on the other side of the island, known to-day, and in Palladio’s time, as Ponte S. Bartolommeo. Yet its inscription, which is mentioned by Canina and by Sir William Smith, speaks of it as Pons Gratianus, and commemorates its repair by Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian. It has but one arch, nearly a metre less in span than those of the Pons Fabricius. These two bridges, according to Piranesi, were founded in a very remarkable manner, on reversed arches built under water. Gauthey gives two drawings of this construction, but he does not guarantee the truth of Piranesi’s details.

Five other antique bridges crossed the Tiber at or near Rome, but Palladio found nothing more of them than a few remnants. Already I have spoken of two, the Pons Sublicius and its understudy ([p. 140]). On the left bank, facing the church of S. Spirito, Palladio saw remains of the Pons Triumphalis; but Piranesi and Bunsen do not agree with Palladio. They place the Pons Triumphalis beyond the Pons Ælius, and Sir William Smith thinks it probable that the remains near S. Spirito belong to a bridge which the Mirabilia names Pons Neronianus, and which ancient topographers describe as Pons Vaticanus. Then there was the Janiculine bridge upon the foundations of which, between 1471 and 1484, Pope Sixtus IV had erected the Ponte Sisto. As the Janiculine bridge went from the Janiculum to the Porta Aurelia, it was known also as Pons Aurelius; and in the Middle Ages it seems to have been called Pons Antoninus. As for the Ponte Molle, anciently the Pons Milvius, it belonged to the Flaminian Way, crossing the Tiber beyond the walls of Rome, a mile and a half outside the city. Its founder was said to be the earlier Æmilius Scaurus, who died about eighty-five years before the Birth of Christ. Yet it certainly existed in B.C. 207, for Livy relates how the people poured out of Rome as far as the Milvian bridge in order to meet the messengers who brought tidings of the defeat of Hasdrubal. This may have been a timber bridge, and Æmilius Scaurus may have displaced it for a stone bridge during his consulship, B.C. 110.

Only a few fragments of the Pons Milvius existed in Palladio’s time; and so the Ponte Molle now extant has a false reputation of being Roman. In fact, it is a very poor structure, badly designed and very uncouth.

IV

There was in Italy a Roman bridge built of white Istrian stone that Palladio admired much more than any other; indeed, he admired it too much, for he copied it in most of his pontine architecture, as if he had no right to make use of his own originality! And since his time many architects have cribbed from the same shining model, the Ponte Augustus over the Ariminus, at Rimini. Two Roman bridges are found in the neighbourhood of this town, one with seven arches and one with five; both date from the same great era, and in both the roadway is not carried through on the same level, but has an ascent at each end, like the two bridges of Roman origin at Vicenza. It was the bridge with five arches that Palladio preferred at Rimini, and his fondness for it—or, rather, for her, as this Roman bridge has a charm somewhat feminine—is approved by recent experts, and notably by R. Phené Spiers and M. Degrand. She is a bijou among bridges, and not a male prodigy, like the Puente Trajan. Her arches are small in span, ranging from 8m.77 to 7m.14, according to Gauthey, [79] the narrower ones being at the sides, and the three larger bays in the middle. Their form is semicircular, and their springing does not rise from low water-level, like that of the arches in the Roman bridge at Mérida; it is placed four or five metres[80] above low water, and this planning adds lightness and grace to a fortunate design. As usual, the piers are too heavy, their thickness being about equal to a half of the adjacent voids; they are protected by very vigorous cutwaters that break the current with angular wedges of ninety degrees. The spandrils are decorated with niches, and every niche is flanked by pilasters carrying entablature and pediment. A beautiful cornice supported by modillions crowns this bridge, which was begun by Augustus and finished by Tiberius.

