The archæology of Rome, Part 8

by John Henry Parker

Since this chapter was printed, the great excavations that have been carried on in Rome have brought to light many remains of the old Aqueducts in places where they were not previously known or thought of. These are so numerous that we can do little more than mention them, beginning at the Sessorium, where the principal aqueducts entered Rome. In the Sessorian or Palatian gardens, now those of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, a pit was dug in the reservoir which was used for the Thermæ of S. Helena, which is a large cistern of two narrow chambers, with others similar under them; this was ascertained by digging this pit. Remains of other reservoirs along the line of the north wall of the garden, which is made out of the old aqueduct, were brought to light more clearly. Just outside of this garden is the road from the church of Santa Croce to the Porta Maggiore[211], which is carried on a bank of earth that was the boundary of the Sessorian garden, and on the outer side of it, this bank is supported by a wall of the time of Constantine, no doubt built when his mother, S. Helena, resided there. Just beyond this bank, and in the great foss of the ancient fortress, are two large reservoirs close together, one on either side of the foss. These appear to correspond with the Gemelli, or twin reservoirs of Frontinus; an excavation made here was stopped by water, but enough was seen to make it evident that there were other chambers under them, and that they were very deep, but have probably been used for one of the later aqueducts, at a higher level also. It was very usual to carry one aqueduct nearly over another, in order that the older subterranean reservoir might receive the surplus water of the later and higher ones. It is probable that in this instance the Claudia and Anio Novus had each a reservoir here on the higher level, and that the water of the two was here united and carried on along the Cœlian Hill in one specus, on the arches of Nero, to the middle of the city.

The inscriptions on the Porta Maggiore record the distances from the sources of the aqueducts to this point, clearly shewing that this was the entrance into Rome in the outer wall, though not into the City, until the boundary of the city was extended to this outer wall by Aurelian, in the third century. On the northern side of this great gate remains of the Marcian arcade were found going from this point, where the three aqueducts pass through the outer wall at one of the angles, and go straight on to the high bank on which the wall of Aurelian was afterwards carried, to the Porta Tiburtina (now di S. Lorenzo), and the reservoirs there. The specus passes underground for some distance, about half-way between the two gates, and is carried on arches near the gates. The fine building called Minerva Medica was full of fountains, as was all the great public garden in which it stands, and all the fountains in Rome were supplied by the aqueducts. Between this building, of the third century, and the wall, is another large reservoir, turned into a house, where considerable excavations have been made. The later aqueduct, called Aqua Alexandrina, was carried in the wall over the earlier ones, to a point just opposite, to the remains of the Minerva Medica. The piers of the arches that supported the specus can be seen in the wall, both outside and inside, as far as this, but they go no farther. This point, where they cease, is close to the place where the railway passes through the wall. Beyond these arches other excavations were made by the archæologists near the Porta di S. Lorenzo, and the arches that carried the Marcia, etc., were shewn. There are remains of two reservoirs near this point; the outer wall of one now forms part of the city wall, and is foolishly called “the house of Cicero;” the other is just within the line, but still on the bank, with the wall of Aurelian built close against it on the outer side. There are remains of another reservoir on the other side of the gate, and one branch goes on from thence to the Prætorian Camp, passing by the Porta Chiusa, where the specus was shewn in some other excavations of the archæologists; and near to it, on the south side, is a large reservoir on the bank, cut through the middle by the wall of Aurelian. This proves that the great bank of earth was there, and had the aqueducts carried upon it, before the time that the wall of Aurelian was built. The specus then goes upon the bank round this camp, but is for the most part concealed; it is visible again on the northern side, which is the only perfect part of the fortification of the camp by Tiberius, and his wall stands upon the earlier specus of the aqueduct; the latter is faced with opus reticulatum where perfect; the wall is of fine brickwork.

The branch that goes from the Porta di S. Lorenzo to the other reservoir, under the Trophies of Marius, is carried on a fine arcade of the first century; this has been brought out far more clearly than it had been for many centuries. The remains of the reservoir at this very high level are also made visible. Signor Ernest de Mauro, the surveyor who took the levels, considers this branch so high, that the only water that could reach it was that of the Claudia and Anio Novus united, which we know from Frontinus was carried into all the fourteen Regiones of Rome, but it was considered by Fabretti to have belonged to the Aqua Julia; the difference of level between the two aqueducts is only ten feet. At this high point the water was divided, and carried in different directions; one branch, of which part of the specus is visible, went to the other great reservoir called the Sette Sale, which supplied the Thermæ of Titus and Trajan on the Esquiline, and the surplus water passed on to the Colosseum and to the fountain called the Meta Sudans. From the other great division of the aqueducts, at the corner of the Sessorian gardens, near the Porta Maggiore, the well-known arches of Nero go along the bank to the Lateran, and from thence along the Cœlian Hill to the great central reservoir of Nero, over the Arch of Dolabella. At that point it has been already shewn that several of the aqueducts met, and were divided into three branches, one straight on to the Palatine, on a double arcade across the valley from the Cœlian, of which there are considerable remains of the lower tier of arches, and one arch of the upper tier, which forms a sort of back gate to the palaces of the Cæsars. A second branch passed over the Porta Capena to the Aventine, at different levels; the earliest and lowest, the Aqua Appia, is the one that can now be the most distinctly traced. After passing over the short agger of Servius Tullius it goes underground under the cliff, at the north end of the Pseudo-Aventine, and at the further end under the hill on which S. Sabba now stands; a series of stone-quarries have been made by cutting away one side of the specus, leaving the wells to give air to the quarry.

