Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When did the Romans get aqueducts?
Rome's first aqueduct was built in 312 BC, and supplied a water fountain at the city's cattle market. By the 3rd century AD, the city had eleven aqueducts, sustaining a population of over a million in a water-extravagant economy; most of the water supplied the city's many public baths. Cities and towns throughout the Roman Empire emulated this model, and funded aqueducts as objects of public interest and civic pride, "an expensive yet necessary luxury to which all could, and did, aspire".[1]
Rome's first aqueduct supplied a water-fountain sited at the city's cattle market. By the third century AD, the city had eleven aqueducts, sustaining a population of over a million in a water-extravagant economy; most of the water supplied the city's many public baths. Cities and municipalities throughout the Roman Empire emulated this model, and funded aqueducts as objects of public interest and civic pride, "an expensive yet necessary luxury to which all could, and did, aspire."
Navigable aqueducts (sometimes called water bridges) are bridge structures that carry navigable waterway canals over other rivers, valleys, railways or roads. They are primarily distinguished by their size, carrying a larger cross-section of water than most water-supply aqueducts. Although Roman aqueducts were sometimes used for transport, aqueducts were not generally used until the 17th century when the problems of summit level canals had been solved and modern canal systems were developed. The 662-metre long steel Briare aqueduct carrying the Canal latéral à la Loire over the River Loire was built in 1896. It was ranked as the longest navigable aqueduct in the world for more than a century, until the Magdeburg Water Bridge in Germany took the title in the early 21st century.
The aqueducts could stretch from long, and typically descended from an elevation of above sea level at the source, to when they reached the reservoirs around the city. Roman engineers used inverted siphons to move water across a valley if they judged it impractical to build a raised aqueduct. The Roman legions were largely responsible for building the aqueducts. Maintenance was often done by slaves.
The Diocletian aqueduct was destroyed in the invasion of Goths in the middle of 6th century and did not work for thirteen centuries after that.
The first reconstruction of the aqueduct took place during the reign of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1877–1880). The aqueduct was abandoned from 1932 when the modern water station Kopilica was built.
The ancient Romans also had a complex system of aqueducts,[52] which were used to transport water across long distances.[52] The first Roman aqueduct was built in 312 BCE.[52] The eleventh and final ancient Roman aqueduct was built in 226 CE.[52] Put together, the Roman aqueducts extended over 450 kilometers,[52] but less than seventy kilometers of this was above ground and supported by arches.[52]
The aqueducts of the C&O, unlike the Roman aqueducts, were built with inferior materials and cement, and did not have a long life expectancy. Usually the trash from the floods did the most harm to the aqueducts.
Hundreds of similar aqueducts were built throughout the Roman Empire. Many of them have since collapsed or been destroyed, but a number of intact portions remain. The Zaghouan Aqueduct is 92.5km (57.5mi) in length. It was built in the 2nd century to supply Carthage (in modern Tunisia). Surviving aqueduct bridges include the Pont du Gard in France and the Aqueduct of Segovia in Spain. The longest single conduit, at over 240km, is associated with the Valens Aqueduct of Constantinople (Mango 1995). "The known system is at least two and half times the length of the longest recorded Roman aqueducts at Carthage and Cologne, but perhaps more significantly it represents one of the most outstanding surveying achievements of any pre-industrial society".[15] Rivalling this in terms of length and possibly equaling or exceeding it in cost and complexity, is the provincial Aqua Augusta that supplied an entire region, which contained at least eight cities, including the major ports at Naples and Misenum; sea voyages by traders and the Roman navy required copious supplies of fresh water.[16]
There were ten branches, seven of which were for cities while three were for some of the numerous luxurious villas in this area popular with rich Romans, such as the Villa Pollio at Posillipo. Including the branches, the total length of the aqueduct was approximately , making it the longest Roman aqueduct, with the possible exception of the Gadara Aqueduct, until the 5th century AD when the Valens Aqueduct was extended in Constantinople. The Aqua Augusta was one of the most difficult and costly aqueducts ever constructed by an ancient civilisation. Despite its size and complexity, the Augusta is today largely unknown as a major monument because most of it is underground. 
At Barbegal in Roman Gaul, a reservoir fed an aqueduct that drove a cascaded series of 15 or 16 overshot water mills, grinding flour for the Arles region. Similar arrangements, though on a lesser scale, have been found in Caesarea, Venafrum and Roman-era Athens. Rome's Aqua Traiana drove a flour-mill at the Janiculum, west of the Tiber. A mill in the basement of the Baths of Caracalla was driven by aqueduct overspill; this was but one of many city mills driven by aqueduct water, with or without official permission. A law of the 5th century forbade the illicit use of aqueduct water for milling.[47]
Most Roman aqueducts proved reliable and durable; some were maintained into the early modern era, and a few are still partly in use. Methods of aqueduct surveying and construction are noted by Vitruvius in his work De Architectura (1st century BC). The general Frontinus gives more detail in his official report on the problems, uses and abuses of Imperial Rome's public water supply. Notable examples of aqueduct architecture include the supporting piers of the Aqueduct of Segovia, and the aqueduct-fed cisterns of Constantinople.
Two pillars from the Roman Aqueduct of Yzeron, sometimes called the Craponne Aqueduct, remain standing and these are listed as an historical monument. The aqueduct was one of the four ancient aqueducts of Lyon, serving the ancient Roman city of Lugdunum. It owes its name to the fact that it draws water from the watershed of the Yzeron river, which is a tributary of the Rhône .
