Ingenieria Romana Ing Interactivo

JUANELO TURRIANO LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF ENGINEERING
Roman Engineering
Alicia Cámara Muñoz and Bernardo Revuelta Pol (eds.)
ROMAN ENGINEERING
«That the greatness of the empire might be attended
with distinguished authority in its public buildings»
Vitruvius
Lectures given at the course:

Roman Engineering. «That the greatness of the empire might be attended with distinguished
authority in its public buildings» held in Segovia from 9th to 11th November 2012
and organised jointly by the UNED and the Fundación Juanelo Turriano.
Course coordinated by Alicia Cámara Muñoz and Bernardo Revuelta Pol.
English edition 2016

www.juaneloturriano.com
Original title:
Ingeniería romana. «Que la majestad de tu Imperio cuente
con el adecuado prestigio de edificios públicos» (Vitruvio)
© Fundación Juanelo Turriano, 2013
Translation:
Interlinco Servicios Lingüísticos y de Comunicación, S.L.
Photographs:
José María Álvarez Martínez, Fernando Aranda (Confede-
ración Hidrográfica del Guadiana), Gonzalo Arias, Carlos
Caballero, Fundación Juanelo Turriano, Giacomo Gillani,
Irene Glendinning, Max Guy, Eduardo Saavedra, Giorgio
Viazzo, Alonso Zamora
Design, modelling and production:

Lucam
Ediciones del Umbral
© of the edition, Fundación Juanelo Turriano

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© of the photographs and drawings, their authors
The Fundación Juanelo Turriano has made every

effort possible to find out who the owners of the
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owners of the rights or their representatives may
write to Fundación Juanelo Turriano.
FUNDACIÓN JUANELO TURRIANO
TRUSTEES
PRESIDENT
Victoriano Muñoz Cava
VICE PRESIDENT
Pedro Navascués Palacio
SECRETARY
José María Goicolea Ruigómez
MEMBERS
José Calavera Ruiz

David Fernández-Ordóñez Hernández
José Antonio González Carrión
Fernando Sáenz Ridruejo
José Manuel Sánchez Ron
HONORARY PRESIDENT
Francisco Vigueras González

FOREWORD
This book is the outcome of the course held at the Centro Asociado de la UNED in Segovia, as a re-
sult of the collaboration between the University and the Fundación Juanelo Turriano, which financed
it. Its title, Roman Engineering: that the greatness of the empire might be attended with distinguished
authority in its public buildings, included the words of Vitruvius, which expressed the close rela-
tionship between public works constructed by engineers and the grandeur of an empire that, thanks
to those infrastructures, controlled the extensive areas under its domain.
We wanted to answer questions such as: What kind of communication systems existed in a huge em-
pire? What role did religion play in hydraulic engineering? To what extent did public works make cit-
izens’ lives easier? How was water supplied to a city? What do we know about the Segovia Aqueduct?
How can we identify a bridge as being Roman? How did the Spanish Renaissance interpret Roman
Engineering? The fact that the course took place at the same time as the Artifex Exhibition, in the
Casa de la Moneda de Segovia (Segovia Mint), enabled the attendees to gain great insight into all
the aspects of engineering and how they were applied to the Empire’s cities and territories.
This book is the first in a series of publications by the Fundación Juanelo Turriano containing the
lectures given by well-known specialists in the university courses, with a view to helping to inform
society about the history of engineering.
TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
1
Aquae Augustanae ......................................................... 9
JOSÉ MARÍA ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ
2
A few traces from the Construction of Segovia’s
Aqueduct ................................................................... 31
ALONSO ZAMORA CANELLADA
3
Hydraulic Engineering and Religion in the Roman
Empire: Trajan and the Canal Construction ............... 49
SANTIAGO MONTERO HERRERO
4
Roman Roads: the Backbone of the Empire ............... 69
CARLOS CABALLERO CASADO
5
Design and Construction of Roman Bridges
in Hispania ................................................................. 87
MANUEL DURÁN FUENTES
6
Artifex. Roman Engineering in Spain ....................... 103
BERNARDO REVUELTA POL
7
Ingenious comparisons: the look of the
Renaissance ............................................................. 121
ALICIA CÁMARA MUÑOZ
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY FUNDACIÓN JUANELO TURRIANO ............. 144

1
Aquae Augustanae
JOSÉ MARÍA ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ
Director of the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano de Mérida
Everybody who reached the Augusta Emerita settlement along the Roman road from As-
turica or the one from Corduba must have found it not only an unequivocal sign that
they were arriving at a large metropolis reflecting the grandeur of the Empire, but also a
cause for great admiration not different from the impression one gets these days when
one sees the symbols that summarize anyone of our most representative cities, when they
came across the majesty of the arches of San
Lázaro [FIG. 1], or those of Los Milagros, which
had to be constructed to span the valley of the
Albarregas River and to enable the water to flow
in at an acceptable elevation from which to dis-
tribute it at will throughout the old colony. These
arches, which form part of two of the three aque-
ducts planned in Augusta Emerita, greatly at-
tracted the attention of the learned, historians
and archaeologists, who spoke highly of them
when describing their splendid remains.
All of this spawned a large amount of litera-
ture, most of which was repetitive in nature and
concerned the aforementioned arches, or the
heads of two of the aqueducts: the Proserpina and
Cornalvo reservoirs. Interesting graphic docu-
ments such as those for which we are indebted to
Villena1, Fernando Rodríguez2 o Laborde3, to men- FIG. 1 The San Lázaro aqueduct, according to
tion the most outstanding examples, must also be A. de Laborde.
9
added to the aforementioned, to a greater or lesser extent, complete and thorough descrip-
tions. This panorama, object of definition in the past by Jiménez Martín, the author of a
synthesis work on the aqueducts, and of one of their main critical studies4, has recently
made significant progress and it has been possible to provide substantial descriptions, espe-
cially with regard to all that concerns the Rabo de Buey-San Lázaro duct, and considerable
graphic documentation with respect to the routes taken5. However, we are missing analyses
concerning the layouts and in-depth studies of the preserved stonework that will help us to
gain a better insight into their structure, the construction phases, repairs done and details
that will enable us to establish the correct chronological order, not so easy to determine6.
Among the major studies to which reference must be made are the aforementioned
one by Jiménez Martín7, the very complete study by Fernández Casado8 - full of worthy
contributions, the descriptions provided by Mélida9, the considerations by Hauschild10
and the recent work resulting from the activities carried out by the Confederación Hidro-
gráfica del Guadiana [Guadiana River Basin Hydrographical Authority] on the ducts11.
As far as partial aspects and specific ducts are concerned, reference must be made to
the works of Plano y García12, Celestino Gómez13, Álvarez Sáenz de Buruaga14, Canto de
Gregorio15 and Feijoo16.
We would not like to forget either the collaboration provided to us by the Escuela de
Topografía de Mérida [Merida School of Surveyors], namely with García Morant and his
team, who offered as a result, after applying surveying and geophysics, the discovery of
a considerable section of the Proserpina-Milagros aqueduct17.
THE WATER COLLECTION
The degree of knowledge shown by those responsible for designing the new Augusta
Emerita settlement is extremely surprising. When implementing the infrastructure, the
architecti et libratores certainly knew how to make the most of the conditions offered by
the existing bell shaped landscape of Mérida, to establish a basic and essential architec-
tural feature of its territory as they did with the hydraulic ducting.
It is true what Roso de Luna and Hernández-Pacheco18 once said, that there are very
few natural springs and water sources in Mérida area, which is why those that did exist
were put to the very best possible use and very small streams such Las Arquitas, Las
Tomas and other nearby brooks were well channelled, together with all the discharges
flowing from the Valhondo Estate, which would appear to have been collected in a now
barely visible reservoir, after which it flowed through galleries (cuniculi) to the main cur-
rent of Rabo de Buey duct, and the one that starts in Casa Herrera zone, which is
strangely enough often confused with an inflow from the Cornalvo aqueduct19.
Completely different matter was the Cornalvo and Proserpina reservoirs, outstanding
examples of Merida architecture.
When the first of these20 was at its maximum storage capacity, it could hold up to ten
million cubic metres of water and occupied an extensive slate valley, 300 m above sea
level, some 100 m less than the altitude of the city that it supplied. So, just by the con-
struction of a dam a large reservoir could be created at very little expense.
10 ROMAN ENGINEERING
FIG. 2 Channelling the Las
Adelfas stream into the Proser-
pina duct.
The second one, referred to as the Proserpina dam because in the 18th Century an in-
scription appeared in the vicinity dedicated to the Goddess dea Ataecina Turobrigensis
Proserpina21, with a capacity of 6 hm³, before it began to silt up, was erected in a large dip
in the granite terrain in the Merida countryside, 245 m above sea level, 25 m higher than
any other elevation in the city. The catchment area that supplied the dip with its waters
was composed of several small streams. Most of the water flowed into the perfectly chan-
nelled aqueduct22, from the stream known as Las Adelfas [FIG. 2], whose source is close to
the current Highway 630, together with the supply provided by the Las Pardillas stream.
The two reservoirs are situated outside the valley comprising the major streams, so
they both can be regarded as genuine natural basins composed of gently sloping dips on
the ancient peneplain, which bring together excellent conditions for water storage23. They
are exceptional examples of Roman hydraulic architecture although, as several authors
have stated, the two models are rather different in nature.
The Cornalvo reservoir [FIG. 3] has a dam that is 222 m long at the crown and is about
18 m high. At the end of the 19th Century, on a period of time when there were several
drought spells that made more than one person, not only in Merida but also in other
FIG. 3 View of the Cornalvo

reservoir.
AQUAE AUGUSTANAE 11
places, think about reinstating the old
Roman aqueducts and using them once
again to supply the city with water, consid-
eration was given to restoring the facilities,
which were in a poor state of repair with
many of its surfaces missing. The idea was
the brainchild of Francisco Rus, and al-
though the plans were drawn up in 1913,
they were not put into action until 1926,
when the project was carried out, albeit with
certain modifications to the original, by Juan
García y García. This caused the original fa-
cies being covered over, although various
documents and illustrations from the period
make it possible to obtain a general idea of
what it was like.
It consisted of three longitudinal walls
running parallel to the waters and other
smaller walls set at right-angles to the water
FIG. 4 Cornalvo. Water outtake tower.
that delimited spaces in the form of lattice-
work, the bottom part of which was filled
with earth and the top part with concrete. It
was thus possible to refer to the dam as having three distinct parts, corresponding to the
above-mentioned transverse walls. Dressed-stone facing was applied to the staggered sur-
face. The usual earth parapet was laid on the downstream side, this being an average of
10 m thick24.
Although the structure cannot be fully appreciated today, at least to the extent that
one might like, the construction characteristics of its interesting outtake tower can be
clearly seen, this construction lying at a certain distance from the dam itself for safety
and practical purposes, yet joined to it by an arch, whose starting point is marked by the
springer set into the tower, most of whose arch-stones have fortunately been retrieved
[FIG. 4]. The tower is approximately 20 m high and it is almost rectangular in section. It
was equipped with outtakes on two levels, one at the bottom of the basin and the other
a few metres deeper.
Such is the knowledge that has been obtained about the nature and the structure of
the dam that the recent studies conducted have modified the conception that we had of
its construction idea25. We owe this information to Dr. Arenillas and his team26. Chronol-
ogy dates the dam at a later time probably than the first stage of Aqua Augusta duct.
Celestino Gómez gave his description providing very interesting information about
its outflow systems27, which we will not go into details about here, in view of the limited
time that we have to devote to such considerations28.
The «modernity» of this dam is truly surprising29, the Madrid example at El Gasco,
dating back to the 18th Century bearing witness to its permanence; but if we analyse cer-
tain other examples perhaps it is not so modern.
Nevertheless, as we have already
pointed out, the analysis of the stonework
of its sluice-gate tower is more revealing
and akin to examples from Emerita and
its sphere of influence. In spite of what
has been said about its bossage, it is not
consistent with the bossage on the bridges
of Merida of clear Augustea chronology,
as we have already stated30. It would ap-
pear to be stonework of a different kind
that to begin with we could associate
with the type to be seen on the western
face of the Amphitheatre and that may
be consistent with one of its stages that
just might be a result of Flavio’s modifi-
cations31 and, perhaps, with the faces of
other singular and well-known works,
such as the Alconétar Bridge itself, which
was one of the most important works
out of the many that were carried out in FIG. 5 Caput aquae. Aqua Augusta.
Vía de la Plata32 by Emperor Trajan, at
the start of his rule. All in all, what we
are expressing here are no more than impressions gleaned from a visual analysis, which
would have to be backed up by a thorough study that has yet to be conducted.
The truth of the matter is that the observations in question lead us to think of a later
period than Augustus’, however much of this ducting work, whose name we fortunately
know, Aqua Augusta33 [FIG. 5] would date from that period.
That Augustea chronology, cleared up by the above-mentioned inscription and by cer-
tain construction details on the route, such as the arches without arch stones, a feature
that is certainly very old, to which Jiménez Martín attracted attention because of the
Caño Quebrado section34, leads us to consider a possibility whose enunciation is not re-
ally ours to give, because it is an observation made by Celestino Gómez, who put forward
the theory that the major inflow from El Borbollón, which runs from the hills of Cam-
pomanes as far as the Albarregas Valley through well-constructed piping, through which
a slight current of water still flows – in spite of the damage done to this spot by a euca-
lyptus plantation that ended up by almost completely drying up the Caput Aquae [head-
waters] –, namely that this could have been the very first major Augustian hydraulic
duct35, logically augmented by other inflows and by the fact that these reaches run
through the Albarregas Valley itself. It is a very plausible theory, because it also indicates
a considerable knowledge of the environment, a clearly practical approach, as it was pos-
sible at little cost, to bring water of an excellent quality, to Emerita36.
Probably at a second stage…. at which period of the Flavios, Trajano?, if we take into
account the characters from the stonework of the outtake tower, the duct was strength-
ened by the dam, and maybe its path was widened by the so-called «Vía Ensanche», which
AQUAE AUGUSTANAE 13
FIG. 6 Aerial view of the
Proserpina dam.
is a conclusion that Jiménez Martín37 also came to, although we are not so sure about
this ourselves.
As far as the Proserpina Dam [FIG. 6] is concerned, a few years ago the Confederación
Hidrográfica del Guadiana and Professor Miguel Arenillas’ team were able to study it. After
carrying out emptying and cleaning works, they were able to bring to light data of great
interest that has come to change our traditional way of understanding the reservoir38.
Much was known about its structure, 425.80 m long at the crown and 21 m high,
with three alignments in plant view, but it has now been possible to obtain a much more
complete information after the aforementioned works.
The upstream section had a concrete core faced with dressed and rough stonework
[FIG. 7], stepped in the same way as at Cornalvo, albeit with a rather different arrangement
and provided with nine rectangular abutments, also made of granite and staggered. Down-
stream, there was the usual parapet, in this case rather strong, that supported stonework
situated next to the dam itself, with sixteen small abutments arranged between the two
outtake towers, which in this case are joined to the dam itself39. These towers were sub-
jected to major alterations in the 17th and 18th Centuries in order to put the complex into
operation and to enable some nearby mills and wool-washing facilities to operate.
The vertical structure of the dam, now known in its entirety for the first time, shows
signs of several stages corresponding to several restoration activities, records existing for
some of these, mainly the work that was performed in the 17th Century, on the orders of
the Governor Felipe de Albornoz, assisted by commissioners and aldermen Diego del Car-
pio and Juan de Tovar. We know that this was a major restoration work thanks to certain
documents, unfortunately rather scanty, but mainly owing to the news, also brief, written
down by the city chronicler Bernabé Moreno de Vargas40. Subsequently, according to cer-
tain documents in Merida’s Municipal Archives brought to light by Álvarez Sáenz de Bu-
ruaga41, further works were done in 1700 and 1730 – which possibly managed to
overcome the problems observed since 1654, although the difficulties at that time, the
FIG. 7 Proserpina dam structure.
war against Portugal, prevented them from being carried out – and at the beginning of
the 19th Century.
The dam elevation was studied to the most possible extent by the authors of the re-
habilitation, consolidation and enhancement project for the complex. The data that were
extracted proved to be extremely useful and made it possible to gain insight into its nature
and to clearly establish the different stages that could be identified in its structure.
There would appear to have been two distinct stages for the dam construction: a
minor phase, which was completed with the rounded abutments that it has been possible
to observe for the first time, and a second phase that involved the heightening of the
works where the aforementioned staggered abutments appear [FIG. 8]. We must reiterate,
that it is a pity we do not have the specifications for the major dam remodelling project
implemented by Governor Albornoz at the beginning of the 17th Century, as we do have
in the case of the study for the large bridge spanning the Guadiana river, and we believe
the restoration work took place
almost at the same time. In the
case of the bridge, a good ac-
count of the project is given in
the Merida Council Corporate
Agreements Books42. However,
we must mention one signifi-
cant piece of information, i.e.
we have observed on a consider-
able part of the dam, oblong
shape stones similar to those
that appear on the five new
arches that were laid during the
aforementioned restoration. FIG. 8 Lower part of the Proserpina dam and outlet tubes.
AQUAE AUGUSTANAE 15
One of the new contributions yielded by
the recent study that certainly did not go
unnoticed to us was the discovery of a
wooden stopper, almost one metre long,
which may have been used to unblock one
of the outlet ducts [FIG. 9]. The Carbon 14
test conducted on it revealed evidence that
clearly dates it back to the 1st Century AD,
probably about halfway through. If the re-
FIG. 9 Wooden stopper for an outlet tube. sult of this test are valid, this could be fur-
ther evidence to be taken into account
when correctly dating the duct works,
which now, after Feijoo’s interesting considerations, have been brought forward to the
period of Arab domination, which does not seem likely to us43.
However, with regard to the dating of the duct, which as can be seen is a matter of
some controversy, and is the subject of all sorts of opinions, we would like to draw atten-
tion to certain architectural aspects considered by FernándezCasado44 and Alfonso
Jiménez45, which at the time we could not see or were reluctant to accept. It is clear that
the layout of the pillars for the raised arches of Los Milagros, and particularly the pad-
stone or cornice that finishes the first part of the pillar, have to be compared to certain
examples taken from Lusitanian bridge architecture, Alconétar, for example, where arches
appear lowered in much the same way as the arches of Los Milagros, suggesting therefore
to a proximity to the Trajanian Period46.
THE ROUTES
Although information exists concerning a considerable part of the route followed by the
Augustian aqueducts from their source until they reach the city, and subsequently branch
off, the information is incomplete and still has to be studied. We are going to examine
this state of affairs duct by duct.
Cornalvo
The aqueduct, now perfectly laid out, led off from the reservoir described above and in-
cluded the inflow coming from El Borbollón, the waters being abundant and of excellent
quality. flowing down actually from the true caput aquae at the Sierra de Mirandilla
heights, between the Zorrilla and La Vieja Estates. The channel with its cover remains
almost intact, apart from breakages causing leaks at many points. Small shafts or vents
can be observed every so often to aerate the duct and make cleaning easier. At present,
and because of the above-mentioned eucalyptus plantation, the once considerable flow
of water has been reduced almost to a trickle.
A detailed study has not been performed, yet the ducting, the route and its peculiar-
ities have been surveyed and drawn on plans with more or less correction. However, a
description is indeed available
for some specific sections as a
result of the interest aroused by
the stonework uncovered.
The channel, according to
appraisals made by Fernández
Casado, ran through a small
underground gallery whose
height varied depending on the
lay of the land as it ran down
and making use of the subsur-
face waters throughout the first
section, first with waterlogging
FIG. 10 Specus along the Cornalvo duct.
and then with the bed full of
sediments. Certain manholes
are observed, whose current
purpose is to serve as shafts to draw off water from the gallery47. Once the first section
of the channel has ended, it passes through the village of Trujillanos and goes along the
hillside, running closer to the surface and appearing in the open in some gullies where
major stonework can be seen.
Some of the best examples of these remains emerge at the spot known as Caño Que-
brado, close to the road leading to Valverde and in the grounds of Merida Psychiatric
Hospital. These structures feature substructio and arcuationis [substructures and arch-
ing]. The upstream wall and part of the downstream block are perfectly preserved. Judging
by the lay of the land in the gully, it has been estimated that there may have been twenty
arches. The slight traces of one of them still remain, which was supported by a pillar,
but there are no signs of distinct archstones48 in it.
Others traces of stonework can be observed in the Cerro Gordo gully, albeit with a
simpler structure, given that in this case the channel is raised above a wall by about 30
m, in the middle of which there is a 86 cm drain with an overflow49.
From this point until it reaches the city the channel only occasionally comes to the
surface, although it does emerge near the former Nacional V Highway, where two spi-
ramina [vents] can be seen. It was possible to uncover the aqueduct during excavations
in the area of the necropolis, and its characteristics are similar to those described, with
a height of approximately 50 cm.
It is clear that it made its way to the city across the football pitch, towards the old
water cistern. We suspect that just as it entered the settlement, on the enclosure wall,
there would have been an inscription bearing its name (Aqua Augusta). A great deal of
information has been gleaned from the remains found in the grounds of the Giner de los
Ríos Public School, through which the duct ran on its way to the Theatre and Amphithe-
atre, which it supplied [FIG. 10].
Recent excavations dug at the site of the former Guardia Civil barracks, with a view
to constructing the new Visigoth Museum, have yielded data that, together with the in-
formation already compiled beforehand, enable us to know not only where the duct off-
AQUAE AUGUSTANAE 17
shoot was leading to the Vía Ensanche, but also to establish, in spite of what Richmond50
thought, that the aqueduct did not run along the line of the city walls, but that the wall
left the duct within the city walls and ran parallel to them, only a short distance from
them, the two structures creating a sort of passage between them.
We do not know the exact location of this aqueduct’s piscina limaria [settling basin].
However certain more or less plausible hypotheses have placed it in the vicinity of the
former Nacional V Highway.
The major section that can be seen in the Vía Ensanche is of great interest though. It
consists of a preserved substructio 85.70 m long and 3.08 m thick, whose maximum height
is 2.20 m. The base is composed of a concrete core with an opus incertum [irregular work])
face, with the typical presence of mortar in the joints, this being highly characteristic of
works in Mérida. The specus [roofed channel] is 57 cm wide and it is also 57 cm high.
This section was equipped with an arcuationis scheme, which is accounted not only for
its structure but also for the presence of certain square or rectangular stumps for pillars.
It is assumed that the duct ended up in the bull-ring, next to the Casa del Mitreo.
Rabo de Buey-San Lázaro