PONTE MAGGIORE OVER A RAVINE OF THE TRONTO AT ASCOLI-PICENO IN ITALY; BUILT IN THE MIDDLE AGES, BUT ROMAN IN STYLE

Brangwyn is fascinated by the bridges at Ascoli-Piceno, the Asculum Picenum of the Romans, that gleams on a terrace dominating the Tronto, about twenty miles from Porto Ascoli on the Adriatic. The town is defended by ravines, across which four great bridges are thrown. The Ponte di Porta Cappucina is a Roman bridge, a fine example with a single arch of 71 ft. span; and the Ponte de Cecco is Roman. It has two arches and belongs to the Via Salaria. As for the Ponte Maggiore and the Ponte Cartaro, they are mediæval, but the former is an adaptation from Roman aqueducts, and in the latter there appear to be some traces of antique craftsmanship. All these great viaducts are marvellously constructed, for they resisted the earthquake that shook Ascoli in 1878.

V

Very little is known about the Eastern bridges constructed by the Romans. In Jebb’s “By Desert Ways to Baghdad” an illustration is given of a Roman bridge over the Tigris at Diarbekr; and on the same river, at Hassan, between Diarbekr and Mosul, there are ruined piers of another Roman bridge. Again, at Shushter, in Persia, we find a dike and a bridge ascribed to the Roman Emperor Valerian, whom Shapur the First took prisoner at Edessa, A.D. 260. The dike is called the Band-i-Mizan, the bridge the Pul-i-Kaisar. But if Valerian helped to build these huge monuments, very little Roman work now remains; seventy yards of dike and bridge were swept away in 1885; and the Pul-i-Kaisar has been rebuilt several times. Indeed, as Brangwyn’s pen-drawing shows, the arches (there are forty in all) differ in style as well as in size and material.

THE PUL-I-KAISAR AT SHUSHTER IN PERSIA. ITS LENGTH IS 560 YARDS, AND ITS ROADWAY IS 7 YARDS WIDE

“Persian tradition has it that Ardashir (either Artaxerxes of the old Persian kings or Ardashir of the Sassanians) built the first dike across the river Karun in order to raise the water of the river to the level of the Darian canal. The dike became destroyed and was renewed under the Sassanian Shapur I, by Roman workmen sent for by Valerian, who had been captured by the Persian king in 260. That Valerian had a part in constructing these remarkable works does not rest upon any historical basis; we may, however, believe that the Sassanian Ardashir, or his son Shapur I, finding that the river, with its bed in friable soil, was daily getting lower and finally threatened to leave the town and the Mian-do-ab district dry by not filling the Darian canal, engaged Roman workmen. The Gerger canal was cut and the river diverted from west to east of the town. The old river then became emptied and its bed was raised and paved with huge flags, to prevent further erosion and washing away of the soil and a consequent fall of the river. Then the Band-i-Mizan and the great bridge were erected....”[81]

In every chapter of this monograph other references to Roman work will be found.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] If Rousseau walked along the three tiers of this bridge-aqueduct, then he had what climbers call “a good head,” for there is but little space between the piers and a most unpleasant fall into the river Gardon. Most of us have passed over the top, leaving Alpinists to explore the rest of this wonderful structure.

[64] “Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of his Life.” Edited by his Wife. 1879. Vol. II, pp. 176-7.

[65] Sir William Smith, in his great “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography,” gives a detailed account of the stonework. “The stone of this bridge is a yellowish colour. Seen under the sun from the west side, the bridge has a brightish yellow tint, with patches of dark colour, owing to the weather. The stone in the highest tier is a concretion of shells and sand, and that in the lower tiers appears to be the same. In the stones in the highest tier there are halves of a bivalve shell completely preserved. The stone also contains bits of rough quartzose rock, and many small rounded pebbles. In floods the Gardon rises 30 ft. above its ordinary level, and the water will then pass under all the arches of the lowest tier. The piers of this tier show some marks of being worn by the water. But the bridge is still solid and strong, a magnificent monument of the grandeur of Roman conceptions, and of the boldness of their execution.”

[66] Later we shall see that Perronet, a famous bridge-builder of the eighteenth century, used iron clamps for this purpose.