At this point excavations have repeatedly been made by the archæologists, and as often filled up again by the workmen in the summer months, until 1876, when an arrangement was made with the proprietor to make a more complete excavation, and put up a door to protect it. In this part, which is just before the specus crosses the last road on its way to the Tiber, seven different branches of other aqueducts cast their surplus water into this earliest and lowest; in many parts this was only a tunnel cut in the bed of tufa, and generally half full of a deposit of clay, left by the water which comes from the clayey fields of Lucullus, but in one part it is built of large blocks of tufa, like the walls of the Kings; it is here six feet high and two feet wide; on each side of it is a terra-cotta water-pipe of very early character, and bringing different water in the same tunnel[212].

Near this point it crossed over the road on a bridge (?), or perhaps from the low level under it, at the site of a gate where the four roads meet, to another old stone-quarry of the same kind nearly under Santa Prisca, where the specus was visible in 1874, but is now concealed by some of the vault having fallen in; and from that it has been traced through another series of old stone-quarries to the mouth on the bank of the Tiber, in the very curious cave called that of Picus and Faunus, and Hercules—having previously passed through another reservoir, with water still in it knee-deep, remaining at a considerable distance under the hill, with a specus from thence to the cave at the mouth, partly a natural channel for the water to escape, and partly cut when the aqueduct was made.

The third great branch from the Arch of Dolabella went direct to the Colosseum, and two subsidiary springs still flow there, one under the garden of the Villa Celi-Montana, the other under the garden of the monastery of SS. John and Paul, near to the Colosseum, the latter a very abundant stream, bubbling up copiously; and there are three small pools supplied by it in that quarry, which was formerly called the Vivarium, and supposed to have been the place where the wild beasts were kept, but this was a mistake[213]. From that reservoir another branch went in a specus at a considerable depth under the garden of the Marchese Rappellini, behind the monastery of S. Gregory. In this garden there was a landslip in the spring of 1876, and the Marchese thought it probable that the palace of Scaurus had stood there, as it is close by the sloping road called the Clivus Scauri; I thought it more likely to have been the aqueduct which had fallen in, but agreed that the archæologists should excavate it, which was done in May. It turned out to be an old stone-quarry that had fallen in, at the depth of more than 20 ft., but the specus of the aqueduct had passed through the quarry, and remained visible in the pit coming from the cave called the Vivarium, and going over the Porta Capena. There is, however, so little of interest left, that the pit was filled up again, after a plan and sketch had been made by Signor Cicconetti.

Another branch of the three aqueducts (Marcia, Tepula, and Julia) went from the Porta di S. Lorenzo along the side of the road or via, so called, partly in the bank, by the side of it; the upper specus is now visible, the other two are under it. The whole were underground until the levels were altered in the arrangements for the new city. This branch led straight to the Mons Justitiæ, in the centre of the great agger of Servius Tullius. Near this point the four young princes found in their excavation, in 1870, two cippi near together, with inscriptions upon them, stating that the three aqueducts passed between them, and the specus of the upper one, the Julia, was brought to light; the other two, Tepula and Marcia, remained underground. Not much more than a hundred yards from this, another cippus had previously been found, on the top of a well, recording that it descended into the Anio Vetus, which therefore ran under the others, at a great depth in this part, on account of the different levels of the ground, and was then carried along the inner side of this great bank both right and left. The one to the right, or north, going to the gardens of Sallust, or at least a branch from one of the three, went along the horn-work at that corner of the old city, and had a reservoir under the house (now rebuilt by Mr. Spithœver), and then to the nymphæum at the end, and (to the east) of the Porticus Milliarius of Aurelian. In the opposite direction, the left, or south, it went along the inside of the agger, on which a row of houses of the first century had been built. It has been found at intervals in several places, one of which is close to the house of Mæcenas. Another branch of an early aqueduct has been found in the tufa rock behind the houses, near the great church of S. Maria Maggiore, on a high level, at the south end of some great building of the first century, or earlier, which was formerly called the Porticus Liviæ and an account of it was published under that name, but the fragment of the Marble Plan of Rome, with the plan of that building and the name upon it, clearly shews this to have been an error. The Macellum Livianum, or meat-market of Livia, was found in these excavations near the arch of Gallienus, but there is no connection between the Macellum and the porticus, which is represented as an oblong platform, with steps up to it at one end, and with a grand double colonnade all round it. Nothing like this was found near the Macellum, and as the earth was carried away to the depth of several feet, if it had been there it must have been found.

