previous next

CHAP. 24.—THE MARCIAN WATERS.

The most celebrated water throughout the whole world, and the one to which our city gives the palm for coolness and salu- brity, is that of the Marcian1 Spring, accorded to Rome among the other bounties of the gods: the name formerly given to the stream was the "Aufeian," the spring itself being known as "Pitonia." It rises2 at the extremity of the mountains of the Peligni, passes through the territory of the Marsi and through Lake Fucinus, and then, without deviating, makes directly for Rome: shortly after this, it loses itself in certain caverns, and only reappears in the territory of Tibur, from which it is brought to the City by an arched aqueduct nine miles in length. Ancus Marcius, one of the Roman kings, was the first3 who thought of introducing this water into the City. At a later period, the works were repaired by Quintus Mar- cius Rex: and, more recently, in his prætorship, by M. Agrippa.4

1 A considerable number of its arches are yet standing, and it still in part supplies Rome with water.

2 At Sublaqueum, now Subiaco.

3 "Primus auspicatus est." In obedience to the "auspices," probably.

4 In A.U.C. 720. See B. xxxvi. c. 24.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (2 total)
  • Cross-references to this page (1):
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), ROMA
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: