The Practical and Symbolic Resonance of Water in Ancient Rome

      A short essay exploring the significance of water to ancient Rome follows.  MLA format not strictly adhered to here due to blog formatting restrictions and general readability.

The Practical and Symbolic Resonance of Water in Ancient Rome


If we pause and think about the cycle of a drop of water as it endlessly changes its form and location, we can catch a glimpse of this Christian community: past, present and future. Perhaps this drop of water on our outstretched finger once dropped as rain on the head of Christ himself. (Erickson, Online)

     One of the great wonders of ancient Rome was its ingenious strategy for bringing fresh water into the city.  With its stunning creation of aqueducts and underground system of lead pipes, it truly was called “regina aquarium, the queen of the waters.”  (Hughes, 64)  Visitors from afar must have been astonished at the abundance of clean running water within the city.  This abundance of water was a critical factor in enabling Rome’s population to expand so freely with each passing century.  According to Robert Hughes in Rome, A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History, maintaining this flow of fresh water into Rome was a complex and daunting task.

Before it could flow out of Rome, of course, the water had to flow in.  It did so mainly through aqueducts.  Eleven of these supplied the city with its drinking and washing water, eight entering by the region of the Esquiline Hill.  Four more were added after the popes replaced the emperors, two of them in the twentieth century.  No other ancient city had such a copious supply of water…  (Hughes, 64)

Water was more than a practical necessity for Rome, however.  As its many fountains like the Fontana del Nettuno (Fountain of Neptune) demonstrate, water also played a critical part in nurturing and symbolically representing the unique creativity and passion for the arts found within Rome.  From bringing water into the city in complex aqueducts, turning dry lands into productive agricultural models, and using water for artistic purposes, there was no end of the practical and symbolic resonance of water in early Rome.

     In an excellent academic paper prepared by Evan James Dembeskey for the University of South Africa, he quotes the following passage from Pliny the Elder’s Natural History concerning the wonders of the Roman aqueduct system.  (A different translation was utilized here than the one referenced by Evan Dembeskey.)

If we only take into consideration the abundant supply of water to the public, for baths, ponds, canals, household purposes, gardens, places in the suburbs, and country-houses; and then reflect upon the distances that are traversed, the arches that have been constructed, the mountains that have been pierced, the valleys that have been levelled, we must of necessity admit that there is nothing to be found worthier of our admiration throughout the whole universe.  (Pliny, EBook)

Another remarkable passage from Pliny describes the astonishing magnitude of the engineering involved in these creations.

The channels thus formed are called “corrugi,” from our word “corrivatio,” I suppose; and even when these are once made, they entail a thousand fresh labours. The fall, for instance, must be steep, that the water may be precipitated, so to say, rather than flow; and it is in this manner that it is brought from the most elevated points. Then, too, vallies and crevasses have to be united by the aid of aqueducts, and in another place impassable rocks have to be hewn away, and forced to make room for hollowed troughs of wood; the person hewing them hanging suspended all the time with ropes, so that to a spectator who views the operations from a distance, the workmen have all the appearance, not so much of wild beasts, as of birds upon the wing. Hanging thus suspended in most instances, they take the levels, and trace with lines the course the water is to take; and thus, where there is no room even for man to plant a footstep, are rivers traced out by the hand of man.  (Pliny, EBook)

It is hard to grasp the ability of an ancient people having both the understanding and the ability to accomplish such tasks.  While this appreciation is perhaps tempered by the assumed use of slaves to perform much of the backbreaking and dangerous work, the final success remains a breathtaking feat of engineering.  More than that alone, however, the Roman water system facilitated the practical survival of a large and growing Roman population, which then permitted greater attention to be placed upon the arts as well as engineering and government, public discourse.  In other words, being relieved of some of the immediate pressures of daily survival, the culture was able to mature and flourish in a way that would not have been possible otherwise.  In a substantive way, the clean water pouring through the aqueducts and out from the many fountains was quenching a cultural thirst in the same way it addressed the immediate human need.

     While further research remains required to ascertain the critical nature of agricultural irrigation within the immediate area of Rome itself, irrigation and water rights issues were critically important in North Africa and elsewhere within the Roman Empire.  (Hollander and Spanier, 3504) If rainfall could not be depended upon for agriculture, irrigation techniques were implemented where possible.  As we see from the fountain photographs at the conclusion of this essay, however, water was for far more than practical and life-sustaining purposes alone; it also conveyed the artistic richness and beauty of the Roman Empire.  This particularly must have struck the pilgrims arriving in Rome at Piazza del Popolo.  After long and difficult journeys, the sight of so much flowing water must have been truly astonishing: both welcoming the end of physical thirst and the beauty addressing something more along the lines of the thirst for beauty and the spiritual dimension.

     If water symbolized life, then there was truly an abundance of life within the Roman Empire.  The eternal nature of water, its endless cycle of change, also seems a fitting emblem for Rome.  In one sense, the mysterious quality of water represents the many and diverse citizens of Rome, but it is more than that alone.  As mentioned previously, the abundance of fresh water led to satiation of the need for drinking and bathing water, which, in turn, created an environment a little less concerned with survival alone as the goal, opening the door to wider and richer expressions of thought and the arts.  Beauty for the sake of beauty finally became something within the grasp of the common man, and that is clearly something for which we can all be thankful.  Another important dimension of the Roman contribution to western civilization, of course, is its impressive legacy of paved roads.  Together, the water and transportation systems encouraged the spread and sharing of important ideas; this certainly includes Christianity and Living Water.

 

Cited and Consulted Sources

Dembskey, Evan James. “The Aqueducts of Ancient Rome.” Feb. 2009,
  www.romanaqueducts.info/aquapub/dembskey2009Rometxt1.pdf. (University of South Africa)

Elder, Pliny The. Delphi Ancient Classics: Complete Works of Pliny the Elder

       (Delphi Classics). Delphi Publishing Limited, 2011. EBook.

Erickson, Karl Bjorn. “Mysterious Tools.” America Magazine, 3 July 2006,

     www.americamagazine.org/issue/577/faith-focus/mysterious-tools.

Erickson, Karl.  Fountain and Water Photography, 2017, Rome.
       JPEG.

Hollander, David B., and Ethan Spanier. “Irrigation, Greece and
       Rome.” The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 2012,    
       doi:10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah06364.

Hughes, Robert. Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History.
       New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Print.