The route followed by this aqueduct is, apart from certain as yet unanswered questions,
the best known of all. One of the main reasons for this is that, as its waters were used
until recently, Merida Council decided on several occasions to order works to be done to
improve the way in which its inflows were being used. The most important of these works
were carried out towards the end of the last century, on the initiative of Miguel Nogales
and ordered to be undertaken by the Mayor Pedro María Plano, who gave a good account
of the results of the activities in his book51.
One of the problems that still have to be overcome when establishing the correct lay-
out of the aqueduct is to suitably determine the inflows that the main duct receives, al-
though progress has been made in recent years52.
It did have one major inflow, the discharge coming from the Valhondo Estate, the es-
sential details of which have been made known by Álvarez Sáenz de Buruaga53. The water,
in abundance, and with a greater flow rate than it has today, three litres per second, was
taken from the Valhondo stream itself and from small runoff sources nearby. The con-
struction of a dam, now partially buried, was a good choice, and this is the real caput
aquae of the duct. A series of galleries lead off from this point, and these, now in ruins,
were so badly destroyed that at the end of the last century, when an attempt was made
to recover these inflows for the city, it was impossible to channel them towards the main
duct at Las Tomas-Rabo de Buey, and it proved to be more feasible to construct new gal-
leries, higher and wider than the Roman ones, with side walls made of stone without
mortar to enhance the filtration of slight water currents that increased the flows in the
duct. It then runs through iron piping into the Rabo de Buey Cistern.
The layout of the main duct is well known today, not only because of the above-men-
tioned works that took place at the end of the last century, but also because of the sur-
veying work carried out by the students at the Escuela de Topografía de Mérida under the
supervision of Dr. Hernández Ramírez54.
FIG. 12 Las
Tomas-Rabo de
Buey duct
gallery.
FIG. 11 Stairway
leading down to the
Las Tomas duct gallery.
It starts in what was known in the 16th and 17th centuries as the Mari-Pérez valley,
which in the last century came to be known as Las Tomas. The offshoot coming from
Las Hospitaleras would have been located there, at its caput aquae. From that point, the
water flowed for about 4 km, mainly through underground galleries, until it reached the
town. We are not going to go into great detail about the whole ducting, but we will address
its essential features.
A total of 99 dormers, shafts or spiramina are positioned throughout the entire gallery,
which not only served in some instances, to enable workers to go down to the duct, for
the purpose of which a series of stairways had been strategically located, but also served
as windows or skylights to enable the light to filter through into the long covered section.
These works are perfect, with layers of dressed stone, currently covered with square gran-
ite slabs. The distances between them vary, as is the case with most Roman aqueducts
that we know of.
Throughout the length of the duct there are four shafts leading down to its interior
[FIG. 11]. Outside, the entrances are similar to the ones in most other examples. They are
equipped with dressed stone stairways. The walls are made of diorite masonry, and the
roof well defined with brickwork, a result of what would appear to be restoration work
(they were originally made of stone).
The cuniculi or galleries [FIG. 12] are of different heights, higher along the first section
and lower as the galleries approach the hill known as Rabo de Buey, showing evidence of
the diorite masonry in well-defined layers, the presence of brick bearing witness to repairs
made down through the years. The roof is composed of layers of stone, and sometimes
the bare rock serves to cover. At times, the specus, varying in width but never exceeding
80 cm, takes the form of a hydraulic lining with chamfered angles, and sometimes the
pavement is simply exposed concrete.
AQUAE AUGUSTANAE 19
FIG. 13 Bottom
arches made of
stone on the San
Lázaro Arching.
The connection points with other ducts are well worth to be observed, especially
where they join the old Valhondo duct in the vicinity of La Godina.
The gallery system, which causes such a great impact on those that can visit it today,
is typical of the Roman world, and although the ones in Merida are spectacular in them-
selves, reference must also be made to other major examples, namely those in Algeria55,
Ascoli56, in Gallia (France) in several well-known places: Antibes, Vienne, Arles, Font-
Giraud de Saintes, Rodez, Poitiers, Cimiez, Nîmes, etc., and in Hispania, Segobriga57.
The piscina limaria, just like the one for Proserpina’s duct, was probably located on
the Rabo de Buey Hill, at the foot of which the Albarregas Valley dip begins. Based on
the fact that not only the width but also the depth in this zone was greater than in Los
Milagros, it was decided to construct longer and higher arches than those constructed
for its contemporaries.
But unfortunately for a variety of circumstances worse luck befell these arches, one
of such circumstances being the construction, of an aqueduct in the 16th century, useless
and showing to what extent awareness in hydraulic matters relevant to aqueducts had,
making use of materials, and sometimes the structure of the earlier aqueduct, which may
well have already been in ruins at that time. Only two side pillars with an irregular layout
and a central one that is rectangular remain of the impressive arched bridge [FIG. 13]. They
are joined by semi-circular arches. As far as can be made out, in accordance with the soil
conditions in the area, these constitute the intermediate part, and a change of direction
can be detected in the downstream face towards the artillery barracks and the Amphithe-
atre House, where most of the arcuationis would have ended up.
At the first level there is an ashlar masonry foundation over which a second level is
laid. The pillars are provided with pronounced bossage. In the arches, the archstones are
not as bossed, but the keystone stands out. The second level shows evidence of a combi-
nation of stonework and brickwork, the same brick that is used for the roofs and, perhaps,
also on its spandrels and on the horizontal strips that cross the entire pillar and appear
on all the faces, four layers of stonework alternating with four layers of brick.
Unfortunately, part of the aqueduct, the section close to the Amphitheatre House,
was destroyed several decades ago, when Miguel Galán was Mayor, and its remains, just
like the remnants of the Rabo de Buey section, appear scattered on the ground.
The duct entered into a castellum [distribution cistern], to which reference will be
made later, via a substructio that can be seen in the enclosure of that house.
Proserpina-Los Milagros
Now that the details of the water collection process in the reservoir have been explained
and its characteristics have been dealt with, we can consider the aqueduct’s route to the
city.
The water flowed out through a narrow gallery into which it is possible to enter as far
as to the nozzle tube. The outlet is in the orchard belonging to the Pacheco family, adja-
cent to the reservoir, where a small modern aqueduct is still preserved, records of which
can be found in the Mérida Council Corporate Agreements Books. This small raised
aqueduct, which in fact would be more aptly referred to as a channel, was constructed
to channel the water that was lost after the Roman works were abandoned, so that these
resources could be used to drive several mills, whose ruins can still be seen today.
The designing process was difficult, because several obstacles had to be overcome:
gullies, small dips and granite blocks. All of this accounts for the considerable work that
had to be done and the detours that the aqueduct had to take invariably seeking the best
elevations and the level contours rather than crossing them, which explains why the route
was eventually almost 10 km long.
Much has been said about the nature of this duct, especially by Fernández Casado,
who refers to the open-air stretch58. This is by no means exact, because in our prospecting
activities along the entire ducting we have found more than enough traces of roof covering.
The channel was devised in much the same way as other Merida ducts. It is a stonework
composed of opus caementicium [Roman concrete] with an outer face of dressed stone or
opus incertum. The use of brick as caementa [rough quarry stones] can be observed here
and in the roof that covers the channel. It must also be pointed out that the caementa get
of smaller size as the aqueduct moves
away from the caput aquae the mate-
rial used being then local stone, with
presence of river pebbles in those
sections lying closest to the Guadi-
ana river.
The channel emerges for the first
time 500 m away from the reservoir.
As far as the Montijo crossroads, in
the Cuarto de la Charca Estate, in-
teresting construction structures
being found and, something hitherto
unseen in Merida, a tunnel excavated
in the local granite block [FIG. 14]. FIG. 14 Proserpina duct tunnel in the Carija Estate.
AQUAE AUGUSTANAE 21
FIG. 15 Stone works in the gullies
along the Proserpina duct route.
The tunnel is approximately 1 km from the reservoir and dug with a view to passing
through the above-mentioned rock mass. It was detected thanks to geophysical prospect-
ing conducted by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid under the supervision of the
Escuela de Topografía de Mérida and ourselves. The required excavations were then car-
ried out, which led to the spectacular discovery of the specus open in the rock. Spiramina
had been sunk at intervals. This measure is known to have been adopted in several ex-
amples from the Roman world, including the Nîmes Aqueduct.
These were major works that not only took place in the above-mentioned estate but
also in the Carija Estate, where gullies had to be spanned. In the latter case, the works
for spanning the three gullies that we know of, involved substructionis of constant thick-
ness. The starting points still remain but the arcuationis sections in the central part no
longer exist. Perhaps the second gully reveals the most interesting details. The construc-
tion on the surface is 24.40 m long and 2.85 m high. The substructio is 1.40 m wide,
whereas the specus is 56 cm wide [FIG. 15].
Beyond the third gully, the channel runs through rather flat granite terrain, consti-
tuting one continuous stretch. When it approaches the Montijo crossroads it is raised
on a 1.20 m high wall.
The channelling crosses part of the Araya Estate, before making its way towards the
Carija Pass, then running into the La Calera Estate, from which it starts to descend to-
FIG. 16 Close-up of the piscina limaria

in the Proserpina duct.
FIG. 17 The Los Milagros Archings.
wards the city passing close to a modern fountain, El Sapo, where the layout takes the
form of a 130 m long hairpin.
Reference must be made to the piscina limaria of the duct, discovered on the munic-
ipal cemetery hill [FIG. 16]. It is a catchpit 3.60 x 3 m on the inside, equipped with a bottom
outlet, floodgate chamber and spillway outlet. From this height, the specus runs along
an increasingly high wall and then carries on supported by pillars and arches in the Al-
barregas Valley.
The arched section from the aforementioned settling pit to the existing terminal on
the El Calvario hill is 827 m long, the maximum height being 25 m.
The structure reveals how skilful the Roman engineers were when it came to over-
coming these types of problems. The solution basically consisted of a series of pillars
with a strong concrete core and a lining of stonework and brick, five and five layers re-
spectively. The pillars are 3 m wide and are sometimes provided with a sloping abutment,
2 m wide and 2.50 m long [FIG. 17].
The pillars are connected with brick arches, although the arches that flank the Al-
barregas River are made of stone. The pillars erected over the river are equipped with
wedge-shaped cutwaters.
The specus, for the most part missing, ran over the arches.
The change of direction to reach the castellum where the duct ended can be seen
perfectly.
AQUAE AUGUSTANAE 23
The castella [distribution cisterns]
A lot of discoveries were made about aqueducts as a result of the excavations that took
place in what were known as the Amphitheatre House and the El Calvario Hermitage,
because each of them led to the finding of castella, one for the Las Tomas duct and the
other for the Proserpina duct.
We have already dealt with the possible existence of the Cornalvo castellum in the
vicinity of Casa del Mitreo, next to the bull-ring. In fact, the San Albín hill is the ideal
place for it to be located judging by topographic data of the land.
The Las Tomas duct castellum was discovered during the course of the above-men-
tioned excavations. It is a long rectangular building constructed with stone, masonry and
bricks, the sides being rather thick to enable the brick roof, which covers the entire space,
to rest on them [FIG. 18]. According to Jiménez Martín59, its function was to enable the
impurities in the water to settle, so it would be more of a piscina limaria, an opinion that
we do not entirely agree with.
The whole floor of the building, which lies at a lower level than the channels them-
selves, is lined with hydraulic mortar. However, the rest of the building has a fine coating
of lime and sand, onto which a series of triangles were painted, in the form of pediments,
composed of adjacent red and green lines. Underneath these lay some depictions already
unrecognisable when they were found. It is thought that these paintings could have been
associated with the blessing of the waters.
FIG. 18 Castellum divissorium in the Las

