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He intended likewise to drain the Pomptine marshes, to cut a channel for the discharge of the waters of the lake Fucinus, to form a road from the Upper Sea through the ridge of the Appenine to the Tiber; to make a cut through the isthmus of Corinth, to reduce the Dacians, who had over-run Pontus and Thrace, within their proper limits, and then to make war upon the Parthians, through the Lesser Armenia, but not to risk a general engagement with them, until he had made some trial of their prowess in war.
Had he gone into the Aedes Nympharum, he might have read on brass the so-called royal and tribunician laws; he might have read the treaties with the Sabines, with Gabii and Carthage; the Senatus Consulta and the Plebi Scita. Augustus found in the ruined temple of Jupiter Fucinus the spolia opima of Cossus, who was there declared to have been consul when he won them.
He also constructed great architectural works, especially those of utility, completed the vast aqueduct which Caius commenced, and provided the city with provisions. He built the port of Ostia, to facilitate commerce, and drained marshes and lakes. The draining of the Lake Fucinus occupied thirty thousand men for eleven years.
The fleets were manned by freed men and foreigners who could not obtain citizenship until after twenty-six years' service. We find Claudius employing the marines of the Classis Ravennas to drain lake Fucinus, and it was probably Vespasian who formed the Legion II. Adjutrix from the Ravennate, even as Nero had formed Legion I. Adjutrix from the Misenate marines.
The war was in no respect a memorable one. The enemy were beaten at Antium in one, and that an easy battle; the victorious army laid waste the Volscian territory; their fort at the lake Fucinus was taken by storm, and in it three thousand men made prisoners; the rest of the Volscians being driven within the walls, and not defending the lands.
Yet he availed not to heal the stroke of the Dardanian spear-point, nor was the wound of him helped by his sleepy charms and herbs culled on the Massic hills. Thee the woodland of Angitia, thee Fucinus' glassy wave, thee the clear pools wept. . . . The groves of Egeria nursed him round the spongy shore where Diana's altar stands rich and gracious.
Still more remarkable is the tunnel cut by the Emperor Claudius to drain the Lake Fucinus, now Lago di Celano, in the former Neapolitan territory, about fifty miles eastward of Rome. This lake, as far as its history is known, has varied very considerably in its dimensions at different periods, according to the character of the seasons.
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