THE WATERWORKS OF ANCIENT ROME.

THE WATERWORKS OF ANCIENT ROME.

MISCELLANY

Of all the cities of the Greek and Roman world, Rome was most abundantly provided with water, the importance of which element, in its domestic and sanitary aspects, it is now again, after centuries of neglect, beginning to be recognized as paramount among the physical conditions of urban life. We have, however, not yet quite learned to allow to water, as affecting the life, comfort, and decencies of life, the position which was accorded to it at Rome; but even to us it is inconceivable how many great cities of medieval and even of modern ages could have existed and been considered as elegant and refined abodes, with no artificial, or at most inadequate, arrangements for the introduction and distribution of water among the people. Even Paris, in some sort the arbiter elegantiarum of modern Europe, until recently derived its supply of drinking water from the Siene, the grand recipient of the sewerage of Paris, and from wells polluted by infiltration, and so late as 1836 Parent Duchatelet published a work in which the water of the Siene was proved to be altogether inoffensive to the taste and wholesome, because the foul matter contributed to its current by the superficial and subterranean drainage of the city was not sufficient in quantity to effect sensibly the taste, the limpidity, or the salubriiy of its waters !