The archæology of Rome, Part 7 : $b The Flavian amphitheatre, commonly called the ColosseumParker, John Henry
History
The archæology of Rome, Part 7 : $b The Flavian amphitheatre, commonly called the Colosseum
Parker, John Henry
Rome -- Antiquities
Father Mullooly, the excellent Prior of S. Clement, says he has observed
that the water under this church always rises and falls at the same time
as that under the Colosseum, and he is convinced that they both come
from the same source. It seemed probable that this source, or at least
one of the sources of this water, is the great reservoir of the earliest
aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, under the garden of the Villa Cœlimontana,
formerly called Villa Mattei, which is now the property of the Baron
Hoffman, at the west end of the Cœlian Hill, on a high level. The Baron
wanted to make this old vaulted reservoir into a wine-cellar, but found
it impossible to get rid of the water, which is always two or three
feet deep, and as fast as he pumped it out it filled again to the same
level, but no higher; this shews that there must be some outlet to it,
but so deep underground that no one knows which way it goes. This old
reservoir is nearly under the great reservoir of Nero for the Anio Novus,
which was fifty feet higher, and carried on his arches, for which also
the Arch of Dolabella was used as a substructure only. We have found in
our examination of the aqueducts that the later ones always followed
the same course as the earlier ones, not exactly over them, but by the
side of them, each succeeding aqueduct being always on a higher level,
and there is always a subterranean reservoir of one of the earlier
aqueducts nearly under those of the later period. The Appia was made
nearly four centuries before the Anio Novus, still it is very probable
that the same plan was followed in both cases. We have found that the
aqueduct of Claudius and Nero, called the Anio Novus, was divided into
three branches at this point; one went straight on over the Palatine
to the Capitoline Hill, another branch went to the left, or south, of
the Aventine, and a third to the right, or north, to the Colosseum. It
seems extremely probable that the same plan had been followed with the
Appia, both were carried along the high ground of the Cœlian Hill as
far as could be done, and then each was divided into three branches. We
traced one branch of it over the Porta Capena to the Aventine and the
Tiber; this is now necessarily out of use, the gate on the arch of which
it was carried having been destroyed. A landslip in the garden of the
Marchese Rappini, in February, 1876, between the Villa Cœlimontana and
the Palatine, served to shew that a _specus_ or conduit passed there,
now also out of use. An excavation was made there in April of the same
year, but all that came to light was a deep well, an ancient quarry of
tufa, also at a great depth, and the _specus_ of the aqueduct coming
from the reservoir under the Claudium, called a _vivarium_, and going in
the direction of the valley in which was the Porta Capena. This _specus_
has been long out of use, and could not have had any connection with the
flood in the Colosseum, which was the object of the search. The water
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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