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Updated: May 2, 2025
The soil, it is true, was, for the most part, sandy and sterile; but many places were capable of being reclaimed, and, indeed, needed only to be properly irrigated to be susceptible of extraordinary production. To these spots water was conveyed by means of canals and subterraneous aqueducts, executed on a noble scale.
In the domains of Tusculum and Tibur, on the shores of Tarracina and Baiae where the old Latin and Italian farmers had sown and reaped there now rose in barren splendour the villas of the Roman nobles, some of which covered the space of a moderate-sized town with their appurtenances of garden-grounds and aqueducts, fresh and salt water ponds for the preservation and breeding of river and marine fishes, nurseries of snails and slugs, game-preserves for keeping hares, rabbits, stags, roes, and wild boars, and aviaries in which even cranes and peacocks were kept.
Descending from the mountains which bound the valley on the western side, he observed the ruins of a large settlement, covering at least a square mile, whence, as well as from the remains of aqueducts and fountains, he was led to conclude that it must have been a place of considerable consequence.
The furious power of the wind carried forth from the fiery gulf thousands and millions of burning shells of walnuts and almonds, which, shooting suddenly into the sky, like countless flocks of bright butterflies, burst with a crackling, or, driven by the wind, fell in other parts of the city, on aqueducts, and fields beyond Rome.
From that moment the transformation of the colonial town into a little Rome was a matter of time only. The new comers constructed a capitol, a forum, temples, triumphal arches, aqueducts, markets; besides these, theatres, a circus, baths. In a very few years the aspect of Arles was completely changed.
Many noble monuments which have since been destroyed or defaced still retained their pristine magnificence; and travellers, to whom Livy and Sallust were unintelligible, might gain from the Roman aqueducts and temples some faint notion of Roman history.
It was a lively and a pleasing spectacle, to which novelty lent another charm, when, about two miles beyond the Salara gate, we looked from our double-lined procession of Broughams and Britskas, fore and aft, and saw, for miles, scattered over that usually deserted plain, groups of peasants in the gay costumes of the adjacent villages, now animating it in every direction; some emerging from under the arches of aqueducts, or the screen of ruined columbaria, alternately lost to sight and again rising above those abrupt dips in which the ground abounds, all tending in one direction, all bent on one object.
I could not help walking several times round the obelisk, and admiring the noble open space in which the palace is erected, and the extensive scene of towers and aqueducts discovered from the platform in front. We went out at the Porta Appia, and began to perceive the plains which surround the city opening on every side.
Even now their polished columns and pilasters lie o'erthrown and broken, o'ergrown with acanthus and myrtle, but sparkling still, and flouting the slovenly art of modern workmen. Is it sewers, aqueducts, viaducts? "Why, we have lost the art of making a road lost it with the world's greatest models under our very eye. Is it sepulchres of the dead?
It will be noticed also that the angles at the lower part of the channel are filled up with cement; it appears also that this aqueduct crossed a small valley by means of inverted siphons. But neither of these aqueducts came from a source sufficiently high to supply the imperial palace on the top of Fourvieres.
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