Tomas duct. Illustration by PÉREZ VIGO.
FIG. 19 Nympheum in the Proserpina duct castellum aquae.
We believe that it is a divissorium [fork], in which even before the main duct arrives,
it branches off to supply a suburban zone perfectly located in the vicinity of the aqueduct
with a view to supplying at least two areas: the theatre and amphitheatre on the one
hand, and the central part of the city, on the other hand, as can be clearly seen in the
duct found when excavating the Museum. It is impossible to ascertain now, but there
might have been a large castellum aquae next to the walls, as is the case with the Pros-
erpina Aqueduct.
The structure of the large cistern at the end of the Proserpina Aqueduct is also very
interesting. It was found under the El Calvario Hermitage, where ever since olden times
a structure associated with the ducting60 was thought to have existed.
It is almost a square-shaped construction, like a nympheum associated for its source
of supply and character with the neighbouring castellum61. It is 15.40 m long on the best
preserved side. The stonework is no more than 2.70 m high [FIG. 19].
The cistern is seated on natural rock surface, for which purpose a concrete platform
was laid to provide a flat base. A layer of roughly cube-shaped granite blocks runs along
the entire length of the construction, constituting the real foundation base. The top part
of the construction has a very uneven diorite masonry surface and the entire core was
made of concrete. A lacing course comprising two lines of brick, a highly distinctive char-
acteristic of this particular hydraulic complex, was laid between the masonry, in order to
suitably smoothen the rows of stone and to speed up the construction process without
waiting for the previous line to cure.
AQUAE AUGUSTANAE 25
Two steps led up to the central part of the fountain. The interior was 5.85 m long, 2
m high and the walls and floor were lined with a layer of grey veined marble as can be
deduced from the small remnants that have been preserved. Clear traces of past restora-
tion attempts can also be observed. The preserved part of the top of the construction is
covered with a 33 cm thick layer of hydraulic mortar and a small channel is set in its
centre, which is all that is left of the several ducts leading into the cistern.
The fact that this fountain is positioned where it is, next to the castellum and at the
start of the cardo maximus, the main street in the city, is proof of its importance, and it
had a highly-effective ornamental function at the entrance to the city from the north.
The location of this castellum, next to the city walls, is almost general, but sometimes
it was built closer to the centre of settlements.
NOTES
1. A. M. CANTO: «La Arqueología Española bajo Carlos IV y Godoy: Preludio a los dibujos emeritenses de Villena y Moziño (1791-
1794)», Anas, no. 7-8, 1994-1995, pages 31-56; Id.: La arqueología española en la época de Carlos IV y Godoy. Los dibujos de
Don Manuel de Villena Moziño. 1791-1794. Madrid, Ediciones El Viso, 2001, no. 9, 10, 17, 19, pages 140-143, 156-162.
2. S. ARBAIZA BLANCO-SOLER and C. HERAS CASAS: «Fernando Rodríguez y su estudio arqueológico de las ruinas romanas de Mérida y sus
alrededores (1794-1797)», Academia. Boletín de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, no. 87, 1998, pages 309-364.
3. A. DE LABORDE: Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Espagne. París, 1806, v. II.
4. A. JIMÉNEZ MARTÍN: «Los acueductos de Emerita», Augusta Emerita. Madrid, 1976, pages 111-125.
5. The work of ÁLVAREZ SÁENZ DE BURUAGA and his activities at the School of Surveyors at the Universidad Politécnica de Mérida,
encouraged by his lecturers and particularly by Dr. Hernández Ramírez, who provided us with data of great interest where
establishing the exact layout of the ducts is concerned. All of this amounts to a major breakthrough in awareness about the
hydraulic complexes and serves as a starting point for systematic work that has not been possible until now.
6. A joint effort concerning the ducts of Merida is what should be carried out, with the participation of multidisciplinary teams.
7. A. JIMÉNEZ MARTÍN: Op. cit.; Id.: «Problemas de los acueductos emeritenses», Habis, no. 7, 1976, pages 271-292.
8. C. FERNÁNDEZ CASADO: «Acueductos de Mérida», Informes de la Construcción, no. 205, 1968, pages 51-74; Id.: Acueductos ro-
manos en España. Madrid, Instituto Eduardo Torroja, 1972.
9. J. R. MÉLIDA: Catálogo Monumental de España. Provincia de Badajoz. Madrid, 1925, vol. I, pages 106 et sec.
10. TH. HAUSCHILD: «Problemas de las construcciones romanas en Mérida», Augusta Emerita. Madrid, 1976, pages 107-109.
11. The numerous works conducted recently by a considerable number of qualified professionals have been extremely useful,
including contributions made by Fernando Aranda, José Luis Sánchez Carcaboso, Juan Martín Morales y Miguel Arenillas,
with their respective teams. For reference of their works see A. VELÁZQUEZ JIMÉNEZ: Repertorio de bibliografía arqueológica
emeritense III. Emerita 2010. Mérida, 2011.
12. P. M. PLANO Y GARCÍA: Ampliaciones a la Historia de Mérida. Mérida, 1894, pages 22 et sec.
13. R. CELESTINO GÓMEZ: «Los sistemas romanos de abastecimiento de agua a Mérida. Estudio comparativo para una posible
cronología», Revista de Obras Públicas, December 1980, pages 959-967.
14. J. ÁLVAREZ SÁENZ DE BURUAGA: «La conducción de Rabo de Buey-San Lázaro, de Mérida», Estudios dedicados a Carlos Callejo
Serrano. Cáceres, 1979, pages 71 et sec.
15. A. M. CANTO DE GREGORIO: «Sobre la cronología augústea del acueducto de Los Milagros de Mérida», Homenaje a Sáenz de Bu-
ruaga. Madrid, 1982, pages 157 et sec.
16. S. FEIJOO MARTÍNEZ: «Las presas y los acueductos de agua potable, una asociación incompatible en la antigüedad: el abastec-
imiento en Augusta Emerita», in T. NOGALES (ed.): Augusta Emerita. Territorios, espacios, imágenes y gentes en Lusitania romana.
Monografías Emeritenses, 8. Mérida, 2005, pages 171 et sec.
17. J. M. ÁLVAREZ, J. GARCÍA MORANT et. al.: «Localización de la conducción romana desde el reservoir de Proserpina» hasta Mérida
mediante la aplicación compartida de la topografía y la geofísica», Jornadas sobre Teledetección y Geofísica aplicada a la Arque-
ología. Madrid, 1992, pages 189-196. We have referred to the literature on Merida’s waterworks on several occasions, updating
the information from time to time. Some of the most significant papers on the subject include: «Las conducciones hidráulicas
emeritenses. Estado de la cuestión», in J. MANGAS and S. CEBALLOS (edit.); El agua en las ciudades romanas. Madrid, 2007,
pages 183-212; «Los primeros años de la colonia Augusta Emerita», in E. LA ROCCA, P. LEÓN and C. PARISI PRESICCE: Le due patrie
acquisite. Studi di Archeologia dedicati a Walter Trillmich. Bullettino della Comisione Archeologica Comunale di Roma. Sup-
plementi, 18, pages 27-40.
18. I. ROSO DE LUNA and F. HERNÁNDEZ-PACHECO: Mapa geológico de España. Explicación de la Hoja n.º 777. Mérida (Badajoz). Madrid,
1950, p. 69.
19. J. ÁLVAREZ SÁENZ DE BURUAGA: Op. cit., pages 71 et sec.
20. The name Cornalbo or Cornalvo dates back a long way and the idea was to use it in relation to the Latin name Cornus Albus
for of the shape of its basin and the whiteness of some parts of its shores.
21. J. ÁLVAREZ SÁENZ DE BURUAGA: «El nuevo hallazgo de la perdida lápida emeritense de Proserpina», A EspA, vol. 30, 1957, pages
245-251. This discovery is unusual that is undoubtedly associated with the presence of some place of worship to the infernal
goddess that was considered to be an entrance to the kingdom of darkness.
22. FRONTIN: De aquae ductu urbis Romae (Ed. P. Grimal, Guillaume Budé, Paris, 1961), XV, 1; X, 5,6.
23. I. ROSO DE LUNA and F. HERNÁNDEZ-PACHECO: Op. cit., p. 31.
24. R. CELESTINO GÓMEZ: «Los sistemas romanos de abastecimiento de agua a Mérida. Estudio comparativo para una posible
cronología», Revista de Obras Públicas, December 1980, pages 964 et sec.; J. A. FERNÁNDEZ ORDÓÑEZ et. al.: Catálogo de noventa
presas y azudes españolas anteriores a 1900. Madrid, 1984, p. 32.
25. A good source for this is provided by a drawing by Fernando Rodríguez, towards the end of the 18th Century. S. ARBAIZA BLANCO-
SOLER and C. HERAS CASAS: Op.cit., no. 42 and 43, A-5959, pages 339-340.
26. M. ARENILLAS et. al.: «Apuntes documentales para la historia de la presa de Cornalvo», V Congreso de Historia de la Construcción.
Madrid, 2007, pages 57-73.
27. R. CELESTINO GÓMEZ: «Los sistemas...», p. 966.
28. With regard to the technical details concerning the Cornalvo Reservoir, we would recommend the excellent studies carried
out by the Confederación Hidrográfica del Guadiana. F. ARANDA GUTIÉRREZ and J. L. SÁNCHEZ CARCABOSO: «Las grandes descono-
cidas de las presas romanas principales: La Alcantarilla y Cornalbo», I Congreso Nacional de Historia de las presas. Mérida, 8-
11 November 2000. Actas, I (F. BUENO, ed.). Badajoz, 2002, pages 273-278; J. MARTÍN MORALES et. al.: «La presa de Cornalbo
en Mérida». I Congreso Nacional de Historia de las presas, I, pages 279- 287.
AQUAE AUGUSTANAE 27
29. Such «modernity» has led more than one to suspect that much of the structure was modified in the 18th Century. We do not
think that it is very right given that the dam structure itself remains the same, yet certain aspects of the dam as a whole were
modified, in view of the fact that the well-known politician from the second half of the «Age of Enlightenment» Conde de
Campomanes installed, by Royal Decree, a variety of devices of an industrial nature on the estate bearing his name.
30. J. M. ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ: El Puente romano de Mérida. Monografías Emeritenses, 1. Badajoz, 1983. Sobre los paramentos del
Puente, pages 60-61.
31. T. NOGALES BASARRATE: Espectáculos en Augusta Emerita. Espacios, imágenes y protagonistas del ocio y espectáculo en la sociedad
romana emeritense. Monografías Emeritenses, 5. Badajoz, 2000. Concerning the phases of the Amphitheatre, pages 34 et
sec.
32. Concerning this subject: J. M. ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ: «Calzadas romanas de Hispania e ideología imperial», Vía Claudia Augusta.
Un’arteria alle origini dell’Europa: ipotesi, problemi, prospettive. Attii del Convengo Internazionale. Feltre, 24-25 September
1999 (V. GALLIAZZO, ed.). Treviso, 2002, pages 375 et sec.
33. J. HIERNARD and J. M. ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ: «Aqua Augusta. Una inscripción con letras de bronce de Mérida», Sautuola III, 1982,
pages 221 et sec.
34. A. JIMÉNEZ MARTÍN: «Los acueductos...», p. 114.
35. R. CELESTINO GÓMEZ: «Los sistemas…», pages 960-961.
36. Concerning this subject: J. M. ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ: «Los primeros años de la colonia Augusta Emerita. Las obras de infraestruc-
tura», in E. LA ROCCA, P. LEÓN and C. PARISI PRESICCE: Le due patrie acquisite. Studi di Archeologia dedicati a Walter Trillmich.
Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma. Supplementi, 18. Rome, 2008, pages 36-38.
37. A. JIMÉNEZ MARTÍN: «Los acueductos...», pages 115-116.
38. Regarding the work carried out in the 1990s on the Proserpina Dam we would suggest those conducted by the Confederación
Hidrográfica del Guadiana and by the team led by Professor Miguel Arenillas, which are of greater interest because of their
technical contribution and given that they provide new data that make it possible to gain further insight into the reservoir
structure: M. ARENILLAS et. al.: «La presa romana de Proserpina (Mérida)». Confederación Hidrográfica del Guadiana. May
1992; J. MARTÍN MORALES: «Hormigonar Proserpina», I Congreso Nacional de Historia de las Presas, II, pages 75 et sec.; J. SERENO
MARTÍNEZ: «Aproximación a los usos históricos de los reservoirs. La Charca de la Albuhera de Carixa (Proserpina) en los siglos
XVII, XVIII Y XIX», I Congreso Nacional de Historia de las presas, II, pages 235 et sec.
39. Cfr. M. ARENILLAS et. al.: op. cit., p. 14.
40. B. MORENO DE VARGAS: Historia de la ciudad de Mérida. Madrid, 1633 (second re-edition. Mérida, 1974), pages 87-88.
41. J. ÁLVAREZ SÁENZ DE BURUAGA: Materiales para la Historia de Mérida (de 1637 a 1936). Los Santos de Maimona, 1994, passim.
42. J. M. ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ: El Puente, pages 53-55.
43. S. FEIJOO MARTÍNEZ: Op. cit., pages 195 et sec.
44. C. FERNÁNDEZ CASADO: Los acueductos romanos. Madrid, 1972, un-numbered pages.
45. A. JIMÉNEZ MARTÍN: Op. cit., pages 120 et sec.
46. J. M. ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ: «Trajano y las obras públicas en Hispania», J. GONZÁLEZ (ed.): Trajano, Óptimo Príncipe. De Itálica a la
corte de los Césares. Sevilla, 2004, pages 49 et sec.
47. C. FERNÁNDEZ CASADO: Acueductos romanos de España.
48. A. JIMÉNEZ: «Los acueductos…», p. 114.
49. C. FERNÁNDEZ CASADO: Ibidem.
50. I. A. RICHMOND: «The first years of Augusta Emerita», Archaeological Journal, LXXXVII, 1930, pages 99 et sec.
51. P. M. PLANO Y GARCÍA: Ampliaciones, pages 22 et sec.
52. Especially the studies conducted by the Confederación Hidrográfica del Guadiana engineers.
53. J. ÁLVAREZ SÁENZ DE BURUAGA: Op. cit., p. 658, further note.
54. J. HERNÁNDEZ RAMÍREZ: «El conducto de Rabo de Buey-San Lázaro (Mérida)». Mérida. Ciudad y Patrimonio, 2, 1998, pages 39-
65.
55. J. BIREBENT: Aquae romanae. Algiers, 1964.
56. M. PASQUINUCCI: «Studio sull’ urbanistica di Ascoli Piceno romana», Asculum, I. Pisa, 1975, p. 59, fig. 84.
57. M. ALMAGRO: «El acueducto romano de Segobriga (Saelices, Cuenca)», R.A.B.M., LXXIX, 4, 1976, pages 875 et sec.
58. C. FERNÁNDEZ CASADO: Acueductos romanos de España.
59. A. JIMÉNEZ: «Los acueductos de Emerita», p. 119.
60. J. M. ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ: «En torno al acueducto de Los Milagros», op. cit., pages 49-60.
61. Excavations, later than the ones carried out in the early 1960s, provided more data for establishing the structure of the com-
plex: T. BARRIENTOS VERA: «Intervención arqueológica en el solar de la calle Adriano, 62. El Cerro del Calvario», Mérida. Ar-
chaeological Excavations. Report, 2, 1996, Mérida, 1998, pages 27-54.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. ALMAGRO: «El acueducto romano de Segobriga (Saelices, Cuenca)», R.A.B.M., LXXIX, 4, 1976.
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hasta Mérida mediante la aplicación compartida de la topografía y la geofísica», Jornadas sobre Teledetección y
Geofísica aplicada a la Arqueología. Madrid, 1992, pages 189-196.
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Back to Contents
2
A few traces from the Construction
of Segovia’s Aqueduct
ALONSO ZAMORA CANELLADA

Former Director of the Museo Provincial de Segovia
First of all it must be pointed out that it will be necessary for you to appreciate the aque-
duct as one single entity, regardless of the era or the character of its constituent compo-
nents. If at the outset it just consisted of a set of works, subject to repairs and
modifications later, it has nowadays become a multi-faceted monument which is not al-
ways possible to completely comprehend in its successive occurrences, not even to put
date to these occurrences. In turn, each piece of it has to be valued as an intrinsic part
of a whole, as being essential for it to operate and, thus, essential for its preservation
throughout History.
Traces from construction, repair or use can be found in all zones. When there was
no masonry, for example, the building was raised with irregular rubble-stone, using a
technique often repeated down through History, of which manufacturing process little
remains, apart from being rather unrepresentative. In this case we will refer in particular
to the marks left from hewing and raising the granite of the building ashlars and arcua-
tionis (arches), because granite is a material that gets these signs easier to identify. We
can group these markings into a number of types: extraction and finishing, raising and
laying.
THE CHANNELS
The first thing that had to be done when it came to planning the construction layout,
once the decision had been taken to erect it, was the use of chorobates, water levels that
enabled the user to visually establish the horizontals and the slopes that the future chan-
nel had to adhere to, in such a way that gravity allowed the water to flow from the col-
31
lection point to the places where it was to be utilised. This required suitable gradients to
be established, as well as small pits every so often for cleansing and energy-loss purposes,
at short distance in this case. These sort of continual shaft were known as spiramens or
lumens, and they were essential to the aqueduct maintenance, because they made it pos-
sible to prevent unwanted pressures, enabled cleaning and repair tasks to be performed
and caused a better oxygenation and purification of the water. The channel could be con-
structed underground, on the surface or raised above surface. It usually consisted on an
assembly in which the three types were combined, depending on the levelling require-
ments and the time or money available. They were also built in tunnels or siphons, or
cut into granite blocks, for example. The corrugus were normally open-air channels con-
veying water for industrial use. The specus, for human consumption instead, were roofed
channels covered with slabs. This was what the Segovian monument was like in the La
Granja road area, before the cobijas (covers) used to protect them were removed. It seems
reasonable to assume that that this was the system utilised from the draw-off point to
that area.
Roman concrete is generally very cohesive. The type of concrete that was perhaps
most extensively, but not exclusively, used in hydraulic works was known as opus sig-
ninum, a mixture of limestone, stone – crushed to a greater or lesser extent – and brick,
also crushed, all of which was well mixed and introduced into and pressed in coffer
work, which served to mould it. This same mixture was also used to make the channels,
when they were not made of wood or lead (sometimes with the hallmarks of the work-
shops concerned), or ceramic piping. In other cases, such as when siphons were
arranged, they were formed with stone drums that had holes drilled in their centre, the
joints being tongued and grooved and waterproofed with oil and mastic, a paste that
cures and ends up strongly adhering the contact points. As was the case with other hy-
draulic works, the edges between the ground and the sides were reinforced, also with
signinum, in order to improve the hardening of that zone and prevent the corners from
being directly eroded by the impurities entrained in the water, basically by the very re-
markable scouring effect of the sand, while at the same time facilitating the cleaning
process.
THE DESANDERS
Concern over the purity of the water led the classic world to construct desanders, de-
canters or «water towers». A turrisaquae or piscina limaria is a hut that houses a central
pool, the channel water flowing in and out this pool. The alignments of the two stages
do not coincide, in such a way that the water has to swirl in the pool, losing velocity and
entrainment force. As a result, the impurities settle on the bottom, from where they are
drained away through a trap. Along the same lines, the foam, i.e. the floating matter, can
be removed via a different pipe, also used when it is necessary to cut off passage through
the main outlet, in order to carry out cleaning activities or to do repairs.
The Segovian duct has two desanders, both of which have been repaired or recon-
structed on several occasions; they can be seen close to La Granja road.
EXTRACTION TRACES
With the granite still in the quarry, the sections of the blocks to be extracted were marked
with small lines by means of hewing. Several wedges were stuck into these marks, in
such a way that the desired block was gradually split off. The result is the presence of
marks, equivalent to half the widest surfaces of the wedges, because the other half was
left on the un-extracted part of the granite. They are usually arranged similar distances
apart, their depths also being similar and they often disappear when subsequent work
has been carried out on the edges. Iron wedges replaced the older wooden ones that
swelled up when wet or covered with ice. It is a system that nowadays has been replaced
almost entirely by mechanical machinery. Some of these marks can be detected on the
upper banks of the channels, in the first overhead zone, before the large desander. The
masonry bases in this zone contain a channel made of granite blocks, whose shoulders
were covered with small slabs on either side. These traces can be seen most clearly on
the edges of the referred slabs, especially on the inner ones. They were placed there in
the 1974 restoration, and I have not seen this type of remains anywhere else, as they
would have normally been removed by the finishing treatment given to stone ashlars
and/or by erosion down through centuries.
Whatever the case may be, the above surface construction began with the search for
suitable foundations. Trenches were performed to locate the hardest and least weathered
rock, on top of which the first ashlars for each pillar were placed. Once these had been
correctly positioned and the top level of these «foundation pits» had been reached, these
were filled with nearby rubble; any remnants of other materials used as filler, such as
bits of ceramic, will help to date the time of the filling process and, therefore, the date
on which work in this zone of the monument was completed [FIG. 1].
FIG. 1 First overhead section of the aqueduct. Traces of the metal wedges inserted to force the extraction or controlled
fragmentation of the granite. They are arranged with an even gap and their sections and depths on the cleavage plane are also
similar. Photograph: A. ZAMORA.
A FEW TRACES FROM THE CONSTRUCTION OF SEGOVIA’S AQUEDUCT 33

