Baths, Aqueducts and Water

Chapter 2 Baths, Aqueducts and Water

Introduction in large, immersive baths to develop, which was a major part of the daily routine of most city-dwellers. In all Water was integral to Roman cities for a range of basic these ways, aqueducts were “both symbols and devices purposes, from drinking supplies to keeping the sew- useful for promoting a certain Roman style of life in ers functioning, but also for more extravagant purposes urban centres”.6 like immersive bathing and monumental water displays. It is worth noting from the beginning that aqueducts The great majority of Roman cities were provided with played a different role depending on the region. An aque- water through aqueducts: channels that ran (often long) duct in Lyon, for example, would not have been quite as distances underground and occasionally on arcaded vital as it would have in a city like Volubilis in Maure- bridges. And yet, by and large, these aqueducts were not tania Tingitana. There were cities in the empire where strictly necessary for the basic survival of people in most aqueduct water was strictly a luxury, and others where cities in the Roman empire. Arguably, the largest urban this source was more necessary for basic needs. There centres at their peak, like Rome, could not draw enough are two factors involved in making this distinction. The water from rivers, wells and collected rainwater for the first was the population of the city. There is a limit to essential needs of their populations. Yet, for numerous the number of people that can survive on well (ground) smaller cities, the water supplied from aqueducts far and cistern (rain) water, depending of course on their exceeded their basic requirements.1 natural abundance. After a certain point, however, water Aqueducts provided water for a variety of auxiliary would have had to be brought in from outside. Equally, purposes including water displays and cooling foun- the hinterland of each city had to produce enough food tains, ornamental and productive gardening, fullonicae for the populace, which itself required a certain amount and other industrial processes and immersive bathing.2 of water, either from local sources or from aqueducts. In fact, some aqueduct water, as at Thysdrus in North The interplay of climate and geography on water supply Africa and from the Aqua Alsietina in Rome, was not can be fairly complex, but it is clear that both can greatly generally drunk except during emergencies.3 As Wilson affect the water resources of an area. In the West, aver- notes, the water from the Thysdrus aqueduct: age rainfall can vary, for example, between 200 mm per year in parts of Spain and much of North Africa, to five … would have been useful only for watering gar- times as much in most of Gaul and Italy. This variation, dens, certain domestic needs and baths, while when coupled with local climatic conditions, results in water for drinking and cooking would have been very different levels of ground and river water in each provided by rainwater collected in cisterns. […] region.7 The aqueduct water could be used ornamentally It is possible to note an overarching pattern where the without depleting the drinking water supply.4 most urbanised parts of the empire are paradoxically those that receive the least consistent rainfall, largely Thus in addition to basic needs, aqueduct water allowed the lower and coastal areas of the Mediterranean basin. for urban pools and gardens (to say nothing of the However, it seems that the limits of local water supply extra-urban uses), which served as markers of wealth were rarely an issue in the Roman empire though, as and refinement.5 Abundant water was important to the the vast majority of cities never reached a population Roman elite, but it was also central to the lifestyle of the level, or had the impetus to grow beyond a population average urban citizen. It allowed the practice of bathing level, that went past what could be supported locally. This issue of water requirements, usage and population is of significant importance in understanding the late 1 See Hodge (1992) 5; Shaw (1991) 71–72. antique city. Thus in most situations aqueducts were a 2 Rome, however, where the aqueducts predate the baths by nearly prestige monument, but one that was, in most places, three centuries, is a glaring exception to this trend. This is sim- highly integrated into the standards of Roman urban ply a matter of its centrality, both political and economic, in the Mediterranean: Hodge (1992) 5. life. 3 Thysdrus: Wilson (1995) 55; Rome: de Kleijn (2001) 23. 4 Wilson (1995) 55. 6 Shaw (1991) 83. 5 Wilson (1995) 55. 7 Peel et. al. (2007) figs. 4, 8; Grove and Rackham (2001) 28–36.

