aqueducts, sections of which still stand in many parts. In the
neighbourhood of Jericho, Laurence Oliphant counted nine different
aqueducts. At Khan Minyeh, believed by some to be the site of Capernaum,
there is a bewildering mass of water-building of many sorts. A
Wasserthurm still stands, whose walls are 12 feet in thickness, and in
all directions water is carried at various levels in channels which run
along the top of mighty banks of masonry. Great stone water-pipes, with
rim and hollow for fitting to the next pipes tightly, lie scattered in
all directions, peeping up through the long grass and ferns, or hiding
among the roots of the thorn trees. Elsewhere are to be seen longer
stretches of aqueduct, whose architects have been able to turn strength
into beauty in a very wonderful fashion. Roman building at its best
relies on the one principle of constructive truth. It never aims at
being pretty; it never fails in being _right_ for the purpose it is
meant to serve. From the point of view of beauty this may often have
produced harsh, material, and heavy work--and indeed that is part of
what we have already referred to as the limitation of Roman achievement.
But the highest beauty is, after all, a matter far more of truth than of
ornament, and there are many remains of Roman work in which such high
beauty has been unconsciously attained. They built to accomplish some
definite practical purpose, and for that end they built thoroughly and
well. The result is the beauty which comes like a crown upon honest work
beyond the design of the workers--a beauty of wholeness, adequacy,
truth, which is perhaps not so far removed from the Hebrew idea of the
“beauty of holiness” as careless observers might be disposed to think.
This is seen in many a fragment of the Roman aqueducts. These irregular,
three-tiered clusters of variously sized and shaped arches, carrying the
stone or concrete channel across a gorge, have a real beauty of their
own; and the long stretches of single or double tiers that take up the
channel where it emerges from a mountain-tunnel, lead it high and secure
across the treacherous ooze of a marsh, throw their level line on high
bridges over ravines, and at last end in the tumbled ruins of a city
whose pools and fountains they filled long ago--these have an
indisputable beauty of workmanship and design, as well as an infinite
pathos of sentiment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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