FIG. 2 Slings, tongs and holivela wedges,
systems used to lift the ashlars. Tongs, i.e. the
intermediate option, were the ones most used
for the Segovia Aqueduct. Source: J.P. ADAM:
La Construction …. p. 52.
There are some doubts about where the granite came from, because the exact locations
of the quarries from which it was extracted have not been fully identified. It is also possible
that the typical boulders were used, several of which still lie in the surrounding area. More
than one point were probably used, laying not very far from the monument, perhaps cov-
ered over by subsequent works. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that several types
of stone were used, as can easily be seen when observing the monument. The hewing was
done with the usual tools, virtually the same ones that are still used today: the scalprum
(flat chisel), the scoplum (cutting chisel), the malleus (mallet) and several types of aschiae
(axes), mainly the dolabra (pickaxe), the bipennis (double-headed axe) and the upupa (the
present hachette, with two cutting edges arranged in opposite directions).
If we are talking about construction with ashlars in general, the result of the way of
doing it is referred to as opus quadratum. In the Segovian case it is fairly used, the size
of the stones being quite similar. All of the stonework was laid in such a way that the
ashlars on top cover the joins of the ashlars below (hiden joint), to protect them and to
improve stability, without the use of mortar (dry, or face to face joint).
HOISTING TRACES
It is assumed that the tympanon was used, this comprising two parallel wheels joined by
cross beams forming a cylinder, inside which one or more people move, using their weight
to make it turn and cause the rope on the axle to wind up, operating like a winch. The
wheel is laid on a base, the same as the arms, in the form of a fork, into which a pulley
or block and tackle is placed. The whole assembly is called a machina, and is in fact a
crane that can be orientated by ropes fixed to its sides, moved by an ergata, or by vertical
winches equipped with blades over which the required pressure is exerted. This system
is suitable for heavy weights that, in the case of the Segovia Aqueduct, would not have
been essential, being probably replaced by horizontal and vertical winches, moved by
hand, easier to construct, carry and handle; this type of winch have always existed, of
several different sizes, joined to pulleys (orbiculus) or to block and tackle (trochlea) and
derricks, also of various sizes, adapted to the weight or the height in each particular case.
In general, such materials and devices have continued being in use practically up until
the present time, with very little changes to their shape, until the motor came along to
replace traditional human «blood» [natural] traction.
At the end of the maromas [ropes] and their driving pulley, the way they worked, sys-
tems of three different types were used for holding the pieces in suspension: slings, ho-
livelas and tongs [FIG. 2].
Slings
Ashlars could have simply been tied, but leaving them in their final position must have
been more difficult, because they would have had to be chocked before the ropes were
removed from the stones. The slings, a simple tie on a rope, could have been tied to op-
posite sides, without occupying the bottom surface. But in this case, for the ropes to
catch it would be necessary to use nipples, or projections carved on these faces, to ensure
that ropes would not slip. Once the block was put in place and the slings had been re-
moved, the projections were no longer needed and could be chipped off, although this
was not always done, because they were also regarded as a form of embellishment. When
nipples are removed, all traces of the hoisting process disappear. This could have been
the system used for the Segovia Aqueduct, although the fact that these protrusions were
eventually removed renders it impossible to be sure they were used.
Holivela Wedges
This is a set of two or more pieces – one of which serving as a keystone –, joined by a
common shaft; they are inserted into a socket, grooved for the purpose on the upper sur-
face of the piece to be raised. Once it is in place, the shaft is removed, the keystone is
released and the set of tools is withdrawn. The hewing required are, in this particular
case, sockets whose longitudinal section is vertical in the form of a trapezoid, with the
short side on the ashlar surface. One of its sides can also be arranged obliquely and the
other one vertical, by way of summary: a hole whose base is bigger than its mouth. The
holivela wedge is put inside, its trapezoidal form adapting to the two sides, at the widest
part of the cut, while the mouth dimensions preventing the instrument from getting out
as long as the keystone is not removed [FIG. 3].
FIG. 3 An assembled holivela wedge. The specimen shown features three

key pieces, of quadrangular section and uniform thickness, in the centre. Its
number makes it possible to connect the instrument to cuts of several differ-
ent sizes. The bolt provides safety and closure to the assembly, besides serving
as support for the handle. The bolt also has a small stud nail at the far end to
prevent it from slipping out without being removed beforehand (exhibit from
the Ròmul Gavarro Collection).
Source: I. GONZÁLEZ TASCÓN AND I. VELÁZQUEZ: Ingeniería romana..., p. 247.

The system was used particularly for pieces whose surfaces should not show signs of
any handling, such as pillars or column heads, although it was also used on ashlars or
other blocks. The hewing traces could still be seen on the upper surfaces until they were
concealed by the new ashlars. So, where the aqueduct is concerned, no traces are left
from this system being used, if indeed it was applied, although its utilisation cannot be
completely ruled out. Whatever the case may be, a certain degree of skill was needed to
carry out the hewing required, given that the weight of the piece to be lifted was going to
be concentrated on just a few centimetres, and the holivela had to be carefully adjusted.
Claws or Tongs
Ashlars were raised into place by means of what were known as ferrei forfices, a tool that
is still used today. These are in fact large tongs or grippers, made of cast iron, in the form
of a compass, suspended in such a way that the weight being hoisted was used to prevent
them from opening out and ensuring that their ends strongly gripped the load. Small in-
dentations, normally conical, had to be hewed to receive the tips of each pincer, and pre-
vent them from slipping. It was customary to cut the indentations on the top third and
in the central zone of the load, on opposing surfaces, with a view to preventing any un-
wanted swaying, except in the case of the keystones, which did have to swing to the in-
clination that they had to exhibit over the arch frame, which was achieved by offsetting
the indentations for the tong tips [FIG. 4].
This was the system that was mainly used to construct the aqueduct. The indentations
can still be observed in nearly all ashlars, which makes one wonder why they do not ap-
pear on all of them. First of all, the height where they lie must be taken into account.
When they are located «high up», it could be the case that erosion processes might have
erased many of these marks, in spite of their depth, especially in the case of pieces cut
from less resistant granite. The thickness of the bossage on which the socket was cut
out, could have been lowered after the piece was laid in place, causing the marks to dis-
appear. For ashlars located in zones that are not very high, the blocks might have been
slid into position with levers, ropes or ramps. However,
it should not be forgotten that the current ground
level, especially in the Plaza de Azoguejo, is a fill that
is several metres above the original river valley floor,
so the height to be considered is invariably subjective.
New blocks are gradually being added by means of
these systems, in such a way that the pillars gain height
bit by bit until the cornices are put in place, over which
the wooden centring is laid to support the arch key-
stones, the channel acting as an upper closure for the
assembly serving also to add to the general stability.
FIG. 4 Raising of an ashlar by means of tongs. The weight of the

piece tends to close the tong pincers, making the hoisting feasible.
As from A. RAMIREZ GALLARDO: Supervivencia …., p. 29.
TRACES FROM BLOCK ADJUSTMENT
Once the stone blocks had been raised and placed next to their ultimate position, the
final adjustment was made using levers (vectis), which were no more than iron bars
equipped with a claw at one end, just like they are today. The pressure is exerted on small
and recently-made cuts on the edges of what were referred to as the «waiting surfaces»
of the blocks, now finally seated. They are small, around 5 cm. long, their number de-
pending on the length of the ashlar to be seated, and in nearly all cases they can be seen
on the top edges of every piece. This procedure was extensively used throughout the
aqueduct construction process. It also reveals a preliminary cut, with the necessary prior
planning, before the task was carried out. This could have taken place before or after
hoisting, although we are inclined to think that it often occurred afterwards. More than
one of these marks can be seen when the top block is long – or when it is seated showing
its longest side – the marks being arranged in such a way that they are at a distance from
the vertical joints, on their sides and symmetrically and evenly distributed, i.e., tailor-
made, depending on the length of the ashlars being adjusted [FIG. 5].
FIG. 5 One of the pillars, in Plaza del

Azoguejo. The cuts for the adjustment levers
(indicated by the arrows) can be seen in the
upper edges of the ashlars. The circle shows
one of them with the erosion cortex, which
was not removed. It is a very rare case, if not
the only one in the whole construction.
Such a low cornice, near to the pavement,
must mean that there are at least 3 m of pil-
lar lying below street level. The sockets for
the tongs, when they are not visible at this
height, must be located on other surfaces of
the blocks. Photograph: A. ZAMORA.

FIG. 6 Fluting on the ashlar surface. Example obtained
from the two sides of the exposed surface of the piece.
Photograph: A. ZAMORA.
It is also convenient to refer here to some cases where the cuts are made on the lower
edges of some ashlars. It does not seem easy to explain it, other than by regarding it as a
possible hewing error. The position of the ashlar might have been reversed, perhaps due
to the incorrect positioning of the hoisting socket on the lower third instead of on the top
third of the surface. Whatever the case may be these indentations for the tips of the levers
would have been rejected cuts. However, sometimes they were used to help to adjust the
new blocks. It is a complicated subject that has to be expanded upon, as it might make it
possible to indicate the particular worker or workshop who performed that action and why,
but there is no time here, because we do not think it is merely a question of using up all
the blocks in spite of their defects. Nevertheless, there are very few examples of such cases.
DRESSING TRACES: CUTTING THE SURFACES
The outer surfaces of ashlars could be defined as of «bossed masonry» type, where the
faces that are going to be exposed are only rough hewn, remaining raised above the plane
determined by the edges of the block. However, a small zone, in the form of a strip and
running parallel to these edges, is smoothed. It is a system that speeds up the cutting
process in each case, making it easier while protecting the stones from scratching or break-
ing during transportation. The finishing touches made to the corners, or the strip cut par-
allel to the edge, might have been done when the pieces were at the works site, before
being hoisted and without the final position of the block having been decided upon. Yet in
many cases the strip was only applied to one of the sides, the outer one, the one that forms
the edge of the construction, which would appear to indicate that either the piece was
dressed once raised and laid in place, or there was free-flowing communication between
the workers at the foot of the site and those working on the scaffolding, enabling the pieces
to be ordered «made-to-measure». Whatever the case may be, the result of these «strips»
seen altogether, must have been to highlight all the external edges of pillars and arches
with their colour, lighter due to the polishing process, than the rest of the surface, only
rough hewn. Somewhat different from the current appearance of the construction [FIG. 6].
One of the systems used in the ancient world to speed up the cutting process for the
concealed faces was known as anathyrosis, smoothing of an outer band, for all the edges,
which has to coincide with the position of other similar ones on the next ashlar. The in-
side of each face was worked in such a way that it became indented, not supported on
the face it backed onto, like a sort of «negative» bossage, which rendered it unnecessary
to carry out the laborious process of planning the entire face. Of course, once the piece
was positioned, none of this system could have been detected without dismantling the
construction, as it was hidden by the ashlars placed on either side or at the rear. So, we
cannot say that this was the method used for the Segovian Aqueduct, although everything

would appear to indicate that it was not, that the concealed faces of the ashlars were
rough hewn and polished until they rested completely on each other. The reason for our
quick reference to this cutting procedure is because of its common use and because it is
not possible to state as certain that it was never applied on this construction, as we al-
ready said. Additional to the foregoing we could point out that in some zones (the lower
parts of the piles on Azoguejo’s northern tip) a number of isolated points remain pre-
served, featuring that the original surface of one ashlar matches the surface of the ashlar
below. This has been interpreted as a result of certain capacity for granite to weld. We
understand however that it is simply a case of a larger hardness of the stone in those
points, very useful since they reveal the good initial adjustment of surfaces and their dif-
ferent response to erosion.
Other traces of cuts on the exposed surfaces can often be seen, either done at site on
the ground or when the already adjusted piece was positioned in place. They are traces of
«pickaxe», normally in the form of stretch marks running almost parallel from top to bot-
tom, sometimes in groups running in several directions, over the same faces. They form
slightly curved arcs, which must have depended on the position and length of the arm
that was holding the pickaxe. It does seem possible that the blocks were lying on trestles,
or on other ashlars, i.e. at a certain height, because the arcs that are traced are fairly ver-
tical. Furthermore, if they were etched with the pieces in their final positions this would
involve less handling, which was undoubtedly sought so that time and labour could be
saved, as well as making uniform thicknesses in the bossage easier to obtain, because cut-
ting was possible at sight of the other faces – already adjusted – of nearby pieces [FIG. 7].
DEDICATORY INSCRIPTION
As is the case with other monuments from the Roman world, Segovia’s Aqueduct also
had a dedicatory inscription, located in the centre of Plaza del Azoguejo, at a widening
lying between the two arch arrangements. Bordered by cornices, this zone was clearly
intended to be a special one, an outstanding epigraphic area where the construction’s
commemorative plaque would have been placed. A few small holes can be observed on
the ashlars inside this space, some of which contain traces of the lead that was used to
support the pins for fixing the lettering. If we assume that the angle at which these pins
sloped had to be the same as the angle for the tracing of each letter and the angle for the
holes cut into the granite, we must accept the ability to read the old dedicatory inscrip-
tion, the last letters of which were still quoted in the 15th Century. It must have featured
the name and title of the Emperor, plus the names of the local magistrates who authorised
the works and most likely paid for them, following the evergetical customs of Romans.
FIG. 7 View of the remains of the strip cut into the

outer edges of the ashlars for pillars and arches. The fact
that they are hardly detectable today is indicative of the ex-
tent to which the monument has been exposed to erosion.
Thus, should it be possible to reconstruct the contents of the lost plaque, we would be
able to put a date to the aqueduct [FIG. 8].
The text, probably formed with gold plated letters, must have been the same on either
side of the monument, perhaps with a certain degree of variation in the word layout;
maybe with the words arranged in three lines; although there is no general consensus
concerning this point, it would seem most likely. Eventually, the same letters would always
have the same pins, the holes in the granite always faced the same way and were always
in the same positions. However, the search was not that simple, given that there have
FIG. 8 Marks showing the location of the construction’s
dedicatory inscription, which would have been made of gold-
plated lettering. The cornices are clearly visible, surrounding
and highlighting not only the epigraphic field but also the in-
dentations that received the pins for the letters. Several of them
still contain remnants of the original lead from Roman Times.

been at least five attempts since 1820 (Gómez de Somorrostro) and none of the results
are the same. This is justified because the pins may not be the same ones for the same
letters, and the holes may coincide with the joints for the stone blocks, for example, with
a change of slant or having been eroded away or removed by the effort to pull out the
supports. The height of the letters might also have been modified, depending on the re-
quirements of each ashlar or of each zone, although this does not seem very likely. How-
ever, we are given to understand that the fact that the results of the various attempts to
read do not coincide, reveals that the use of the naked eye cannot be the method that
enables one to obtain sufficiently reliable data. The text proposed after the most recent
reading of the pin arrangements for the western side, after a detailed examination of the
traces conducted by Dr. Geza Alföldly, points to the last of these new hypotheses. It is as
follows:
1st Line:
IMP(eratoris)·NERVAE·TRAIANI·CAES(aris)·AVG(usti)·GERM(anici)·P(ontificis)·
M(aximi)·TR(ibunicia)·P(otestate)·II·CO(n)S(ulis)·II·PATRIS·PATRIAE·IVSSV
2nd Line:
P(ublius)·MVMMIVS·MVMMIANVS·ET·P(ublius)·FABIVS·TAVRVS·IIVIRI·
MVNIC(ipii)·FL(avii)·SEGOVIENSIVM
3rd Line:
AQVAM·RESTITVERVNT
That is to say:
«On the orders of the Emperor Nerva Trajano César Augusto Germánico Pontífice
Máximo in his second Tribunician Power, Second Consul, Father of the Country, /
Publio Mummio Mummiano and Publio Fabio Tauro, Duoviros from the Flavian
Municipality of Segovia /
Repaired the aqueduct».
Should this happen to be the correct reading, it could be the case that:
a) Domiciano (81 to 96 A.D.) started the works. During his years of rule a lot of con-
struction activity took place. But he was the subject of damnatio memoriae [his
name was deliberately erased from memory], and thus his name should not appear
on the dedicatory plaque. However, there is no evidence either to suggest that the
pin holes were erased or altered to adapt to any different text.
b) Nerva was not in power for long enough (96 to 98 A.D.), and his building activities
were minimal. He must surely be ruled out.
c) Trajan (98 to 117 A.D.) reconstructed, or completed, or refurbished the monument.
According to the aforementioned reconstruction of the text, the plate is telling us that
Trajan was responsible for the monument (as restorer), which is consistent with the coin
found in one of the foundation pits for one of the monument pillars, during one of the
most recent methodical works that were carried out there under the responsibility of the
archaeologist Germán Prieto. It is a sestertius minted between 112 and 117 A.D. That is
to say, that the pit in question was covered over at an unspecified time, from 112 A.D.
onwards. As a result, it would now be possible to think that the monument was probably
constructed (or completed) during the first twenty or so years of the 2nd Century A.D.
Therefore, Segovia would have been a municipium (town or city) during the period of
the Flavios, which is perfectly feasible, although this has not yet been corroborated by
other texts.
All that remains to be said is that in recent research work we tried to find on the gran-
ite, traces of embossment lettering that could be consistent with the ancient presence of
letters. By means of detailed photogrammetric, in spite of the centuries of erosion to
which it had been exposed. However, the results, if it is indeed possible to obtain any,
are not yet available.
OTHER TRACES
Other traces can also be discerned: quarrying marks, in the zones affected by the first
great restoration, between the second desander and the beginning of the slope, on the
way to Azoguejo. Pointed arches, general reuse of the stone and mixing it with recently
extracted pieces, as well as traces from the alterations, collection points and ducting lead-
ing to the city. These seem to be the main aspects of the work, carried out on orders from
the Catholic Monarchs, towards the end of the 15th Century. There are also marks from
later periods, in the same places and several other zones. Although these marks refer to
restoration work and have nothing to do with the original erection of the monument,
they must be mentioned, because they indicate, endorsed by other data, the reconstruc-
tion of a large part of the layout, and they make it clear that what really matters is the
aqueduct as a whole, not the period to which each part belongs or the extent of each re-
furbishment. And this is the case even from a legal viewpoint (Declared a National Mon-
ument by Royal Decree, dated 11th October 1884).
There are also many other traces, due, not to the extraction system, but to the im-
proper and particularly harsh use of the ducting. The uncontrolled drawing-off of water,
losses in the successive channels, which led to spectacular icicles in winter, the use of
all kinds of nails and stakes, constructions built upon the ashlars, or cables, were com-
monplace for a long time, bringing about a large number of breakage, cuts and scratches.
Bird droppings, grease and the soot from nearby chimney stacks, the traffic, or the many
20th Century restoration activities, all of them less excusable than the earlier ones, have
all left their mark. All of these come together to remind us that the aqueduct has only
managed to survive today thanks to its continual use, including refurbishments, alter-
ations and restoration work.
Once the duct has passed Azoguejo and reached the city walls it goes underground.
This is the place where cisterns and a castellum aquae (water tower) should have been,
i.e.: a distribution system, from which new ducts branched out to the houses, fountains

or baths. However, although there is clear evidence, sufficient research work has not
been done either in this zone or throughout the channel leading from the mountains to
the city. It has been possible to study, section by section, the main duct that conveyed
the water as far as the Alcázar, when it has been necessary to raise the paving to carry
out works on the urban services. However, as is the case with the layout from the source,
it has not been possible to find any evidence to suggest that this channel is Roman. Nev-
ertheless, it is clear that it formed part of the age-old urban section of the city within the
walls, because this was a public ducting network in everyday use.
Let’s finish this short essay with a call for serious, methodical and ongoing research
into the monument, a task that has never been undertaken, the results of which we can
merely speculate about. The undeniable status of the monument clearly makes such a
task worthwhile, and the fact that this has still not been done makes such studies all the
more necessary.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. P. ADAM: La construction romaine. Materiaux et techniques. Paris, 1984.

