The archæology of Rome, Part 8

by John Henry Parker

Many other remains of the aqueducts within the walls of Rome have been found during the great excavations of 1874-1876, in different parts of the city. Some of these have been already mentioned.

Dr. Fabio Gori has sent me an important notice of some excavations recently made between Subiaco and Vico Varo, which throw new light on the line of the specus, or channels of the aqueducts, in several places.

On p. [13], [note h], it is stated that “the Anio Vetus has its source in the district called La Connotta, and passes under the hill of Marano;” but it now appears that the aqueduct in La Connotta belongs to the Anio Novus, because they have discovered at the sources of the Aqua Marcia another aqueduct on a lower level, which must be the Anio Vetus. This is on the opposite side of the river Anio, and passed over the river on the bridge at Vico Varo, of which the great stone piers remain in the bed of the river. He could not find the sources of the Anio Vetus at the fortieth mile, near the bridge of Agosta (twenty miles above Tivoli), because the torrents, in time of flood, have brought down such a quantity of stone in the bed of the river Anio, and the valley through which it flows, that the level of the ground, and of the bottom of the river in this part, is now nearly twenty feet higher than it was when that aqueduct was made.

At p. [60], it is said that Dr. Gori had found the Piscina Limaria of the Anio Novus, made by Claudius, “at the Prata della Cartiera of Subiaco;” that was written when they had found a large aqueduct by the side of the Emissarium Barberini; but the recent excavations have shewn that the water for that aqueduct came from the third loch, near the bridge of S. Mauro, where the opening at the entrance to the specus was found, covered with an iron grating. From this it was inferred that there was a special aqueduct with a private specus to supply the baths and thermæ of the Villa Neronis Sublacensis. A quantity of marble of very rare kinds, from this villa, on the margin of the river, has been found, and in the bed of the river the foot of a colossal bronze statue.

The question of the true site of the Piscina Limaria, of Frontinus, still remains to be settled, and with it the beginning or source of the great Aqueduct of Claudius, called the Aqua Claudia. After carefully examining the bank of the river at a quay at the forty-second ancient mile of the Via Sublacensis, that is to say, between three and four modern miles below Subiaco (which is forty-five miles from Rome), they found the remains of an aqueduct called the Muraccio, almost always washed by the water of the river, which enters into it, and then turns at an angle.

On entering into the Muraccio, Dr. Gori became convinced that it was the Piscina Limaria of Claudius, as described by Frontinus, c. 15, because the water enters freely into the lower chamber, and to the right the specus of the Anio Novus is seen. The water, according to Frontinus, between the entrance from the river and the specus (inter amnem et specum), was stopped and purified in the same chamber, before it entered into the conduit. Considering also that between the three lochs, where the water is now pure, and this piscina, there is a considerable distance. In the rainy season the floods bring down a considerable quantity of earth from the neighbouring fields, which makes the water of the Anio Novus muddy; for which reason the Emperor Trajan began, as Frontinus states, to lengthen that aqueduct to the second upper loch, above the Villa Neroniana Sublacensis. Dr. Gori has found that this work of Trajan was completed, by tracing the whole line of it along the left bank of the river Anio.

Another Aqua Augusta.

At a meeting of the “Institut de Correspondance Archéologique,” in 1873, the Commendatore G. B. D. Rossi gave an account[215] of another Aqua Augusta, the springs and source of which have been found with that inscription, in the district called Le Macchie di Rocca di Papa. This aqueduct appears not to have gone to Rome, but descending into the meadow called the Camp of Hannibal, it went on to the imperial villa at Tusculum, where the magnificent piscina of the time of Trajan or Hadrian is miscalled the House of Cicero.