Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 3): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

Ch. V.

THROUGH ITALY.

173

Two in particular, the Claudia and Anio nova,
were carried over arches for more than twenty
miles, and sometimes raised more than one
hundred and twenty feet above the level of the
country. The channel through which the water
flowed in these aqueducts (and in one of them
two streams rolled unmingled the one over the
other) was always wide and high enough for
workmen to pass and carry materials for repair;
and all were lined with a species of plaster hard
and impenetrable as marble itself, called by the
ancients, opus signinum. Of these aqueducts
three are sufficient to supply modern Rome,
though it contains not less than one hundred and
eighty thousand inhabitants, with a profusion of
water superabundantly sufficient for all private
as well as public purposes; what a prodigious
quantity then must the nine have poured con-
tinually into the ancient City !
As I have already given some account of these
Aqueducts, I shall here confine myself to a few

Quas praeceps Anien, atque exceptura natatus
Virgo juvat, Marsasque nives, et frigora ducens
Martia, praecelsis quarum vaga molibus nnda
Crescit, et innumero pendens transmittitur arcu.
Sy I. Lib. 1. 5.