The archæology of Rome, Part 8 : $b The aqueductsParker, John Henry
History
The archæology of Rome, Part 8 : $b The aqueducts
Parker, John Henry
Rome -- Antiquities
Paul V. also mentions (in his inscription at the fountain above S.
Pietro in Montorio) that it had been previously restored by one of his
predecessors, Hadrian I., A.D. 774. This was after it had been damaged
by the Lombards under Astulfus, as recorded in the Pontifical Registers
of Stephen III., Hadrian I., and Gregory IV., in whose time (A.D. 830)
the work was completed. The Saracens again destroyed it in 846, and it
was again restored by Nicholas I. (A.D. 860). It continued in use in the
fifteenth century; but in the sixteenth it was much out of repair, and
the branch to the Janiculum almost entirely failed. That to the Vatican
continued to flow in 1561, and was repaired by Pius IV., as recorded
on an inscription in the garden of the Vatican. In 1618, it had become
almost entirely ruined, and was restored in a more thorough manner at
great expense by Paul V., a member of the wealthy Borghese family, from
whom it is now commonly called the Aqua Paola. The Orsini family, to whom
the lake Bracciano belonged, contributed 2,000 ounces of water daily
from that lake. Hadrian I., who had made the first great restoration of
this water-course, was a Colonna, so that three of the greatest medieval
families of Rome have contributed towards it.
The cascade which now falls down the face of the Janiculum, in a
_specus_, turns the water-wheels of three mills in its course; this is
mentioned by Procopius, they having been destroyed by the Goths, and
their place supplied by other mills made in the Tiber by Belisarius,
which continued in use for a long period. The ruins still visible in the
river, opposite the mouth of the Cloaca Maxima, are supposed by some to
have belonged to these mills. They were of wood only[168], and may have
been built on the stone foundations; but these ruins in the river more
probably belonged to the fortifications at the head of the Port of Rome,
where there was a chain across the river to prevent boats from being
carried down by the rapid stream into the Port[169].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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