The Emperor Trajan (2/2)
Trajan recorded many of his achievements
in images on specially minted coins, The victory in Dacia was recorded on
coins, as well as all the scenes on Trajan’s column, there was a coin for the
new Forum Traiana in the centre of Rome, a new highway, the Via Traiana, and a
new high quality, high capacity Aqueduct, the Aqua Traiana, which was to bring
fresh spring water to all areas of the city.
In the beginning of Trajan’s
reign, the curator of the city’s water supply was Sextus Julius Frontinus, he
documents most carefully the sources, routes and volumes of water supplied by
the city’s existing aqueduct system, and this work, remarkably, has come down
to us in modern times.
In the time of Trajan the Roman
city aqueduct system was quite old, and Frontinus’s work was largely concerned
with repairs and maintenance of an out of date system that no longer delivered sufficient
water for a rapidly increasing population.
Another problem is that all
the existing aqueducts at that time came from the east of Rome, the sources
were from rivers or springs providing water that carried dissolved salts that
were deposited inside and eventually blocked the pipes and ducts, and also
sometimes carried very large amounts of silt that blocked the ducts and reduced
the water flow.
Part of Trajan’s revised
system was to bring in fresh spring water from the north-west of the city,
water that was collected from fresh water springs distributed in the mountains
around the Crater Lake known as the Lacus Sabatinus, known today as Lake Bracciano.
The water collected was gathered from many sources around the lake, it was
filtered at source through the volcanic ash aquifers around the lake and
brought clockwise around the lake before heading down to Rome.
This new aqueduct, named the
Aqua Traiana after the Emperor Trajan, provided a copious supply of very high
quality clean water to all areas of Rome, it arrived
very high above the city on the top of the Janiculum hill where it was also
used to power grain mills.
It is almost certain that it
was taken over the river Tiber to supply Trajan’s new bath complex, and also to
provide water for an artificial lake, a Naumachia, in the area that would
become later known as the Vatican Hill, and where the first Basilica of St.
Peter, would be built by the Emperor Constantine.
The Aqua Traiana was damaged
several times by the action of the Barbarians, but was restored and is believed
to have kept running as late as the 9th or 10th century.
In the very early years of the second century A.D.
Trajan organised a major overhaul and restoration of the existing system. The
details of this work did not come down to us via Frontinus, who died in about
the year 104.
Our project is about Trajan’s
Aqueduct, how it was built, where it’s sources are,
and what remains today.
We know it was inaugurated in
the year 109, just 1900 years ago. It was restored in 1612 by the Pope Paulo V
(Borgese), and once more powered water mills on the Janiculum hill above
Trastevere in Rome.
Today it is in a sad and sorry
state of destruction and decay, much that was known and still working just
fifty or a hundred years ago, has today been lost. We will find,
film and record all that still remains today.
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