R. ALBA et. al. (eds.): Elementos de ingeniería romana. European Roman Public Works Conference (3-6 November
2004, Tarragona). Tarragona, 2004.
G. ALFÖLDY: Die inschrift des aquäduktes von Segovia. Ein vorbericht, zeitschrift für papyrologie und epigraphik, no.
94, 1992, pages 231-254.
— Die bauinschriften des aquäduktes von segovia und des amphitheaters von Tarraco, Madrider Forschungen, no. 19, 1997.
— La inscripción del Acueducto de Segovia. Madrid, Ed. Spanish by JORGE MEIER and THOMAS G. SCHATTNER, 2010.
M. ALMAGRO BASCH and L. CABALLERO ZOREDA: «Las excavaciones realizadas a lo largo del acueducto romano de
Segovia», in Various Authors: Segovia y la arqueología romana. Barcelona, 1977, pages 33-42.
A. BLANCO FREIJEIRO: «Epigrafía en torno al Acueducto de Segovia», in Various Authors: Segovia y la arqueología
romana. Barcelona, 1977, pages 131-146.
M. A. CHAVES MARTÍN: Arquitectura y urbanismo en la ciudad de Segovia (1750-1950). Segovia, 1998.
— «El acueducto en la ciudad. La configuración urbana de Segovia en torno al canal “Madre del agua”», in Various
Authors: Monumentos restaurados. El acueducto de Segovia. Madrid, 2002, pages 37-76.
A. CHOISY: El arte de construir en Roma. Madrid, 1999.
D. DE COLMENARES: Historia de la insigne ciudad de Segovia y compendio de las Historias de Castilla, 3 vols. Segovia, 1994.
C. FERNÁNDEZ CASADO: Acueductos romanos en España. Madrid, 1972.
M. DE FRUTOS BORREGUERO: Época y conservación del acueducto de Segovia. Madrid, 1992.
A. GÓMEZ DE SOMORROSTRO: El acueducto y otras antigüedades de Segovia. Facsimile Edition by Miguel de Burgos
(1820). Segovia, 1983.
T. GONZÁLEZ ROLÁN and L. A. DE CUENCA: Frontinus. De aquaeductu urbis Romae, Col. Hispánica by Greek and
Latin Authors. Madrid, 1985.
I. GONZÁLEZ TASCÓN and I. VELÁZQUEZ: Ingeniería romana en Hispania. Historia y técnicas constructivas. Madrid, 2005.
T. A. HODGE (ed.): Future currents in aqueduct studies. Leeds, 1991.
R. INNOVES and R. MARTIN: Dictionnaire méthodique de l’architecture Grecque et Romaine, 2 vols. Roma, 1985.
X. LAFON and G. SAURON: Thèorie et practique de l’architecture romaine. Études offertes à Pierre Goss. Aix en
Provence, 2005.
R. MARTA: Architettura romana. Tecniche costruttive e forme architettoniche del mondo romano. Roma, 1990.
L. J. MUNICIO GONZÁLEZ: «La arqueología y el acueducto», in Various Authors: Monumentos Restaurados. El acue-
ducto de Segovia. Madrid, 2002, pages 201-207.
G. PRIETO VÁZQUEZ: «Excavaciones arqueológicas en el acueducto de Segovia. 1998», in Various Authors: Segovia
Romana. Segovia Exhibition Catalogue, October 2000. Segovia, 2000, pages 89-136.
M. QUINTANILLA: Memoria descriptiva del puente acueducto de la ciudad de Segovia, por el Arquitecto Don Juan José
de Alzaga, 1835. Estudios Segovianos, Volume V, 15, Segovia, 1953, pages 311-346.
A. RAMÍREZ GALLARDO: Supervivencia de una obra hidráulica. El acueducto de Segovia. Segovia, 1975.
J. RIVERA BLANCO: «El Acueducto de Segovia: Restauraciones históricas», in Various Authors: Monumentos restau-
rados. El acueducto de Segovia. Madrid, 2002, pages 149-199.
J. A. RUIZ HERNANDO: Historia del urbanismo en la ciudad de Segovia del siglo XII al XIX, 2 Vols. Segovia, 1982.
— La ciudad de Segovia. Segovia, 1986.
J. SANTOS YANGUAS et. al.: Epigrafía romana de Segovia y su provincia. Segovia, 2005.
VARIOUS AUTHORS: Bimilenario del acueducto. Commemorative Exhibition. Catalogue. Madrid, August-September, 1974.
VARIOUS AUTHORS: Segovia y la Arqueología Romana. International Roman Architecture Symposium. Bimilenario
del Acueducto. Barcelona, Publicaciones Eventuales 27. Universidad de Barcelona, 1977.
VARIOUS AUTHORS: Segovia 1088-1988. Actas del Congreso de Historia de la Ciudad. Segovia, 1991.
VARIOUS AUTHORS: Segovia Romana. Segovia Exhibition Catalogue. Segovia, 2000.
VARIOUS AUTHORS: Monumentos Restaurados. El Acueducto de Segovia. Madrid, 2002.
VARIOUS AUTHORS: Aqua romana. Técnica Humana y Fuerza Divina. Barcelona, 2004.
A. ZAMORA CANELLADA: El Acueducto de Segovia. Col. Segovia al Paso 1. Segovia, 1995.
— «Huellas de Factura en el Acueducto de Segovia», in J. L. GARCÍA HOURCADE et al. (eds.): Estudios de historia de
las técnicas, la arqueología industrial y las Ciencias. Actas del VI Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Historia de
las Ciencias y de las Técnicas (La Granja de San Ildefonso, September, 1996). Salamanca, 1998, pages 149-158.
— «Roma, desde el Museo de Segovia», in Various Authors: Segovia Romana. Segovia Exhibition Catalogue, October
2000. Segovia, 2000, pages 45-70.
Back to Contents

3
Hydraulic Engineering and Religion
in the Roman Empire: Trajan
and the Construction of Canals
SANTIAGO MONTERO HERRERO

Professor of Ancient History. Universidad Complutense de Madrid
The construction of channels to divert water courses or lower their discharges, i.e. taking
the water away for secular uses, has been considered since the times of Ancient Greece
as a serious act of ungodliness1. Two Persian monarchs, Cyrus and Xerxes, committed this
act of impiety against rivers denounced later by the Greeks and Romans. Cyrus, on his
march to Babylon, reached the River Gyndes, a tributary of the Tigris, which also marked
the frontier between the Iranian Plateau and the Mesopotamian flood plains. When he
attempted to cross it one of his sacred white horses was dragged away by the river currents
and drowned in it. The monarch «was extremely annoyed with the river for having com-
mitted such an act and threatened to make it so insignificant in the future that even
women would be able to cross it easily without getting their knees wet». Carrying out his
threat, he decided to punish the river by excavating 180 channels on each side:
«…After the threat, abandoning the expedition against Babylon, he split his army in two
and, once it was divided, he marked out in a straight line and running in all directions, 180
channels on each bank of the Gyndes, throughout the length of the river. Once he had
plotted the work to be done, he ordered the army to dig the channels. As a large number
of people were excavating, the works were completed soon, but they spent the whole sum-
mer working in this place. When Cyrus had punished the River Gyndes, dividing it into
360 channels and the following spring came around, he decided to continue with his march
on Babylon» (Herodotus I, 189; Translation: A. González).
In spite of this, Cyrus was always presented as the «perfect sovereign»2; proof of which
lies in the fact that he managed to take the City of Babylon, subduing the river that sur-
rounded it by subjecting it to another civil engineering operation. However, in this case,
49
what is of interest to us is that Herodotus viewed the channelling of the River Gyndes in
a negative light, as an act of hybris [exaggerated self-pride] committed against nature and
the sacred waters of the river.
Xerxes constructed a canal for navigation in the isthmus on the Mount Athos Penin-
sula when he invaded Greece around 480 BC3. His reason for doing this was to make it
easier to move his huge fleet and shorten the duration of the expedition. It must not be
forgotten that a few years earlier, his father, Darius I, lost a large number of vessels and
men after being surprised by a storm when attempting to go round that peninsula. Ac-
cording to Herodotus, the canal constructed by Xerxes was wide enough to enable two
ships to pass simultaneously, but perhaps the most interesting point was his reasons for
doing it:
«As far as I am concerned on making my own conjectures, Xerxes ordered this canal to be
constructed through pride, in order to demonstrate his power and leave a legacy worth re-
membering: because, although it was possible without any great effort to drag the vessels
across the isthmus, yet he ordered a canal to be excavated in the sea that was wide enough
to allow two triremes to sail through abreast. And he also ordered the same people who he
had ordered to construct the canal, to join one bank with the other, to span the River Stri-
mon with a bridge» (Herodotus VII 24; Translation: A. González).
It is clear that the Greek Gods were against this kind of works and they made this known
to men through the oracles. When the inhabitants of Cnidus were attacked by Harpagus
and they tried to cut off the isthmus to turn the city into an island (since apart from a
strip it was surrounded by sea), in the face of the difficulties posed by the works and the
numerous accidents that befell the workers, they decided to consult the Oracle of Apollo,
convinced that the God in question was against those works. The oracle was as follows:
«Do not fortify or excavate the Isthmus / because if Zeus had wanted to do so, he would
have made it an island»4.
The precedents of Cyrus and Xerxes were borne well in mind by the Roman powers.
Over the last centuries of the Republic, and after inheriting hydraulic techniques from
the Etruscans, Rome was able to systematically modify rivers throughout their different
stretches sectioning the gradients of the sections through which they flowed, creating
cuts or opening up new channels running parallel so that the original riverbed was aban-
doned. However, and even though we have not always heard about it, many of these
works were opposed by both the Roman and Italic inhabitants as well as those who lived
in the provinces, on the grounds of religious beliefs. Local superstitions and beliefs were
undoubtedly obstructions to the construction of hydraulic works and the Roman author-
ities often found themselves having to stop constructing channels especially in deified
water courses, in order to avoid confrontations with the local inhabitants who, supported
by local priests, remained faithful to the cult of water deities. This also happened in Italy:
remember how the population living on the banks of the Tiber and the senators them-
selves opposed the modifications to be made to the river course in Tiberius’ times, when
plans were made to divert tributaries (like the Clanis) or filling in some lakes. It was nec-
essary – or so it was said – to respect the powers that the river people attributed to their
rivers and thus prevent the wrath of divus amnis Tiber once he was deprived of his trib-
utaries5. In Rome and the Italian Peninsula, the emperor often had to confront the su-
perstitious reactions of the inhabitants, frequently supported by the decemviri and the
political opposition.
However, some Roman emperors, defying the technical risks and, above all, the con-
sequences where religion was concerned, dared to carry out works to divert rivers, join
one to another or by-pass the most hazardous stretches. Trajan was one such emperor.
The Italian scholar G. Traina maintains that in his epoch technical progress in the field
of public works gradually «dispelled» the objections raised by the ancients with respect
to major projects. And he points out that this is how the attitude towards these works,
like the opening of the Isthmus of Corinth for example, is understood by authors such
as Suetonio: «In particolare i piani di Traiano, che disponeva di ottimi architetti, potevano
aver influenziato l’ atteggiamento di Suetonio verso i progetti di taglio del Istmo»6. Accord-
ing to G. Traina, Chapter 44 of Caesar’s Vita by Suetonio, which lists the public works
projects ordered by the Roman dictator, is a political testament «che trova riscontro nelle
imprese dell’optimus princeps»7. Ventures such as the Parthian and Dacian Wars, the
draining of the Fucine Lake or the Pontine Dams which were attributed to Caesar, all
fall within the spirit of the actions taken by Trajan. However, the undeniable progress
made by Roman techniques and engineering at the beginning of the 2nd Century AD did
not mean to say that there was not a certain amount of opposition of a religious nature
from some of the inhabitants.
THE FOSSAE (CANALS) OF NICOMEDIA
In January 97 AD, Pliny wrote a letter to the Emperor from Bithynia. There was a large
lake 30 km to the east of the City of Nicomedia, which is now known as Sabandja Göl
(called Sunonensis by Ammianus Marcellinus XXVI 8, 3), which linked up with the Black
Sea and Central Anatolia via the Rivers Melas and Sangarius. The Governor suggested
to Trajan that two canals (fossae) be constructed, one to connect the lake to Nicomedia
and the other to shorten the route between the two rivers. It would thus not only be pos-
sible to irrigate the country, but also the canal would connect Nicomedia, in the Gulf of
Ismid, with Central Anatolia and the Black Sea:
«When I consider the grandeur of your destiny and your character, it seems to me that it
would be most advisable to make this clear with works worthy of both your immortality
and your glory and that such works should be both useful and beautiful. There is a very
large lake near Nicomedia, across which blocks of marble, the fruits of the earth, wood for
homes and timber for construction are all transported by ship as far as a road at a moderate
cost and effort. However, from that point they are taken by cart to the sea with great diffi-
culty and at a higher cost... [Probable gap in the text]... this work requiring an important
work force. But this will not be lacking in the future, because apart from there being many
men working in the fields, there are many more in the city, and there is a certain hope that
all of them might understand with great pleasure a task that has to be to the benefit of
HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AND RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 51

them. All that you have to do is send, if you think fit, a surveyor or an architect to study in
detail whether this lake is higher than the sea. I have found in these territories one canal
excavated by one of their kings, but it is not certain whether it was dug to collect water to
irrigate the nearby fields or to connect the lake to the river, because the works were never
finished. It is also uncertain whether the work was interrupted by the death of the king or
because the works were not expected to be successful. That is why (allow me to be ambi-
tious for your glory) I am all the more in favour of works being completed by you that other
kings were only able to begin» (ep. X, 41)8.
The emperor replied to the letter with another shorter one, in which he was wary of the
technical difficulties involved in the project but without showing opposition to it:
«This lake that you speak of could encourage us to link it to the sea, but first it is necessary
to study in detail how much water flows into it and from where, so that if it is connected
to the sea, it does not empty completely. Can you ask Calpurnio Macro for a surveyor, and
I will send you from here an expert in this type work» (ep. X, 42)9.
Finally, we have a second letter from Pliny to the emperor, in reply to that one, in which
once again he insists on his project:
«You Sir, with your extraordinary prudence fear that, once the lake is linked to the river
and in this way to the sea, the lake will be emptied, but I believe, from field research, that
I have found a way around this danger. Indeed, the lake can be joined by a canal to the
river without its waters pouring into it. We will manage to ensure that it is not deprived of
its waters when they flow into the river the result being however as if the waters did in fact
mix. It would be very easy to transport the load carried by the canal as far as the river via
this very small piece of land that will go between them both. This will be done if need be,
although I hope it will not be necessary. The lake is quite deep, and a water current now
flows in the opposite direction, which, once closed on that side and diverted in the direction
that we want it to go, will let flow as much water as it currently contains without causing
any damage to the lake. Furthermore, some streams run across the land where the canal
is to be excavated, and if they are carefully collected they will increase the discharge that
is provided by the lake. Notwithstanding, if there is a preference for making a longer canal
and, once excavated more deeply, making it be at the same level as the sea and not letting
its waters flow into the river, but into the sea itself, the tide from the sea will hold back the
flow coming from the lake. If the lay of the land does not permit any of these solutions, we
would still have the option of holding the course of the waters using locks. But the soil ex-
pert that you must send, Sir, as you have promised, will examine these and other possibil-
ities much more thoroughly. Because the task is worthy of your grandeur and
preoccupation. Meanwhile, I have written to Calpurnio Macro, a clear-headed man, as you
advised, so that he can send me the most suitable surveyor possible» (ep. X, 61)10.
The canal was probably beyond the technical possibilities of the Romans, because it re-
quired, as we are told, the use of catarractae, i.e., locks or sluice gates, made of stone to
FIG. 1 Nicomedia-Black Sea Canal Project.
regulate the water volumes. Pliny and the emperor himself in his reply to the first letter
(ep. X, 42) show their concern for the difference in level between the lake and the sea.
However, in my opinion, Trajan’s reply reveals the knowledge or, at least, the information
that the emperor had available even then in matters concerning canals, which he could
have gleaned from the engineers during his stay in Germany on the Rhine front, where
he could have received information, for example, about the canal constructed by Druso
(Fossae Drusianae) in 12 BC that linked the Rhine and the Issel, or the project submitted
to Nero to connect the Rivers Saône and Moselle (Tac., Ann. 13, 53).
It was essential for «libratores» [surveyors] to be involved in the construction of these
canals and to regulate river navigation, and their technical knowledge was also indispensable
for the construction of aqueducts, canals and other structures to ensure that the water
flowed from one place to another11. The problem of all the lake waters flowing into the sea
was solved by Pliny with the consideration that the lake was deep enough not to empty with
the lowering of the shoreline that was inherent to excavating the canal, and with the obser-
vation that the water discharge that would take place through the canal would be neutralised
by an emissary outlet. Therefore, the water outflow would remain constant and so would
the level of the lake. Pliny considered the idea of the local inhabitants participating in the
works (manus), which as we shall see later, was not uncommon [FIG. 1].
Only technicians and experts in hydraulic works were mentioned in the correspon-
dence between the emperor and his governor, yet the project undoubtedly had certain
religious connotations. It happened that the God-River Sangarius, referred to by Homer
in his Iliad (3.187; 16.719), was the son of Oceanus and Tethys, husband of Metope and
father of Hecuba (Hes., Theog. 344; Apollod. III 12, 5). According to a legend, to which
reference is made in a scholium, he was originally a man who having offended Rhea was
punished by becoming a water current (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. II, 722). Furthermore,
the River Sangarius had a special significance for Rome. In 189 BC, when the consul
Manlio Vulsone used a bridge to cross the river and reached the other side, the Gallic
priests of the goddess Sybil came to his meeting from Pessinus announcing in a frenzied
chant that the goddess had paved the way to war for the Romans and that she granted
them victory and control over that region (Liv. 38, 18, 9).

THE IRON GATES CANAL ON THE DANUBE
In the spring of 98 AD, Trajan paid an inspection visit to the Danube Frontier that three
years later, as from 101 AD, would be the scenario for the first Dacian War. Resorting to
Moesia’s troops he also constructed a canal – in Winter 98 and throughout 99 AD – in
order to by-pass the so-called Iron Gates of the Danube, that we learnt about thanks to
a marble plaque (AE 1973, 475), dating back to 101 AD, which bears the inscription:
Imp(erator) Caesar divi Nervae f(ilius)

Nerva Traianus Aug(ustus) Germ(anicus),
Pont(ifex) max(imus) trib(unicia) pot(estate) V p(ater) p(atriae) co(n)s(ul) IIII
ob periculum cataractarum
derivato flumine tutam Da-
nuvi navigationem fecit.
(«The Emperor Caesar Nervae Traianus Augustus Germanicus, son of the Divine Nerva,
maximum pontiff, invested with the tribune’s authority for the fifth time, father of the na-
tion, consul for the fourth time, having diverted the water course of the river to avoid the
danger caused by waterfalls, made navigation on the Danube safe».Translation: J. González
and J. C. Saquete) [FIG. 2].
After the official title, the inscription proclaims that Trajan, by diverting the river because
of the falls or rapids, made it safe to navigate on the Danube. The verb derivato refers to
the construction of a new canal in the vicinity of Viminacium, to by-pass the rapids in
the scary Iron Gate. It led off from the mouth of a tributary, the Kasajna, and crossed
the beds of the Rivers Trstenica and Kosivica; the three currents were regulated by lock
gates to prevent the build-up of alluvial deposits. Rivers, in this case the Danube, were
an excellent driving force for the economic life of the provinces, and made civil and mil-
itary communications on the frontier easier. However, it was necessary for the emperor
to take the required measures to ensure that the river was permanently navigable. Thanks
to the archaeological work carried out, we know that Trajan’s Canal was over 3 km long
FIG. 2 Commemorative In-

scription for the Trajan Canal on
the Danube.
and 57 m wide. The marble plaque bearing the inscription was placed on the arch over
the road that ran from the Diana Castrum to the canal (101 AD). In the 6th Century, Pro-
copius (de aedificiis IV, 6, 8 et seq.) also makes reference to the diversion of the river, as-
sociating it with navigation and not, as has sometimes been speculated, with the
construction of the famous bridge. He also added that he did not wish to spend more
time discussing these hydraulic works because Apollodorus had already written exten-
sively about it, although it would appear to have been lost in the passage of time. However
brief, his testimony confirms the contents of the inscription. It is possible that, as Sasel
suggests, Trajan might have constructed two more canals in the zone, one close to Karatas
and the other in the vicinity of the town of Sip12. He was able to use the Messian Army
to help with this task, under the direction of C. Manlius Felix, the emperor’s praefectus
fabrum (officer in charge) in 100 and 101 AD [praef(ectus) fabr(um) imp(eratoris) Caesaris
Nervae Trai(ani) Germ(anici) Dacici II: CIL III 726=ILS 1419].
To make troop transport easier, Trajan ordered the road already initiated by his prede-
cessors to be extended along the right bank of the Danube. The works done on this road are
commemorated by an inscription dating back to between 100 al 103 AD. The monument
takes the form of a large inscription carved into the rock itself, 3.20 m long and 1.80 m
high, adorned with two winged dolphins, 6-petalled roses and an open-winged eagle. It is
protected by a pediment bearing the modern inscription in embossed form and is known as
«Tabula Traiana» «Trajan’s Plaque»: Imperator Caesar divi Nervae filius / Nerva Traianus Au-
gustus Germanicus / pontifex maximus tribunicia potestate IIII / pater patriae consul III / mon-
tibus excisis anconibus sublatis viam refecit (CIL III 1699). The decoration features the image
of an eagle, figures of genies and one more, which probably depicts the God Danubius.
The truth is that this road required highly singular engineering works to be performed,
as can be deduced from the expression anconibus sublatis, perhaps the use of wooden beams
over water or over land (ancones, elements in the form of bracket arms to support a struc-
ture). But what matters to us is the proud tone in which he proclaims that he has cut into
the mountains to carry it out (via per montes excisa), another triumph over nature similar to
the one to be performed with the construction of the famous bridge spanning the Danube.
The improvement made to navigating conditions in the Danube coincided with the
creation of the Danube route along the Iron Gates stretch, which was carried out in sev-
eral stages. It ran along the right bank of the Danube and its purpose was twofold: on
the one hand, to enable the military forces in the region to communicate with each other,
and, on the other hand, to link the Danubian camps, guaranteeing a regular supply for
the troops13. It also served to enable vessels to be towed upstream when there were nav-
igation problems, to which the traces of cuts in the rock to secure the mooring ropes
bear witness.
A set of inscriptions enables us to know the different stages in the route construction
process and the various tasks performed. Trajan, following the work first ordered by
Tiberius and then by Claudius, decided to prepare for the Dacian Wars by subjecting the
Danubian Path and the fortresses in the region to a major reconstruction process, refer-
ences to which can be seen on several inscriptions to be found close to the river banks
so they could be read from the ships that sailed its waters. One of the plaques, which is
situated close to the Tabula Traiana, is dedicated by the lapidarii to Hercules: Herculi

FIG. 3 Recreation of the re-
pairs to the original rope tow-
path in the Danube Gorge,
carried out in Trajan’s times,
according to Connolly, 1989.
sacrum / lapidarii qui exieru[nt] at (?) ancones facien / dos legionis IIII Fl(aviae) / et legionis
VII Claudiae /v(otum) so[lverunt]14. In spite of the challenge that these works amounted
to against the river deities and the gods who protected the inalterability of nature and its
water courses, the religious element is ever-present not only in the famous Tabula but
also in this particular inscription [FIG. 3].
Really, that is the way things had to be, because ever since the Empire established it-
self, the Danube was not only a frontier river, but also an ancient river deity that Trajan
even tried to present to Roman public opinion as a Pro-Roman god. That is what can be
deduced from the sestertii minted from 103 AD onwards, on which the bust of the em-
peror appears on the obverse, and on the reverse there is a woman, the personification
of Dacia, sitting on the ground, held by force by a male figure, the god Danubius, naked
from the waist upwards holding a reed in his left hand. The figure depicted on the coin
wears a pileus (brimless hat) so characteristic of the Dacian nobility, and also wears a
cloak with slits in the sides and tight pants typical from Dacians15 [FIG. 4].
Only a few years later, Decebalus, the great Dacian king whom Trajan fought against,
also diverted the course of another river, the Sargetias (perhaps the River Bistra that runs
close to Hateg), in order to bury in its bed the treasure that according to Lydus’ estimates
(de magistratibus II, 228), quoting Crito, amounted to 5 million pounds’ weight in gold and
twice that in silver, as well as numerous dishware and goblets16. A Dacian nobleman, Bicilis,
betraying his boss, revealed the secret to Trajan, who no doubt re-diverted the course of
the river to lay his hands on the treasure. The episode is recalled by Cassius Dio:
«Decebalus’ treasure was also discovered, hidden under the River Sargetias which runs be-
yond his palace. With the aid of some captives, Decebalus had diverted the river course,
had dug a hole in the riverbed and had buried in it a large amount of gold and silver and
other objects of great value that could withstand moisture; he had then piled stones over
this treasure and had covered the spot with earth, before diverting the river back to its orig-
inal course. He had also ordered the same captives to leave their tunics and other articles
of certain value in these caves, and after they had done this he dispersed them to prevent
them from discovering anything. However, Bicilis, a colleague of his who knew what had
happened, furnished information about these occurrences when he was captured» (68, 14,
1-5; Translation: Pilar González-Conde).
FIG. 4 Sestertius, depict-
ing the bust of Trajan on the
obverse and the god Danubio
subjecting Dacia on the re-
verse.
Scene CIII of the Trajan’s Column frieze depicts a mule train loaded with gold, exactly
the same as the one shown on the Arch of Trajan in Benevento next to the scenes of the
victory over the Dacians. This news would also be confirmed by a letter from Pliny the
Younger to his friend Caninius in which he expressed his delight at the publication in
the near future of his book on the war against the Dacians, undoubtedly aimed at exalting
the heroic deeds of the emperor Trajan. In a passage of that book, he says: «You will make
us see rivers flowing through countryside that were once arid and dry; bridges constructed
over currents where none had been seen before («dices immensa terris nova flumina,
novos pontes fluminibus iniectos» ep. VIII, 4). The reference to the bridges is clear (it ob-
viously refers to the bridge spanning the River Danube constructed by Trajan), whereas
the presence of rivers in the middle of the countryside may allude to the diversion of
River Sargetias to reveal the treasure hidden by Decebalus.
As far as the actions taken by the Dacian king are concerned, these are reminiscent
of the customs of other peoples, who took a similar course of action when they buried
their leader, this being the case with Alaric, the Visigoth, buried alongside his treasure
on the bed of the River Busento17:
«He [Alaric] is greatly missed by his people who loved him greatly. They diverted the course
of the River Busento, near the City of Cosenza (this river runs from the foot of the moun-
tain as far as the city with its healthy waters) and made a group of prisoners dig a tomb in
the middle of the riverbed. They buried Alaric in this hole, together with a lot of valuables,
then they re-diverted the river back to its course and killed all the people who dug the hole
so that nobody could ever find the spot» (Jordanes, Get. 158).
THE TRAJAN CANAL AND THE TIGRIS
During his third and final campaign against the Parthians, in 116 AD, Trajan, while ad-
vancing upon Ctesiphont via the River Tigris, wanted to create a canal between the Naar-
malca and the Tigris. Some sources indicate that on finding out that at this point the
Euphrates flows at a greater altitude than the Tigris, it was feared that the canal would
overflow from one and flood the other, so the task was abandoned. Trajan eventually de-

cided to drag his vessels overland using machines that were probably winches and rollers,
which was performed successfully. Trajan and Pliny faced the same problem of difference
in level years earlier, as we have seen, with the Nicomedia canal construction project.
However, other authors mention the excavation of the canal, and there is also a third
possibility, that the canal was already constructed and all that Trajan had to do was re-
cuperate its flow. Cassius Dio, Ammianus Marcellinus and Zosimus refer to the episode18:
1) «Trajan intended to connect the Euphrates to the Tigris by canal, so that the vessels
would sail down the latter and he would be able to construct a bridge. However, on finding
out that the altitude of the Euphrates was much higher than the Tigris, his aim was not car-
ried out, because it was feared that the Euphrates would also be rendered un-navigable if
all its currents were drawn downstream through the canal. Having thus borne the ships on
rollers overland from one river to the other, this tract being very narrow at this point (all the
waters of the Euphrates flow into marshland and then join the waters of the Tigris), he
crossed the Tigris, reached Ctesiphont and, taking it, was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers
and ratified the sobriquet of Parthian» (Cassius Dio 68, 28, 1 - 2; translation: J. Gil).
2) «From that point they reached a channelled river called the Naarmalcha, which means
“King’s River”, which was dry at the time. First it was Trajan and then Severus who strove
to excavate an artificial water course in the earth that had built up, so that they could trans-
fer water from the Euphrates to this place, thus enabling the vessels to reach the Tigris»
(Amm. Marc. 24, 6, 1; translation: M. L. Harto Trujillo).
3) «They left that place to reach a very large channel that, according to the locals had been
constructed by Trajan during his expedition against the Persians. The River Narmalaques
discharges into it before flowing into the Tigris. The Emperor [Julian] considered cleaning
it and inspecting it, thereby providing the ships with a route to the Tigris and giving the rest
of the army bridges to cross, if this were possible» (Zos. III 24, 2; translation: J. M. Candau).
It was undoubtedly F. Pashoud who, in two works, paid most attention to the canal19. In
view of his conclusions and knowing what his sources were, we can state above all, that
it was Zosimus who was right: Trajan’s Canal linked the Naarmalcha to the Tigris; Am-
mianus mistook, as all publishers accept, the Naarmalcha with Trajan’s Canal, also for-
getting that he had already mentioned the Naarmalcha in 24, 2, 6. In fact, Trajan wanted
his ships to go from the Naarmalcha to the Tigris via a canal, but, realising that the Eu-
phrates was at a higher altitude than the Tigris, he gave up his project fearing that it
would cause the water level in the Euphrates / Naalmarcha to fall to such a low level
that navigation would be impossible. Therefore, he had to tow the ships along the narrow
stretch that separates the two water courses. Dio’s text confirms the distance as being
30 stadia (5.5 km) that Ammianus indicated, i.e., the distance that separates the Naar-
malcha from the Tigris.
F. Pashoud later wonders if this canal existed before Trajan reached Mesopotamia.
He considers Dio’s text to be ambiguous over this point: he thinks that constructing a
navigable canal 5 km long was not a minor task and certainly more difficult than trans-
porting the ships overland. He thinks that the canal was not opened by Trajan, believing
that it was already there: given that the emperor feared lowering the water level in the
Naalmarcha, this was obstructed and dry as Julian found it centuries later. Nevertheless,
two points weaken his theory: the name of the canal (Trajan’s Canal) and Libanius’ tes-
timony (Or. XVIII, 244-247), which suggests that this canal was the work of palaios
basileus, a term that seems to be used to refer to the Roman emperor. Pashoud is of the
opinion that, as the canal gave direct access to Seleucia and to its wharfs, its construction
has to be put down to the period when the city was founded by Seleucus Nicator. It must
be remembered that Ammianus expressly mentioned the excavation (solo fodiri in modum
canalis amplissimi studio curaverat summo).
Once again, religion appears to have played a very small role in Trajan’s decisions, al-
though the Euphrates and the Tigris, as river deities, do appear on sestertii minted in
116-117 AD after the Roman emperor’s victories in Mesopotamia20 [FIG. 5].
FIG. 5 Trajan’s Canal, accord-

ing to Pashoud, 1979.

THE TRAÏANOS POTAMÓS
While Trajan was finishing off the operations that enabled him to turn Dacia into a new
Roman province, his legate in Syria, Aulo Cornelio Palma Frontoniano proceeded to
annex Nabataean Arabia (which included the northern coasts of the Red Sea and the
Sinai Peninsula as far as Petra). In order to intensify the economic policy with the eastern
countries as from 112 AD, the emperor ordered the then abandoned but formerly navi-
gable canal between the Nile and the Red Sea to be completely re-excavated.
The canal started off from the Egyptian town of Babylon, close to Cairo, and flowed
out into the Port of Clysma, in the north of the Red Sea21. Trajan undoubtedly used the
old canal constructed in Pharaoh Necho’s times (XXVI dynasty) and later by the Persian
King Darius I and the Hellenic monarch Ptolemy II Philadelphus, but the works, still
visible in some places, must have been huge, because the Nile had to provide sufficient
water to make the canal navigable, and it cannot have been simply a question of reopen-
ing older works that had fallen into disuse. Whatever the case may be, it was the only
canal open between the Nile and the Red Sea during the Roman period.
It is referred to by several different names. An ostracon dating back to the year 112
mentions the Potamos Babylonos. Midway through the 2nd Century AD the geographer
Ptolemy (4, 5, 54) mentions the Traïanos Potamós also from Babylon as far as Clysma in
the Red Sea. The brief news that addresses this waterway does not enable us to conclude
that the canal was then either totally or partially navigable, but it is the first non-papy-
rological reference to the hydronym. One generation later, Lucian of Samosata, in a satir-
ical work written around 180 AD, Alexander or the False Prophet (Pseudomantis, 44),
mentions in passing, the voyage of a man sailing up the Nile (anapleusas) as far as Clysma,
the port on the Red Sea, where he embarked for India.
The only aim of that work must have been to facilitate the trade with Arabia and India.
The strategic importance of this waterway is beyond all doubt, because it permitted
Roman merchant shipping to travel from the Mediterranean to the routes of the luxurious
trading objects of Arabia Felix (Yemen), India and the Far East, and it was frequented
throughout the duration of the Empire. It cannot be ruled out either that the canal fa-
cilitated the export of heavy loads of grain, wine and textiles obtained in the southern
delta and the oasis of El Fayum. Trajan established a permanent military fleet in the Red
Sea, the Classis Arabica, to guarantee that the route was protected.
The opening of the canal would undoubtedly have aroused a certain amount of reli-
gious controversy. Necho continued with the works of previous pharaohs, connected Lake
Timsah with the Bitter Lakes by canal. Herodotus (II, 158) informs us that, during the
excavations for this project, 120,000 men lost their lives, and the pharaoh had to give up
the work halfway through because he was stopped by an oracle announcing that «he was
working to the advantage of the Barbarians». It is possible that in Trajan’s time the su-
perstitious considered that those works were to blame for two serious events: the insuf-
ficient rise of the Nile22 and the Judaic revolt of 11523. Sijpestejn stresses that Turbo,
sent by Trajan to Egypt in 117 AD, carried out the re-construction of the fortress of Baby-
lon and defended the channel from the attacks perpetrated by the Hebrews rising up
against Roman power24.
FIG. 6 The canal
in times of Darius I,
connecting the Bit-
ter Lakes to the
Gulf of Suez.
The Nile is the river deity that appears most often on the different coins minted during
the Trajan period, and in the greatest variety of forms [FIG. 6].
THE TRAJAN’S FOSSA
Trajan also constructed two major canals in Italy, in Rome. The works must have been
carried out between the construction of the Danube Canal and the Nile Canal to the
Red Sea. In the year 103, the Tiber caused a disastrous flood, described by Pliny, who
witnessed the catastrophe. Little importance has been attached to the fact that C. Plinius
Caecilius Secundus was curator albei Tiberis et riparum et cloacarum Urbis [i.e.: conser-
vator of the Tiber, its banks, sewers and city drains drains], incidentally, a post created
two years before by Trajan, almost certainly succeeding the famous Julius Ferox between
the years 103 and 11025, so his description has a special value. Pliny appears to attribute
the flooding of the Tíber entirely to natural causes; it must have been under his manage-
ment that looking after the city’s sewerage system was entrusted to the curatores [con-
servators] of the Tíber, with a view to «improving the fight against flooding»26.
The effects of those floods must have been disastrous, judging by the many epigraphic
testimonies that recall it. The river might have broken the pons Sublicius, the oldest
bridge in Rome, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus (III, 45) expressly states «was consid-
ered to be sacred». A coin (minted around 105-107 AD) that depicts the bridge may com-
memorate – as has been postulated – the destruction of the bridge and its subsequent
reconstruction carried out by Trajan27.
The event was particularly serious if we take into account the fact that, a year before,
Trajan had constructed a fossa (canal), which is the current Fiumicino Canal, mentioned
by Pliny, and an inscription from the period found in Ostia:

