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A Study on the Backgrounds of Constructing Aqueducts in the City of Rome during the Republic

In the city of Rome, four aqueducts were constructed during the Republic. Modern historians tend to think that these aqueducts were built to provide the growing population with fresh water. The reason they think so is because they believe that the construction of aqueducts represented the increase of the population and the growth of cities. However, the explanation which states that aqueducts were built to provide people with water is not based on researches about the aqueducts themselves. Rather, it is based on the circumstantial situation of that era and the biased modern views about aqueducts. Apart from the fact that the water from the Aqua Anio Vetus and the Aqua Tepula were not fit for drinking, we need to focus on the fact that no historical source tells us about why aqueducts were built(the only exception to this is the Aqua Marcia). The fact that fresh water supplies were provided to the sharply increasing population would have acted as a huge political merit. Thus ancient historians wouldn t have failed from referring it. In other words, the fact that there is no reference explaining why aqueducts were built points at the fact that aqueducts were built for purposes different from what we would normally think. The Aqua Anio Vetus and the Aqua Tepula seem to have been constructed to the benefit of the privileged class who owned farms in the outskirt of Rome or bathes, and not to provide the people with fresh water. I do not intend on arguing that the public aqueducts were built solely for the benefit of the privileged class. As Frontinus stated, the Aqua Marcia was built because the growth of the city required a large supply of water. We cannot deny that the construction of aqueducts intend to provide the city and its people with the continually increasing need for water. However, we should refrain from applying this particular statement about the Marcian aqueduct to all the other aqueducts. Ignoring the characteristics of each aqueducts and applying the bigger city + larger population = more aqueducts rule disturb us from understanding why each aqueduct was built. There is also no need to assume that the public aqueducts were built for the one reason. It is more likely that aqueducts were built because of many different reasons. It could have been for the privileged class as the Aqua Anio Vetus and the Aqua Tepula or for economical reasons as in the case of the Aqua Appia. In addition, the long arguments about the Aqua Marcia and the antipathy regarding the Aqua Appia show us the possibility that political stakes lay in the construction of aqueducts. Therefore, the assumption that the four aqueducts representing the growth and the development of Rome in the Republic should be discarded. We should consider that they were the outcome of the complex mixture of the necessity of water, the benefit of the privileged and other economical, political reasons. In other words, the four aqueducts in the Roman Republic were not architectural structures placed to solve the need for water, but historical structures holding the political, economical and many other situation of era within themselves.