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Civic Aqueducts in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

G. R. Stephens
Affiliation:
2 Palace Road, Llandaff, Cardiff

Extract

An assured water-supply is essential to the survival and functioning of any urban community. Aristotle was, therefore, stating the obvious when he emphasized that a secure water-source was necessary when selecting a site for a new city, for this factor had long since been appreciated by the Greek colonists of Thurii and Cyrene, for example. An assured water-supply, however, may merely depend on the proximity of rivers and springs, and on the digging of wells and the provision of cisterns, as was the case at Rome until the construction of the Aqua Appia of 312 B.C. It was probably the physical growth of cities which led to the establishment of more organized, civic water-supplies. By the classical period the presence of public fountains was taken so much for granted that Pausanias regarded them as one of the requirements without which a settlement could hardly be recognized as a polis–and only the inhabitants of poleis were civilized.

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Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © G. R. Stephens 1985. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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