The Water-Supply of Rome from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages

Abstract

The article collates the textual and archaeological evidence for Rome’s water-supply in the period c.300-1000. Whilst there is now sufficient archaeological evidence for the rebuilding of the city’s aqueducts after the Gothic Wars, it is clear that the uses to which the water was put in the middle ages were very different from those of Late Antiquity. There was a massive scaling-down of the overall system, with the thermae falling immediately out of use, to be replaced to a certain extent by church baths for the clergy and poor. The Janiculum mills were maintained, and smaller watermills continued to function off the aqueducts, as well as from the Tiber. Baptisteries used both aqueduct and non-aqueduct-supplied water. There was an extensive network of wells and subterranean conduits utilizing ground-water. The system as a whole was organized centrally, by the Church – although the extent of private patronage (wells, smallscale mills and domestic baths) should not be overlooked.