Introduction

Rome’s power extended only to northern Italy in 265 B. C., where the Celt’s were a major barrier to further expansion. They had no navy so that further expansion seemed unlikely; however in the next 120 years Rome became a major Mediterranean power with interests reaching west to Spain and east to Asia and Aegean. In consolidating their empire, the Romans engaged in extensive building of cities. Rome resulted from centuries of irregular growth with particular temple and public districts that were highly planned. The Roman military and colonial towns were laid out in a variation of the grid. The layout of London, Paris and many other European cities resulted from these origins. Cities and towns need a healthy and adequate water supply, so the Romans located along rivers and streams and/or locations with access to springs, which were always favored. When cities were small, obtaining clean water and disposing of wastes was not a major problem, however, as cities grew the large populations and higher densities required public infrastructure.

Historically, settlements and communities relied on natural sources to obtain water. Supplying large quantities of water such as for fountains was a luxury few communities and states could afford before the Roman era. Before water supplies were made available through aqueducts and conduits, many Roman towns relied upon rainwater collection and cisterns for storage. The cisterns ranged from individual use for houses to communal cisterns. Probably the most impressive and immense of the Roman cisterns was the Piscina Mirabilis near Pozzuoli in the bay of Naples, Italy. The early Romans devoted much of their time to public works projects such as building temples, forums, arenas, baths, aqueducts, and sewer systems. The early Roman bourgeois typically had a house of several rooms with a square hole in the roof to let rainfall in and a cistern beneath the roof to store the water.

Romans were more pragmatic than their Greek predecessors in the manner that they planned and constructed the water supply systems. They built what can be

L. W. Mays (B)

School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287-5306, USA e-mail: Mays@asu. edu

L. W. Mays (ed.), Ancient Water Technologies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8632-7_7, © Springer Science+Business Media B. V. 2010

Called mega water supply systems including many magnificent structures. Sources of water for the Greeks were predominantly groundwater as they avoided surface water, probably because of hygienic reasons. The magnificent aqueducts built by the Romans were supplied by either surface water or groundwater.