In order to continue to provide water to maintain a Roman cities. A similar inference can be taken from Roman lifestyle, aqueducts required regular mainte- the late antique history of baths laid out in this chap- nance to clear natural deposits from the channels. This ter. It shows a different pattern from aqueducts, in that, is primarily due to the build-up of sinter, a precipitate beyond the 4th c., baths were largely used and main- of calcium carbonate present in waters that come into tained in cities with connections to the imperial bureau- contact with limestone or marble, and is deposited on cracy and its funding. Nevertheless, the history of bath surfaces during a change in temperature or an aeration upkeep and abandonment, which can tell us about the of the water. It is a hard residue, which has to be chipped management, use of, and ideas about, the water sup- out manually, and has been found to develop at a rate plied by the aqueducts, is also a reflection of the key of 1–2 mm per year in places all across the Mediterra- cultural and economic transitions that occurred in late nean, such as Nîmes, Pergamon and Cologne.8 Rates antique cities. of deposition varied in Roman aqueducts based on the It is important to note at the outset that this chap- hardness and temperature of the water, along with the ter is exclusively interested in urban aqueducts, that is, rate of flow and turbulence along the channel. The water aqueducts that feed primarily into an urban settlement. in Rome in particular, coming from areas with substan- While rural structures played an important role in agri- tial limestone and tufa deposits, was, and is, notoriously culture and other aspects of Roman civilisation, such hard; estimates suggest that the Aqua Marcia alone car- water systems will not be discussed here. ried 47 metric tons of lime per day.9 In channels that are not much more than 1 m wide, a build-up like this could Previous Work on Roman Baths notably reduce the output of water flow during a cen- Baths, as central elements in the Roman city, have been tury without regular removal.10 Unfortunately this sort the focus of scholarly studies for a considerable period. of routine reductive maintenance is largely invisible in The earliest works on Roman baths were largely typo- the archaeological record. Only a lack of maintenance, logical. Krencker’s 1929 book, Der Trierer Kaiserther indicated by a build-up of sinter, is plainly visible. men, catalogued and classified 72 complexes around Additionally, some quantity of stones and dirt was the Mediterranean, and divided them into three major carried in the flow of water. These were generally filtered categories depending on the presumed route of the out of the final output through settling tanks along the bather through the complex or the arrangement and course, which would have to be emptied occasionally. repetition of features in the bath including the row, In fact, the foundation platform for the Villa Bertone in the ring, and the imperial type, with subtypes in each Capanelle was constructed with the pebbles that came category.12 Krencker’s approach became paradigmatic. down the Anio Novus; it would therefore not be surpris- Contemporary archaeological discoveries affected these ing if settling tanks needed to be emptied at least as studies very little, with the result that by the 1980s, the often as the sinter needed to be removed.11 Aqueducts study of baths was no longer keeping up with the mate- could run for some time without this work, but, like all rial remains of those structures that were being discov- infrastructure, they required consistent upkeep. While ered throughout the Roman world. Some inroads were the costs of operating an aqueduct were certainly much soon made on tackling this problem with a number of lower than the original outlay of building one, such regional studies being published, like DeLaine’s work upkeep would have been a continuing burden for cities. on the Baths of Caracalla.13 Manderscheid’s bibliogra- In this way, the sustained maintenance of aqueducts was phy for the years 1988–2001 includes such work, which a means of propagating and supporting certain water- lists 1,749 site or regional studies.14 Since that time, there oriented aspects of Roman culture and civilisation. have been a number of good syntheses on baths for Therefore the timing of the end of such maintenance Gaul, Spain and Africa.15 and the abandonment of the aqueducts—which hap- As a result of the greater interaction between archae- pened gradually from the 3rd c. onwards—are signifi- ology and history in this field in the early 1990s, two cant for what they can say about the transition away works were published which significantly re-evaluated from an urban lifestyle associated with excess water and expanded the study of Roman baths: Yegül’s Baths supply, of the type that was present in the majority of

12 Krencker (1929). 8 Fahlbusch (1991) 8. 13 DeLaine (1997); see also: DeLaine (1988); Fernández Ochoa 9 Taylor (2000) 30. and García Entero (2000); Lenoir (1995). 10 For a discussion of the problems in calculating figures of flow 14 Manderscheid (2004). reduction, see Hodge (1992) 228–30. 15 Bouet (2003a), (2003b); Thébert (2003); Fuentes Domínguez 11 Dodge (2000) 185. (2000); Diarte Blasco (2012).