«The Tiber has burst its banks and at the points where they are lower has caused consid-
erable damage to the land. In spite of the drainage from the canal that the providential
emperor ordered to be excavated (fossa, quam providentissimus imperator fecit), it covers
the valleys, floods the fields and places where the terrain is flat and its waters can be seen
instead of the ground» (Plin., ep. VIII, 17).
[Imp(erator) Caes(ar) diui] / Ne[ruae fil(ius) Nerua] / Tra[ianus Aug(ustus) Germ(anicus)]

/ Dac[icus, trib(unicia) pot(estate) ——] / im[p(erator) —- co(n)s(ul) —- p(ater) p(atriae)],
/ fossam [fecit] / [q]ua inun[dationes Tiberis] / [a]dsidue u[rbem uexantes] / [rivo] peren[ni]
instituto arcerentur] (CIL XIV, 88=ILS 5797).
«The Emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan Augustus Germanic Dacicus, son of the divine Nerva,
invested by the power of the Tribune for the xxx time, proclaimed emperor by xxxx, consul
by ..., father of the nation, constructed this canal to prevent the Tiber from flooding the
city, which frequently happened, having established a permanent channel of water» (Trans-
lation: J. González and J.C. Saquete).
Indeed, in the year 100, Trajan ordered construction work to start, to the southeast of
the Port of Claudio, for a second port, hexagonal in shape (32 Ha and 5 m deep). The
works were completed along with several tanks, 2 km of quays, as well as river facilities
in Rome designed to unload and receive the imported goods. At the same time, the em-
peror gave instructions for an artificial canal to be built, the famous Fossa Traiana (now
known as the Fiumicino Canal), which connected the Tiber to the sea, passing close to
the port (the engineers constructed for it a narrow canal 20 m wide), so that the vessels
could reach the river port of Rome [FIG. 7].
The aim of Fossa Traiana, the bottom of which was paved to enable it to be cleaned
and the sediment removed, was, amongst other things, for the new mouth to enable the
floodwaters to drain away and keep Rome safe from flooding28. This is what was written
on the inscription on the line of a previous one from Claudius (CIL XIV, 85). However,
FIG. 7 Trajan’s Fossa.
the new works were unable to hold back the waters (Plin., ep. VIII, 17, 2: quamquam
fossa, quam providentissimus imperator fecit...), and the fatal consequences for the city
and its inhabitants were soon to be felt.
The overflowing of the Tiber banks as it flowed through Rome was traditionally re-
garded as a disaster that heralded not only the end of the pax deorum, but also a phe-
nomenon that questioned the legitimacy of Roman power. It is possible that Trajan,
following in the footsteps of Tiberius, might have opted for technical solutions, rejecting
all religious explanations for the phenomenon. The inscription that commemorates the
construction of the fossa revealed how the emperor and the administration dealt with a
phenomenon that was obviously natural to which hydraulic engineering provided the an-
swer, and not procuratio prodigiorum ,[Acts of God]. However, that declaration of prin-
ciples must have been seriously questioned by pontíffs, decemvirates and aruspices when
another flooding took place in 103. It appeared that Trajan had once again extracted the
waters belonging to another river deity, perhaps the most venerable one of all, the god
Tiberinus or Tiberinus Pater29.
CONCLUSIONS
What can account for Trajan’s interest in constructing canals and diverting rivers in dif-
ferent parts of the Empire?
First of all, it is advisable to bear in mind the models adopted by other emperors before
him, such as Augustus and, especially, the figure of his father30. Thanks to the finding of
a large number of inscriptions, we are well informed about the professional activities and
personality of M. Ulpius Traianus, father of the future emperor. A faithful servant to the
Flavius family, he was one of the first supporters of Vespasian. Under his orders he par-
ticipated in the year 69 in the Judean War as his legate before the X Legion. Consul suf-
fectus in the year 70, he went on to become legate in Syria before September 74, this
being where he developed a great interest in public works activity.
A Greek inscription dated 73-74 AD, discovered on the west bank of the River
Orontes31, commemorates the fact that in Vespasian’s times the works for a «Fuller’s
Canal» were carried out, as along with dikes to deviate the downstream course, all under
the authority of Marcus Ulpius Traianus, the emperor’s legate. The authority of the gov-
ernor sanctioned the approval of the Roman power, although in this case they were
works of a local nature that the imperial power was not responsible for organising and
carrying out, for, as it is stated in the epigraphic text, they were responsibility of the
«Metropolis of the Antiochians», so perhaps a corvada might have been necessary. Tra-
jan’s father only gave the order, and then he only acted as a supervisor, whereas the mu-
nicipal authorities controlled the works devised to irrigate the boroughs where the
Antiochians worked.
Notwithstanding the above, in the year 75, Trajan’s father undertook in his capacity
of a legatus [legate], the construction of another major canal on the River Orontes, to
the north of Antioch, in which he was directly involved, as the following Latin inscription
recalls32:

Imp(erator) / Vespasianus Caesar / Augustus pontif(ex) max(imus) / trib(unicia) pot(estate)
VI imp(erator) XII p(ater) p(atriae) co(n)s(ul) VI / desig(natus) VII censor / Imp(erator) Titus
Caesar Augusti f(ilius) / pontif(ex) max(imus) trib(unicia) pot(estate) IV / [co(n)s(ul) II]II
desig(natus) V censor / [[Domitianus]] Caesar / Augusti f(ilius) co(n)s(ul) III / M(arco) Ulpio
Traiano leg(ato) / Aug(usti) pro pr(aetore) Dipotamiae / fluminis ductum millia(!) / passus
tria cum pontibus / [pe]r milites legionum IIII / [III Gal]l(icae) IV Scyt(hicae) VI Ferr(atae)
XVI Flaviae / [ite]m cohortium XX / [item?] Antiochensium / [facien]da(?) curaverunt / m(ille)
p(assus) I.
The canal, three miles long, spanned by bridges, was marked with milestones, one of
which, discovered in 196533, refers to the works under the name «canal of the country
with two rivers», or «double river» if the bilingual expression Dipotamiae fluminis could
be translated in this way. The location of the inscription, 7 km from Antioch, suggests
that Dipotamia was the name of the plain that constitutes the confluence of the River
Orontes and, flowing from the north, Lake Antioch’s emissary. The ultimate aim of the
works was probably to make the course of the Orontes navigable as far as the lake. What-
ever the case may be, they were major works, because they required the participation of
detachments sent by the four legions and the twenty cohorts stationed in the province of
Syria. As these, unlike the «Fuller’s Canal», were public works probably associated with
the needs imposed by the war against the Parthians, the Roman army got involved in the
works. Summarizing, Trajan’s interest in channelling major rivers was, as in many other
aspects, just a continuation of the Flavius family’s policy where these matters were con-
cerned34.
Furthermore, it is clear that canal construction was extremely expensive, the cost
being much higher than constructing bridges and roads. However, the prestige involved
made it a highly profitable activity from a political perspective. It is well worth observing
here that by constructing canals, Trajan was associating himself with acclaimed mon-
archs: in Nicomedia with the Kings of Bithynia (Ego per eadem loca invenio fossam a rege
percussam,... Hoc quoque dubium, intercepto rege mortalitate an desperato operis effectu...
ut cupiam peragi a te quae tantum coeperant reges: ep. X, 41); in Mesopotamia, mistaken
with the Naarmalcha (quod amnis regum interpretatur) with the Seleucia kings; in Egypt,
with the pharaohs of the 26th Dynasty and Darius I, King of Persia. All in all, let’s re-
member what Pliny said about the construction of the Bithynia Canal: it was a work «non
minus aeternite tua quam gloria digna, quantumque pulchritudinis tantum utilitatis
habitura» («no less worthy of the immortality of your name than for your glory»: ep. X,
41). It was a triumph over nature – at times it was just an attempt – but it was also a tri-
umph over religious scruples.
NOTES
1. Concerning the sacred nature of the waters in the Roman world, see chapter I of MONTERO, 2012, with bibliography. Also: S.
SISANI: «La sacralità dell’acqua nel mondo romano-italico», Acque minerali nel Lazio, Roma, ed. Quasar, 2000, pages 11-22.
Especially concerning canals as a lack of respect for religion: DIOSONO, 2010.
2. See J. L. DESNIER: De Cyrus le Grand à Julien l’Apostat. Le Passage du Fleuve. Essai sur la légitimité du souverain, París, 1995,
pages 20 and 41, no. 18. D. BRIQUEL: «Le passage de l’Hellespont par Xerxes», BAGB, no. 1, 1983, pages 22-30, which examines
this episode in detail, and observed that the total number of channels, 360, was the same as the number of days in the Baby-
lonian and Persian year and that these «civil engineering» operations undoubtedly had a symbolic duration of one year, as
Herodotus’ text points out. See also SAGGIORO, 2010.
3. B. S. J. ISSERLIN et alii: «The Canal of Xerxes on the Mount Athos Peninsula», Annual of the British School at Athens, no. 89,
1994, pages 277-284.
4. See HEROD. I, 75; AP XIV 81; EUS., PE V 26, 2. see J. M. NIETO: Cristianismo y profecías de Apolo. Los oráculos paganos en la pa-
trística griega (siglos II-IV). Madrid, ed. Trotta, 2010, page 77.
5. S. MONTERO: «Ingeniería hidráulica y religión: un enfrentamiento en época de Tiberio», in T. NOGALES and P. FERNÁNDEZ URIEL:
Ciencia y Tecnología en el mundo antiguo. Monografías emeritenses, 10. Mérida, Museo Nacional de Arte Romano, 2007,
pages 229-240.
6. G. TRAINA: «L’impossibile taglio dell’Istmo (Ps. Lucian., Nero, 1-5)», RIFC, 115, 1, 1987, pages 40-49.
7. G. TRAINA: Op.cit., no. 6, page 47.
8. (1) Intuenti mihi et fortunae tuae et animi magnitudinem conuenientissimum uidetur demonstrari opera non minus aeternitate
tua quam gloria digna, quantumque pulchritudinis tantum utilitatis habitura. (2) Est in Nicomedensium finibus amplissimus
lacus. Per hunc marmora fructus ligna materiae et sumptu modico et labore usque ad uiam nauibus, inde magno labore maiore
impendio uehiculis ad mare deuehuntur ... hoc opus multas manus poscit. At eae porro non desunt. Nam et in agris magna copia
est hominum et maxima in civitate, certaque spes omnes libentissime aggressuros opus omnibus fructuosum. (3) Superest ut tu li-
bratorem vel architectum si tibi videbitur mittas, qui diligenter exploret, sitne lacus altior mari, quem artifices regionis huius
quadraginta cubitis altiorem esse contendunt. (4) Ego per eadem loca invenio fossam a rege percussam, sed incertum utrum ad
colligendum umorem circumiacentium agrorum an ad committendum flumini lacum; est enim imperfecta. Hoc quoque dubium,
intercepto rege mortalitate an desperato operis effectu. (5) Sed hoc ipso - feres enim me ambitiosum pro tua gloria - incitor et ac-
cendor, ut cupiam peragi a te quae tantum coeperant reges (ep. X, 41).
9. Potest nos sollicitare lacus iste, ut committere illum mari uelimus; sed plane explorandum est diligenter, ne si emissus in mare
fuerit totus effluat certe, quantum aquarum et unde accipiat. Poteris a Calpurnio Macro petere libratorem, et ego hinc aliquem
tibi peritum eius modi operum mittam (X, 42).
10. (1) Tu quidem, domine, providentissime vereris, ne commissus flumini atque ita mari lacus effluat; sed ego in re praesenti invenisse
videor, quem ad modum huic periculo occurrerem. (2) Potest enim lacus fossa usque ad flumen adduci nec tamen in flumen
emitti, sed relicto quasi margine contineri pariter et dirimi. Sic consequemur, ut neque aqua viduetur flumini mixtus et sit perinde
ac si misceatur. Erit enim facile per illam brevissimam terram, quae interiacebit, advecta fossa onera transponere in flumen. (3)
Quod ita fiet si necessitas coget, et - spero - non coget. Est enim et lacus ipse satis altus et nunc in contrariam partem flumen
emittit, quod interclusum inde et quo volumus aversum, sine ullo detrimento lacus tantum aquae quantum nunc portat effundet.
Praeterea per id spatium, per quod fossa fodienda est, incidunt rivi; qui si diligenter colligantur, augebunt illud quod lacus dederit.
(4) Enimvero, si placeat fossam longius ducere et altius pressam mari aequare ec in flumen, sed in ipsum mare emittere, repercussus
maris servabit et reprimet, quidquid e lacu veniet. Quorum si nihil nobis loci natura praestaret, expeditum tamen erat cataractis
aquae cursum temperare. (5) Verum et haec et alia multo sagacius conquiret explorabitque librator, quem plane, domine, debes
mittere, ut polliceris. Est enim res digna et magnitudine tua et cura. Ego interim Calpurnio Macro clarissimo viro auctore te
scripsi, ut libratorem quam maxime idoneum mitteret (X, 61).
11. MARTINEZ GÁZQUEZ, 1988.
12. SASEL, 1973, pages 80-85.
13. MIRKOVIC, 1996, page 27; JORDOVIC, 1996, page 257.
14. GABRICEVIC, 1972; PETROVIC, 1986, page 49; figs. 12-13, and MIRKOVIC, 1996, page 8.
15. MONTERO, 2012, page 110.
16. J. MAKKAY: «The Treasures of Decebalus», Oxford Journal of Archaeology, no. 14, 3, 1995, pages 333-345.
17. A. H. KRAPPE: «Les funerailles d’Alaric», AJPh, no. 7, 1939, pages 229-243.
18. (1) Τραϊανὸς δὲ ἐβουλεύσατο μὲν τὸν Εὐφράτην κατὰ διώρυχα ἐς τὸν Τίγριν ἐσαγαγεῖν, ἵνα τὰ πλοῖα δι᾽ αὐτῆς κατελθόντα τὴν γέφυραν αὐτῷ
ποιῆσαι παράσχῃ· μαθὼν δὲ ὅτι πολὺ ὑψηλότερος τοῦ Τίγριδός ἐστι, τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἔπραξε, φοβηθεὶς μὴ καὶ ἄπλουν τὸν Εὐφράτην ἀπεργάσηται
ἀθρόου τοῦ ῥεύματος ἐς τὸ κάταντες φερομένου, ὑπερενεγκὼν δὲ τὰ πλοῖα ὁλκοῖς διὰ τοῦ μέσου τῶν ποταμῶν ἐλαχίστου ὄντος (τὸ γὰρ ῥεῦμα
τὸ τοῦ Εὐφράτου πᾶν ἔς θ᾽ ἕλος ἐκπίπτει καὶ ἐκεῖθέν πως τῷ Τίγριδι συμμίγνυται) τὸν Τίγριν ἐπεραιώθη, καὶ ἐς τὴν Κτησιφῶντα ἐσῆλθε, πα-
ραλαβών τε αὐτὴν αὐτοκράτωρ ἐπωνομάσθη καὶ τὴν ἐπίκλησιν τοῦ Παρθικοῦ ἐβεβαιώσατο. (2) Ventum est hinc ad fossile flumen Naar-
malcha nomine, quod amnis regum interpretatur, tunc aridum. id antehac Traianus posteaque Severus egesto solo fodiri in modum
canalis amplissimi studio curaverat summo, ut aquis illuc ab Euphrate transfusis naves ad Tigridem conmigrarent. (3) Tutissi-
mumque ad omnia visum est eadem loca purgari, quae quondam similia Persae timentes mole saxorum obruere multorum. Hacque
valle purgata, avulsis cataractis undarum magnitudine classis secura stadiis triginta decursis in alveum eiecta est Tigridis.
19. PASHOUD, 1978 and F. PASHOUD: Zosime. Histoire Nouvelle tome II 1re partie (Livre III). Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1979, no. 68,
pages 167 et seq.
20. LIMC Euphrates IV.1, no. 21.
21. The most complete work is by SHEEHAN, 2010, see the description by STRAB, XVII 1, 25; DIOD, I 33, 11.

