[1] Od. viii, 249.
CHAPTER XIII.
SANITATION.
Water-supply — Its extent — The Aqueducts — Distribution in city — Drainage — Disposal of the Dead — Cremation and Burial — Catacombs — Public Health Regulations.
The Water-supply.
In ancient Greece, the cities were supplied with water from springs over which beautiful fountains were erected. The Greek aqueducts were not on the same grand scale as the Roman, but were usually rectangular channels cut in the rock, or made of pipes or masonry. Great care was taken in the supervision of these public works.
The first Roman aqueduct, according to Frontinus, dates from 312 B.C.
Pliny wrote of the Claudian aqueduct: "But if anyone will carefully calculate the quantity of the public supply of water, for baths, reservoirs, houses, trenches, gardens and suburban villas, and, along the distance which it traverses, the arches built, the mountains perforated, the valleys levelled, he will confess that there never was anything more wonderful in the whole world."