AQUEDUCTS

were not unfrequently constructed by the Greeks, who collected the spring-water of neighbouring hills, by channels cut through the rock, or by underground conduits of brick and stone work, into reservoirs, and thence distributed it by a network of rills. An admirable work of this kind is the tunnel, more than a mile in length, which was bored through the mountain now called Kastri, by the architect Eupalinus of Megara, probably under Polycrates (in the 6th century B.C.). The Roman aqueducts are among the most magnificent structures of antiquity. Some of these were likewise constructed underground; others, latterly almost all, conveyed the water, often for long distances, in covered channels of brick or stone, over lofty arcades stretching straight through hill and valley. They started from a wellhead (caput aquarum) and ended in a reservoir (castellum), out of which the water ran in Rome into three chambers, lying one above another, the lowest chamber sending it through leaden or clay pipes into the public fountains and basins, the middle one into the great bathing establishments, the uppermost into private houses. Private citizens paid a tax for the water they obtained from these public sources. Under the Republic the construction and repair of aqueducts devolved upon the censors, their management on the aediles, but from the time of Augustus on a special curator aquarum assisted by a large staff of pipe-masters, fountain-masters, inspectors, and others, taken partly from the number of the public slaves. The amount of water brought into Rome by its numerous aqueducts, the first of which, the aqua Appia, was projected B.C. 312, may be estimated from the fact that the four still in use-aqua virgo (now Acqua Vergine, built by Agrippa B.C. 20), aqua Marcia (now Acqua Pia, B.C. 144), aqua Claudia (now Acqua Felice, finished by Claudius A.D. 62), aqua Traiana (now Acqua Paola, constructed by Trajan A.D. 111) are sufficient to supply all the houses and innumerable fountains of the present city in superfluity. Among the provincial aqueducts, one is specially well preserved, that known as Pont du Gard, near Nimes, in the, south of France (see out on p. 48).