[67] I believe these measurements to be strictly accurate, unlike those in many books of reference.

[68] Let me add to this account a few details from Sir William Smith’s “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography.” “It is generally said that the bridge is entirely built of stones, without mortar or cement. The stones of the two lower tiers are without cement; but the arches of the highest tier, which are built of much smaller stones, are cemented. At the north end of the aqueduct the highest tier of arches and the water channel are higher than the ground on which the aqueduct abuts, and there must have been a continuation of small arches along the top of this hill; but there are no traces of them, at least near the bridge. On the opposite or south side the aqueduct abuts against the hill, which is higher than the level of the channel. There is no trace of the hill having been pierced; and an intelligent man, who lives near the bridge, says that the aqueduct was carried round the hill, and that it pierced another hill further on, where the tunnel still exists....”

[69] See Grangent, Durand et Durant, “Description des Monumens Antiques du Midi de la France,” Paris, 1819, I, p. 113, and Plate XL; see also “Géographie Générale du Département de l’Hérault,” published by the Société Languedocienne, Montpellier, 1905. Vol. III, part II. p. 310.

[70] Two arches over the Salado river, some thirty miles below Seville ([p. 367]).

[71] Between Córdova and Andujar, over a small tributary flowing into the Guadalquivir from the south. This bridge has three arches, one a good deal larger than the others; bays are driven through the spandrils for spate water to pass through. The masonry consists of stone in big blocks, and the craftsmanship has a very peculiar feature: the voussoirs are notched or joggled one into the other, like those in the Elizabethan bridge at Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. This technique is a thing to be remembered: it occurs in no other Roman bridge that is known to me. The notching adds much to the endurance of an arch ring, yet it has never entered into the technical routine of bridge-builders. Perhaps the dovetailing of the stones has been looked upon as too costly, for it needs much skill and care and time. Mr. Edgar Wigram drew my attention to this little-known Roman bridge, and to the one at Alcantarilla ([p. 367]).

[72] This bridge is a soldier, and claims masculine pronouns.

[73] “Northern Spain,” by Edgar T. A. Wigram, London, 1906, pp. 231-2.

[74] The stones laid end-foremost.

[75] The stones laid at full length.

[76] There is conflicting evidence on the date of this monument. Pliny attributed the Marcian Aqueduct to Ancus Marcius, whereas Strabo and Frontinus conjecture that the building got its name from Marcius Rex, a pretor, who in the year B.C. 145, or thereabouts, restored some ancient aqueducts whose first construction did not go back beyond the year 272 B.C. Sextus Julius Frontinus, governor of Britain (A.D. 75-78), was the author of two monographs that are still extant—one on the Roman aqueducts, and another on the art of war. He was nominated Curator Aquarum, or Superintendent of the Aqueducts, in 97, nine years before his death. Sir William Smith tells us that the earliest aqueduct was not older than the year B.C. 313. In earlier times the Romans had recourse to the Tiber and to wells sunk in the city. During the sixth century of the Christian era there were fourteen aqueducts at Rome.

[77] Mr. R. Phené Spiers has written admirably on these technical matters.

[78] I take it that the Pons Palatinus, or Senatorius, mentioned by Palladio, was the bridge called by ancient writers the Pons Aemilius, whose piers were founded in the censorship of M. Aemilius Lepidus and M. Fulvius Nobilior, B.C. 179; the arches were finished some years later, when P. Scipio Africanus and L. Mummius were censors. Becker and Canina assume that the Pons Aemilius became the Ponte Rotto, and Degrand and others identify the Palatine bridge of Palladio with the Ponte Rotto.

[79] Degrand says 10m.56 and 8m.1. R. Phené Spiers gives 27 ft. for the spans of the three central arches, and the side ones about 20 ft.

[80] Gauthey says four, Degrand says five.

[81] Sir A. Houtum-Schindler, C.I.E., “Encyclopædia Brit.,” 1911, article “Shushter.”

DURHAM