in antiquity) on the Via Cassia, which must have been used for the Naumachia (where mock naval battles were held) in Transtiberim (today’s Trastevere). The Acqua Vergine terminates in the Trevi Fountain and has often been cited as the secret ingredient of the excellent tea and coffee found in the center of Rome.
The most important of the aqueducts, begun by Caligula and completed by Claudius in A.D. 54, was the Aqua Claudia, whose water came from springs on the Via Sublacensis near the sources of the Aqua Marcia, with an excellent flow. It was followed a few years later by the Anio Novus, which, again near Sublacum, present-day Subiaco, caught the waters of the Aniene.
The greater need for potable water in Transtiberim was what convinced the emperor Trajan of the need to intervene anew, and so it was that around 109, the Aqua Traiana flowed into Rome, terminating on the Janiculum Hill.41 Finally, between 220 and 235, Alexander Severus brought to Rome the last of the ancient aqueducts, the Aqua Alexandrina, taking its water from the marshy Pantano Borghese, east of Rome. It ran for 13.7 miles (22 kilometers) on the Via Praenestina.42
With the fall of the Roman Empire, these giants, no longer monitored and kept in repair, stood for centuries only to bear witness to the ancient splendor. They were blocked during the Gothic War (535–553), in the siege of Rome (537–38), but Justinian, emperor of Byzantium, provided for their partial repair.
Throughout the High Middle Ages, partial restorations and recoveries made it possible for Rome to receive at least some water. In the seventh century, Pope Honorius I (625–638) restored a stretch of the Aqua Traiana. Trajan’s aqueduct must in some way have functioned during the next century as well, if it was able to operate the mills set up on the Janiculum.
Pope Hadrian I (772–95) provided for the partial restoration of Trajan’s aqueduct and of the Claudia. His engineers also worked on the Aqua Virgo (Acqua Vergine), but since this aqueduct ran in large part through underground conduits, it had been less damaged by neglect and time. The three aqueducts had to supply the city’s hospitals.
It was almost a thousand years before someone else took a look at the situation of the city’s water supply. That was Pope Sixtus V, Felice Peretti (1585–90), who had a hand in the construction of the Acqua Felice, named for him. The aqueduct took its waters from the sources of the Appia and the Marcia (Marzia) in the Castelli Romani, in Colonna territory. The new aqueduct ran underground for thirteen miles (twenty-nine kilometers) and for another fifteen miles (twenty-four kilometers) in aboveground constructions and then emerged on the plain for seven miles (eleven kilometers), reaching Rome at Porta Furba. From there, bending toward San Lorenzo, it reached the Quirinal Hill, where the pontiff built the magnificent fountain that still stands in the middle of the piazza. The flow of water of this immense work was calculated at 3.7 million gallons (14 million liters) per day. A part of all that water must have supplied the beautiful pontifical Villa Montaldo, no longer standing, in the area of the present-day Stazione Termini.
Hydraulic works continued for another century with the construction of the Acqua Paola, which took its supply from Lakes Bracciano and Martignano. Finally, at the end of the pontificate of Pius IX (1846–76), the ancient Aqua Marcia was restored and, in honor of the pontiff, renamed Acqua Pia. It is one of the aqueducts that still today quenches the thirst of Romans and tourists.
Mills on the Tiber: Bread and Pasta in Rome
Bread has been baked in Rome since antiquity, but it has not always been made with wheat. The first stalwart warriors of the republican period nourished themselves for more than three centuries on an unleavened focaccia, cooked on the hearth and certainly not made with the precious wheat we know today. It was made from various grains, such as barley and spelt, but also millet and others. Although at various dark periods of Italian history people resorted to making flour from acorns, the ancient Romans appear not to have. The most common bread was unleavened: once a year, dough was made from millet flour and formed into biscuits.43
It appears that it was through contact with Egypt that the ancient Romans learned to make a soft and very white bread. Soon the pistores (bakers) began to bake a marvelous variety of breads, later procuring the tender grains grown in Sicily and in North Africa, which displaced the old spelt cultivated by this time only in the most isolated or mountainous regions and used by the country folk.44 Wheat was ground by mills operated first by elbow grease, then by draft animals.
At some point, bread making left the home and became public, and consumers became increasingly exigent. In the first century B.C., Roman bakers produced breads made of wheat, rye, and barley, and very white bread for the wealthy patrician tables; Egyptian bakers created the fashion of fine, white Alexandrian bread. Many different kinds of bread were produced: panis cibarius, secundarius, and plebeius, in increasing order of bran content, panis furfureus was for animals, while special bakeries produced panis militaris and panis nauticus for soldiers and sailors. There were breads flavored with milk, honey, wine, oil, cheeses, candied fruits, spices, and fragrant herbs. There was even a panis ostrearius made expressly for serving with oysters. Often bread was molded into the most imaginative shapes: the satirist Martial reports an obscene loaf, created to serve to the mistress of the wealthy host of a banquet.
It follows that the Roman pistor (baker) was a personage of rank, aware of his own importance. Evidence of this is the monumental tomb, worthy of a consul, of the baker Eurysaces, which can still be admired today outside the Porta Maggiore in Rome.
Then the barbarians arrived, but in Rome, as elsewhere, people continued to grind wheat and make bread. A myriad of mills ground wheat for the city. Those built on dry land, called mole terragne (land mills),45 were powered by the numerous watercourses that ran through the city; others were built on the banks of the Tiber.
The historian Procopius of Caesarea, in his Gothic War, provides the first mentions of the Roman phenomenon of the floating mill. The Goths besieged Rome in A.D. 537, but that was not enough, and they took the drastic step of cutting off the flow of water through the aqueducts. In addition to depriving the people of water, that action brought to a halt all the city’s mills. But General Belisarius,46 in charge of defending the city, had the brilliant idea of mounting mills between pairs of boats anchored to the banks of the Tiber, alongside the Tiber Island, where the current was fastest. For many centuries to come, mills on the Tiber were to be an integral part of the Roman landscape. They proliferated until, by the eighteenth century, they posed real impediments to river traffic, but they remained in use until the end of the nineteenth century, when people were still having their grain ground for home use.
The mills were anchored to a masonry pylon attached to the riverbank. The pylon also served as a sort of escalator by which to reach the mill, and its resilience helped absorb the movements of the mill when the river was high. The mill proper was contained in a wooden house atop a large boat anchored with ropes and chains. Between the large boat and a smaller one next to it were the wheels that propelled the mills by their movement in the water. The small boat, the barchetto, was also anchored with ropes and chains. It was not rare, however, for the fury of the floodwaters to rip the fragile boats from their moorings and smash them against the bridges or the riverbanks. Sometimes the owners were lucky and managed to drag their boats back to their moorings without too much damage.
Mill operations were strictly regulated. The cost, in 1597, to mill a sack weighing 450 to 500 libbre47 was ten bolognini.48 A great deal of flour must have been used if Pope Sixtus V (1585–90) forbade milling to all but the bakers in order to keep track of the city’s monthly consumption of wheat.
The millers had a guild whose charter dates to 1496. They were bound by strict laws, and the wheat collected by their delivery boys had to travel with proper documents. The guild also dictated rules on the use of the marrane, the streams that ran through the city. The owners of the mills mounted over the