The Valens Aqueduct ( or "Bozdoğan Kemeri", meaning "Aqueduct of the Grey Falcon"; , "Agōgós tou hýdatos", meaning simply "aqueduct") is a Roman aqueduct which was the major water-providing system of the Eastern Roman capital of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey). Completed by Roman Emperor Valens in the late 4th century AD, it was maintained and used by the Byzantines and later the Ottomans, and remains one of the most important landmarks of the city.
Roman aqueducts were built in all parts of the Roman Empire, from Germany to Africa, and especially in the city of Rome, where they totaled over . The aqueducts supplied fresh water to public baths and for drinking water, in large cities across the empire, and set a standard of engineering that was not surpassed for more than a thousand years. Bridges, built in stone with multiple arches, were a distinctive feature of Roman aqueducts and hence the term "aqueduct" is often applied specifically to a bridge for carrying water.
Bridges were a distinctive feature of Roman aqueducts which were built in all parts of the Roman Empire, from Germany to Africa, and especially in the city of Rome, where they supplied water to public baths and for drinking. Roman aqueducts set a standard of engineering that was not surpassed for more than a thousand years.
Current aqueducts which are notable for their condition include the first aqueduct of Segovia, which is the most famous Roman construction of the Iberian Peninsula, followed by the aqueduct in Tarragona or "Devil's Bridge", and also the remains of the aqueduct of Merida, known as the "Miraculous Aqueduct".
List of Roman aqueduct bridges Roman architecture Roman engineering
Art historians such as Gottfried Richter in the 1920s identified the Roman architectural innovation as being the Triumphal Arch and it is poignant to see how this symbol of power on earth was transformed and utilized within the Christian basilicas when the Roman Empire of the West was on its last legs: The arch was set before the altar to symbolize the triumph of Christ and the after life. It is in their impressive aqueducts that we see the arch triumphant, especially in the many surviving examples, such as the Pont du Gard, the aqueduct at Segovia and the remains of the Aqueducts of Rome itself. Their survival is testimony to the durability of their materials and design.
Although particularly associated with the Romans, aqueducts were devised much earlier in Greece and the Near East and Indian subcontinent, where peoples such as the Egyptians and Harappans built sophisticated irrigation systems. Roman-style aqueducts were used as early as the 7th century BC, when the Assyrians built an 80 km long limestone aqueduct, which included a 10 m high section to cross a 300 m wide valley, to carry water to their capital city, Nineveh.
The Aqueduct of the Gier (French "Aqueduc du Gier") is an ancient Roman aqueduct probably constructed in the 1st century AD to provide water for Lugdunum (Lyon), in what is now eastern France. It is the longest and best preserved of four Roman aqueducts that served the growing capital of the Roman province of Gallia Lugdunensis. It drew its water from the source of the Gier, a small tributary of the Rhone, on the slopes of Mont Pilat, south-west of Lyon.
During the fall of the Roman Empire, some aqueducts were deliberately cut by enemies but more fell into disuse because of deteriorating Roman infrastructure and lack of maintenance, such as the Eifel aqueduct (pictured right). Observations made by the Spaniard Pedro Tafur, who visited Rome in 1436, reveal misunderstandings of the very nature of the Roman aqueducts:
The new town had its problems, not till 1913 did electricity get installed. In 1916 there were only 200 residents. The town and orchards did not get any aqueduct water till 1917, when City of Los Angeles annexed Owensmouth. The street, Owensmouth Avenue that runs north-west through the Valley, is one of the few reminders of the 1910s.
Before the development of aqueduct technology, Romans, like most of their contemporaries in the ancient world, relied on local water sources such as springs and streams, supplemented by groundwater from privately or publicly owned wells, and by seasonal rain-water drained from rooftops into storage jars and cisterns.[3] The reliance of ancient communities upon such water resources restricted their potential growth. Rome's aqueducts were not strictly Roman inventions – their engineers would have been familiar with the water-management technologies of Rome's Etruscan and Greek allies – but they proved conspicuously successful. By the early Imperial era, the city's aqueducts supported a population of over a million, and an extravagant water supply for public amenities had become a fundamental part of Roman life.[4] The run-off of aqueduct water scoured the sewers of cities and towns. Water from aqueducts was also used to supply villas, ornamental urban and suburban gardens, market gardens, farms, and agricultural estates, the latter being the core of Rome's economy and wealth.[5]
The Diocletian Aqueduct is an ancient Roman aqueduct near Split, Croatia constructed during the Roman Empire to supply water to the Palace of Emperor Diocletian.
Between 65 and 90% of the Roman Empire's population was involved in some form of agricultural work. Farmers whose villas or estates were near a public aqueduct could draw, under license, a specified quantity of aqueduct water for summer irrigation at a predetermined time; this was intended to limit the depletion of water supply to users further down the gradient, and help ensure a fair distribution among competitors at the time when water was most needed and scarce. Water was possibly the most important variable in the agricultural economy of the Mediterranean world. Roman Italy's natural water sources – springs, streams, rivers and lakes – were unevenly distributed across the landscape, and water tended to scarcity when most needed, during the warm, dry summer growing season. Columella recommends that any farm should contain a spring, stream or river;[41] but acknowledges that not every farm did.