In the third century, when nearly all the temples in the Forum were rebuilt, the great public building which forms the north end of that Forum (by whatever name it may be called), was also very much altered in many ways; the main fabric, at the west end, is still original, as it was in the time of Varro, when it was justly mentioned as one of the oldest buildings in Rome. But in the interior great alterations were made, and amongst these, at the west end of the Ærarium (or bank-vaults as they might have been called), the arrangement was entirely altered; the public treasury was transferred to the imperial offices on the Palatine, in what are called the palaces of the Cæsars, and at the west end of the Ærarium an aqueduct was introduced, with a reservoir and a well. A specus of brickwork of the third century is visible, but to which aqueduct it belonged is not easily ascertained; from its level it would agree with the Marcia; it is not high enough for the Anio Novus carried over the bridge of Caligula, though that must have passed near this point; and it is too high for the Anio Vetus, although remains of this have been found also at a short distance; but on lower ground, under, and at the back of a wine-shop in the Via del Consolazione, but quite at the east end of it, and near the corner of the steps that ascend from it to the door of the Municipio, on the level of the Tabularium, a reservoir that must have belonged to that aqueduct has been found, and the specus traced at the back, parallel to the street, apparently cut out of the tufa rock. Two doors further from the steps the specus is again visible at the back of the shop; and at the same point, but going in an opposite direction, a subterranean passage, which also appears to be cut in the tufa rock, going in the direction of the Piazza del Campidoglio, and said to go as far as the statue of Marcus Aurelius. Whether this had any connection with the aqueduct, or what its object was, is at present not known.

The Plan and Section of the Aqueducts at the Claudium which is also at the end of the arches of Nero, on the Cœlian Hill, the point from which the water was divided into three branches, have been partially shewn in this work, but this could not be done completely until the explorations were made in 1875 and 1876. Subsidiary springs were continually used for the old aqueducts, that no water might be lost that could be used. Of these springs two were found in the space indicated in this Plan, one under part of the garden of Baron Hoffman, near the Navicella, the other under the garden of the monks of SS. John and Paul, in the cave or old stone-quarry which was formerly called a vivarium, but which really was a reservoir of the old aqueducts, and this is the most copious spring of the two. It seems almost certain that the water from both these springs found its way into the Colosseum, after the great excavations were made there in 1874-75. To get rid of this water is now (in 1876) a great object. The Government and the Municipality propose, at an enormous expense, to make a new drain from the Colosseum to the Tiber at a great depth. Careful enquiries have been made of the workmen employed in repairing the original drain of the time of Sylla and Scaurus; it was found in a very bad state, and the workmen were afraid to go along it without putting a wooden centering under the old vault, as they were made to fear lest the earth should fall in behind them. This was done for the whole length of the Colosseum, nearly as far as the Arch of Constantine, but the men were then obliged to give up this examination of it for want of air. They state that the main body of the water appeared to come in from under the road from the Navicella, and to run in a continuous stream as if from an aqueduct, and not to bubble up out of the earth as in a spring. This led to the exploration shewn in Plate XXXVI., to ascertain where the water came from[214]. The two springs above mentioned are both on a much higher level than the Colosseum, as will be seen by the Section; and as both are good drinking water, always fresh, it is certain that they must each have some outlet, or they would soon be stagnant and putrid. Every probability seems in favour of these being the springs that supply the inundation of the Colosseum, and if they could be turned off in another direction, as suggested in this Plan, the chief difficulty would be removed. A steam-engine would soon pump the water out, if it did not come in again. The so-called vivarium, under the Claudium, is marked on the excellent map of Nolli, in the eighteenth century, as a reservoir for water, which probably had been true; there are three small reservoirs there now which might easily have been united, and the whole be filled by closing the outlet.

Frontinus tells us that the aqueduct of Nero terminated at the temple of Claudius, which was in the centre of the Claudium; this was in fact the sacred enclosure round his temple. A fragment of the Marble Plan of Rome also confirms this, but it is equally clear that soon after the time of Claudius and Nero the water was carried on in three branches, one to the Aventine, another to the Palatine, and the third to the Colosseum, as has been before stated, and there are remains of the arcades of each in all three directions. The specus found in April, 1876, under the garden of the Marchese Rappini, must have come from the reservoir mis-called the vivarium, but it had been long out of use.