22. PEARL, 1956, page 58; D. BONNEAU: La crue du Nil, divinité égyptienne, à travers mille ans d’histoire (332 av.-641 ap. J.-C.),
Paris, Klincksieck, 1964.
23. M. PUCCI: La rivolta ebraica al tempo di Traiano. Pisa, Giardini ed., 1981, pages 61-69.
24. SIJPESTEIJN, 1965, page 82.
25. LE GALL, 2005, page 162.
26. J. LE GALL and M. LE GLAY: El Imperio Romano. El Alto Imperio desde la batalla de Actium hasta la muerte de Severo Alejandro (31
a. C.-235 d. C.). Madrid, Akal, 1995, pages 356-357.
27. MONTERO, 2012, page 110.
28. J. LE GALL and M. LE GLAY: El Imperio Romano. El Alto Imperio desde la batalla de Actium hasta la muerte de Severo Alejandro (31
a.C.-235 d.C.). Madrid, Akal, 1995, page 356.
29. LE GALL, 1952.
30. Cf. R. ÏANSLIK: s.v. M. Ulpius Trajanus (pater), RE, Suppl. X, 1965, coll. 1032-1033.
31. Concerning the inscriptions, D. FEISSEL: «Deux listes de quartiers d’Antioche astreints au creusement d’un canal (73-74 après
J. C.)», Syria, no. 62, 1988, pages 77-103.
32. SEG 35, 1483=AE 1983, 927.
33. DENIS VAN BERCHEM published it for the first time in «Une inscription flavienne du musée d’ Antioche», MH no. 40, 1983, pages
185-196. see AE, 1983, no. 927.
34. K.H. WATERS: «Traianus Domitiani Continuator», AJPh, 1969, pages 385-395.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. S. ALDRETE: Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
J. BENNET: Trajan, Optimus Princeps: A Life and Times. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1997.
D. BONNEAU: «La divinité du Nil sous le principat en Egypte», ANRW II, no. 18, 5, Berlin-New York, Walter de
Gruyter, 1995, pages 3195-3215.
D. BOSKOVIC: «Aperçu sommaire sur les recherches archéologiques du Limes romain et paléobyzantin des Portes
de Fer», MEFR(A), no. 90, 1, 1978, pages 425-463.
P. CONNOLLY: Las legiones romanas. Madrid, Anaya, 1989.
F. DIOSONO: «Pratiche cultuali in relazione a porti fluviali e canali», M. SERLORENZI and H. DI GIUSEPPE (eds.): I
riti del costruire nelle acque violate. Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Roma, Palazzo Massimo, 12-14 giugno
2008). Roma, Scienze e Lettere, 2010, pages 91-105.
D. FEISSEL: «Deux listes des quartiers d’Antioche astreints au creusement d’un canal (73-74 après J.-C.)», Syria,
no. 62, 1988, pages 77-103.
A. GÜRBÜZ and S. A. G. LEROY: «Science versus myth: was there a connection between the Marmara Sea and Lake
Sapanca?» Journal of Quaternary Science, vol. 25, pages 103-114. ISSN 0267-8179. 2010.
F. G. MOORA: «Three Canal Projects, Roman and Byzantine», AJArch, no. 54, 2, 1950, pages 97-111.
B. S. J. ISSERLIN: «The Canal of Xerxes on the Mount Athos Peninsula», Annual of the British School at Athens, no.
89, 1994, pages 277-284.
C. JORDOVIC: «The Roman Road in the Iron Gate Gorge», P. PETROVIC (ed.): Roman Limes on the Middle and Lower
Danube, Cahiers Portes de Fer. Monographies 2. Belgrade, 1996, pages 257-259.
S. KLEMENTA: Flussgotter. Gelagerte Flussgötter des Späthellenismus und der römischen Kaiserzeit, Köln-Weimar-
Wien, 1993.
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Empire», CTAPNHAP, no. 51, 2001, pages 45-68.
J. F. LE GALL: Recherches sur le culte du Tibre. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1952.
— Le Tibre, fleuve de Rome dans l’Antiquité. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1953 (= Il Tevere fiume di
Roma nell’Antichità. Roma, 2005 – italian translation –).
J. MARTÍNEZ GÁZQUEZ: «La escasez de artesanos y las cartas de Plinio a Trajano», Faventia, no. 10, 1988, pages 59-64.
M. MIRKOVIC: «The Iron Gates (Djerdap) and the Roman Policy on the Moesian Limes AD 33-117», in P. PETROVIC
(ed.), Roman Limes on the Middle and Lower Danube, Cahiers Portes de Fer. Monographies 2, Belgrade, 1996,
pages 27-40.
S. MONTERO: «Trajano y la adivinación. Prodigios, oráculos y apocalíptica en el Imperio Romano (98-117 d. C.)».
Anejos de Gerión IV, Madrid, Servicio de Publicaciones Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2000.
— El emperador y los ríos: Ingeniería, religión y política en el Imperio Romano. Madrid, UNED, 2012.
N. MORLEY: «Trajan’s Engines», G&R 47, 2, 2000, pages 197-210.
F. PASHOUD: «Le Naarmalcha: à propos du tracé d’un canal en Mésopotamie moyenne», Syria, no. 55, 1978, pages
345-359.
O. M. PEARL: «The Inundation of the Nile in the Second Century A.D.», TAPA, no. 87, 1956, pages 51-59.
S. PEREA YÉBENES: «Ejército y vida cotidiana en el Egipto romano en tiempos del emperador Trajano a través de un
florilegio de cartas conservadas en papiros griegos y latinos», Sautuola, no. 12, 2006, pages 225-255.
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J. SASEL: «Trajan’s Canal at the Iron Gate», JRS, no. 63, 1973, pages 80-85.
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MANN and M. WÄFLER (hrsg.): Das Marsfeld in Rom. Beiträge der Berner Tagung vom 23/24. November 2007,
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Back to Contents

4
Roman Roads:
the Backbone of the Empire
CARLOS CABALLERO CASADO

Archaeologist. Editor of El Nuevo Miliario
— WHAT A ROMAN WAY IS (AND WHAT IT ISN’T)

— SOURCES FOR STUDYING ROMAN WAYS
— METHODS OF STUDY
— GENERAL LINES FOR A REPORT ON THE RESEARCH INTO ROMAN WAYS IN HISPANIA
— PRESENT SITUATION
In answer to the popular belief that a Roman road is a cobbled road, and even that every
cobbled road is a Roman road, the current appearance of many ways assigned to Romans
significantly differs from the appearance corresponding to those ways that ran across the
Empire. The term Roman is often applied to roads whose appearance is a result of mod-
ern restorations, or even medieval or subsequent layouts. The first paragraphs of this
work will aim to provide certain guidelines in order to make it possible to identify, at least
along general lines, the ways that are genuinely Roman and, especially, to distinguish
them from those that quite clearly are not [FIG. 1].
FIG. 1 The Besaya Road, with its

characteristic cobbles, assumed to be
Roman for a long time.
69
FIG. 2 Elevation profile of the Gran San Bernardo Roman Road (Italy), according to G. GILLANI and G. VIAZZO.
The most recent research has led to the conclusion that studying a road cannot be
done in isolation from the land through which it runs, in such a way that focusing on a
stone cobbled section to determine whether or not it is of Roman origin is not sufficient:
instead, it will be necessary to broaden the perspective and find out about the route’s ge-
ographical context, the landscape and the historical needs that ultimately gave rise to its
construction.
For example, one first feature to be investigated in order to find out if a way is Roman
will be to ascertain whether or not in the vicinity – not necessarily right on the route, as
we shall see later – there are, more or less aligned with the way concerned, a number of
Roman settlements. However, this should not be the only criterion to be taken into ac-
count.
If such a way is really Roman, it will tend to avoid steep slopes and, instead, will go
around the topographical difficulties resorting to the use of constant gradients. Serious
doubts will thus have to be cast on the major slopes traditionally taken to be Roman, and
it will be necessary, before establishing the most favourable layout, prepare a preliminary
survey of the land’s topography [FIG. 2].
Following on from the above, a Roman way will, as a general rule, be one that features
long straight stretches, alignments that at times run for several kilometres, attempting
to find the shortest distance to connect two centres of population [FIG. 3].
Similarly, another feature that is common to all Roman ways, or at least an over-
whelming majority of them, is that they steer clear of valley floors and, particularly, zones
considered to be exposed to the risk of flooding. Nevertheless, being true that a Roman
FIG. 3 Example of a Roman Road with a long straight alignment in France, according to CASTELLVÍ (ed.).
ROMAN ROADS: THE BACKBONE OF THE EMPIRE 71

FIG. 4 The layout proposed for the Roman Road between Uxama and Augustobriga near Numancia, according to EDUARDO
SAAVEDRA. Note that the road systematically avoids the valley floors.
way has been recently recorded in

Hispania that crosses a floodable
zone, this discovery in itself is not
enough to suggest that this is the
norm and it should rather be taken
as just an isolated exception to the
rule [FIG. 4].
Furthermore, although it might
be thought that what follows is
merely stating the obvious, the fact
that a Roman way is a Roman way
will be established by the presence
of characteristically Roman infra-
structures along its length, i.e. sew-
ers, containment walls, trenches
with the typical roman hewing, tun-
nels and, above all, bridges. How-
ever, in the latter case it should be
borne in mind that in the light of
the most recent and thorough stud-
ies, the list of bridges regarded as
Roman on the Iberian Peninsula
only contains around four dozen
examples, according to Manuel
FIG. 5 The Donnaz Tunnel, in Pont-Saint-Martin (Aosta, Italy). Durán’s catalogue1 [FIG. 5].
FIG. 6 Non-Roman
Paving at the Puerto de la
Fuenfría with longitudinal
ribbing.
Finally, Roman roads can also be defined by applying a negative argument: stone roads
that are systematically accompanied by peak shaped beacons or wheel-guard milestones
might un-mistakenly be categorized as not being Romans, because the utilisation of these
signs only dates back to the 16th Century and their use only became widespread in the
18th Century. As a result, no road that has truncated cone-shaped road signs at its sides,
or the typical wheel-guard milestones rounded towards the interior, should be regarded
as Roman because of their current appearance. Along the same lines, the presence of
large ribbed compositions running parallel to the longitudinal centreline, will be revealing
their origins to be later than Roman age [FIG. 6].
The network of Roman roads became really extensive throughout the Empire, and
was continually undergoing repairs and modifications. This is a logical consequence of
the fact that Roman ways were constructed to fulfil at least four main functions: to link
the cities that formed part of the Empire; to provide an outlet for the raw materials ob-
tained from certain places, to make army moves easier and, to a lesser extent, or at least
not as a prime objective, to spread the Roman civilisation.
Under these premises, the road network was clearly made up of ways constructed fol-
lowing the same criteria that we would ask from engineers today, and this has enabled
us to detect the remains of these roads in many locations of the Empire. When studying
these roads, researchers currently have a large collection of ancient sources of different
character available, that enable them to carry out sound research into Roman roads, al-
though the basic ones, as is generally the case with Ancient History studies, are epigraphic
and literary in nature.
The best-known literary source is Antonino’s Itinerary, a work dating back to the 3rd
Century, which contains a series of routes that run through the different provinces of
the Empire. The part devoted to the Iberian Peninsula consists of a compilation of 34
routes. However, this does not mean to say that they were the 34 main routes that existed
in Hispania. This is because, in view of the peculiar characteristics of the document,
there has been much discussion about the function of this Roman literary source without
any agreement having been reached about the reason for its existence in the first place.
The most widely accepted hypothesis currently held is the one put forward by the Swiss

archaeologist Dennis van Berchem, originally postulated in 1937 and elaborated upon
in 1974. This hypothesis, disseminated in Spain on the basis of especially the work done
by Gonzalo Arias2, claims that Antonino’s Itinerary was, in fact, a series of «route maps»
(i.e. a compilation of itineraries) to help the Roman Administration to collect the annona
militaris tax. This would explain the arbitrary way in which the routes contained in the
document were selected, and would also account for the strange «detour-type» layouts
chosen, on some occasions, to link two cities relatively close to each other, when the sec-
ond city is reached after passing through other places that would have made the route
much longer than was really necessary.
The Itinerary also contains in great detail (occassionally, with some errors leading to
confusion) the list of intermediate stops between the points of departure and arrival for
a specific route, as well as the partial distances between the various possible stops (re-
ferred to as mansiones, stationes or mutationes, depending on their importance), these
distances logically been given in miles.
Another controversy created by Antonino’s Itinerary is the reference to some mansiones
appearing in the accusative case or preceded by the direction particle «ad», in contrast
to others, being referred to in the nominative case. This matter has also been the subject
FIG. 7 Geographical interpreta-

tion of Antonino’s Itinerary in the
vicinity of Titultia, according to
GONZALO ARIAS.
of debate given that it could be one of the clues to unravelling the mystery surrounding
the ultimate aim of the Itinerary. Based on the studies conducted by José Manuel Roldán
(1966) and Gonzalo Arias (2004) it has been possible to establish that they refer to places
that are not on the route, but lie at a certain distance from it. On the basis of this dis-
covery, Arias himself prepared what he called the «grammatical interpretation» of An-
tonino’s Itinerary, according to which some of these mansiones would be at considerable
distance from the route in which they are referred to. Although this interpretation con-
tains certain aspects that are debatable (in particular that it enables one to interpret the
routes in an arbitrary way, in view of the fact that it is not necessary for the mansion con-
cerned to be close to them), it is nevertheless true to say that it is currently the hypothesis
that best explains the data included in the Itinerary without having to resort to consider-
ing the presence of numerous mistakes in it [FIG. 7].
A later source, probably from the 7th or 8th Century AD was the Anonymous from
Ravenna, a text that contains a long list of cities and other noteworthy geographical
places, apparently structured with no established order. However, the fact that the Anony-
mous appears to follow itinerary sources – especially because it reproduces fragments of
the routes contained in Antonino’s Itinerary3 – and the hypothesis that it could have been
based upon some itineraria picta (an illustrated document, of which the Tabula Peutin-
geriana -Peutinger Map- is one of the main examples), has meant that the (limited) in-
formation provided by the Anonymous from Ravenna is often used to reconstruct routes
that might have been used by the Romans. However, the information contained in it is
scant, little more than a list of names (many of which are grossly deformed with respect
to the original source), just enabling to assume that there was a succession of stops on
each route. The Spanish version was the work of Roldán (1975), although there are nu-
merous studies on possible individual routes.
A brief mention should also be made, amongst the itinerary sources, to other reper-
toires whose focus on Hispania and use for studying the ways on the Iberian Peninsula
are lesser: these include the Itinerarium Maritimum4, the Guidonis Geographica5, the
Itinerarium Burdigalense, etc.
Apart from the itinerary sources in the strictest sense, many maps are still preserved
included for study among the so-called itineraria picta that, which according to certain
interpretations would have been at the service of a cartographic reconstruction of the
Roman Empire that was undertaken by Agrippa, for which the Rome’s Pantheon6 would
have been the centre of activities. Towards the end of the 20th Century, a map called de
Artemidorus of Ephesus was found on the back of a papyrus that contained artistic
sketches; this can be regarded as the last known example to date of the Orbis Pictus tra-
dition of which, nevertheless, the Peutinger Map is the most outstanding representation.
It is likely that the Peutinger Map is a design from the 2nd Century of our era, of which
only one copy remains, dating back to the 12th or 13th Century, that includes the repro-
duction of many of the Empire’s roads together with the distances – mainly expressed in
miles – between the intermediate stops. However, the Peutinger Map is of very little use
for reconstructing the network of Roman ways on the Iberian Peninsula, because the
segment given over to Hispania was lost and all that is available from the original map is
a small strip for the Pyrenees. In 1898, Miller prepared for the rest of the Peninsula, a

FIG. 8 «Nest» of miliarios in Lobios (Orense).
thorough reconstruction on the basis of data taken from other sources. However, it is
only based on the appearance of the original and on diachronic data regarding the time
when the original Tabula was drawn up.
A second group of sources comprises those of an epigraphic nature. As far as the Iberian
Peninsula is concerned, two sources stand out that could be called epigraphic-itineraries,
because of the way they are presented; on the one hand, the Vases from Vicarello, four small
cylinders three of which were found in excavations carried out in Baños de Vicarello [Vi-
carello’s Baths], about 30 km from Rome, midway through the 19th Century. They describe,
in a similar way as Antonino’s Itinerary7 will do it at a later date, a road that connected
Gades with Rome and ran along the Mediterranean Coast, going, in its Hispanic section,
from Cádiz to the Pyrenees. In its comparison with the road described, through the same
territory, by Antonino’s Itinerary, the Vases from Vicarello are an essential source for estab-
lishing how the network of roads developed in the zone at the beginning of our era.
A second source of an epigraphic-itinerary nature would consist of the group com-
posed of the so-called Tabletas de Lépido or Itinerarios de Barro de Astorga. These are
fragments of four earthenware tabulae ansatae reproducing roads that supposedly ran
across the north of Hispania. However, studies conducted by José Manuel Roldán and
Gonzalo Arias have cast serious doubts on their authenticity, so there is currently con-
siderable hesitation about whether any of them should be taken seriously8.
At this point of the work, miliarios [milestones] play a crucial role among the epi-
graphic sources – not of itinerary nature –, for the direct information that they provide
about the routes they served (date of construction or repair, distance from a particular
point), and also for the indirect data that can be gleaned from them, especially if it can
be assumed that they were located in situ, actually on the route itself.
By the very nature of their function, it would only be expected that milestones would
lie at regular distances from each other, there being perhaps more of them in zones of
the Iberian Peninsula where the special characteristics of the land through which the
roads passed made it necessary to repair or maintain them more often. Yet this is not the
case, in Hispania insofar as the presence of miliarios is concerned there are large gaps.
There is a major concentration around the route known as Vía de la Plata [Silver Route]
and, particularly, in the far northwest of the Peninsula, especially in the south of the
Province of Orense and Northern Portugal, with a major concentration around the City
of Braga. Groups of ten or twelve milestones significantly described as «nests» have been
located in this zone, probable in situ [FIG. 8].

Miliarios however are not always found in their original positions, as they were often
moved or reused, broken up or found with their inscriptions virtually lost, so it is neces-
sary to study them in great detail, in such a way that the information that they yield can
be put to the best use.
After their first inclusion in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL), towards the
end of the 19th Century, in Hispanic territory, researchers did not take much notice of
miliarios, studied from an epistemological viewpoint, until the last two decades of the
20th Century. As from that time, work began on preparing systematic inventories for spe-
cific territories (a special, but not exclusive, reference must be made to those in the
Province Tarraconense [Tarragona], by Joaquín Lostal9 and to the Convento Bracarense10).
In addition to the bibliographies concerning miliarios, there are several projects currently
under way whose development can be followed by consulting their databases via Internet.
These include the following:
— Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, based at what is known as the Centro CIL II at

the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, accessible at http://www2.uah.es/imagines_cilii/
— Hispania Epigraphica, whose headquarters are at the Geography and History
Faculty at the Universidad Complutense (http://eda-bea.es/)
— Vbi erat lupa, prepared by the University of Salzburg (http://www.ubi-erat-lupa.org/)
Finally, a last group of sources for studying Roman ways is formed by itinerary sources
from the modern period: route repertoires that, to a certain extent, reproduce ways of
Roman origins or are suitable to give insight to the layouts of Roman routes that we
would not be able to reconstruct if it were not for the existence of these tracking guides.
One of these is the Reportorio (sic) de todos los caminos de España, by Pero Juan Villuga
(1546), and the Reportorio de caminos ordered by Alonso de Meneses (1576), which is a
recycled reflection of Villuga’s work. Along the same lines, providing interesting data for
studying roads, there are works such as the Descripción y Cosmografía de España, by Her-
nando Colón (1517) and even subsequent works like the Diccionario Geográfico-Estadís-
tico e Histórico de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar, coordinated by Pascual Madoz as
from 1848.
By way of a supplement, or more of a continuation, to the study of Roman Ways carried
out resorting to well-known literary and epigraphic sources, it is inevitably required to re-
sort to archaeology. The method used to conduct archaeological research of roads has
made considerable progress since the beginning, especially over the last two decades.
Studying the road itself, in isolation from the environment through which it passes, and
not assuming that all Roman ways had to be made of cobbledstone, have opened the door
to a more diverse perspective of roads, probably more consistent with the real situation.
Archaeological research has now given up the old hypothesis according to which the ma-
terials that constituted a canonical Roman road were arranged in a strict manner com-
prising four layers as described by Vitruvius when he spoke of the paving for city streets.
The idea that it was Vitruvius who defined the four layers that made up a Roman road
was for a long time attributed to Nicolás Bergier, who lived in the 17th Century. However,
a recent study conducted by Rodríguez Morales (2010) has set the record straight and
has exonerated Bergier from being responsible for spreading Vitruvius’ idea in an erro-
neous context. Regardless of who it might have come from, the truth of the matter is
that the hypothesis that a Roman way is Roman if the rolling course is made of cobbled
stone and if it has the four layers described by Vitruvius has been believed, just as much
as other more accurate theories worthy of belief, to the point that even today, when that
hypothesis has been rejected out of hand by those who study Roman roads, cross sections
of roads showing this «Vitruvian» stratigraphy can be seen on all kinds of posters, publi-
cations and websites, mainly aimed at the tourist market.
The truth of the matter is that should one road be studied in relation to its territory
and as an essential part of it, as it is done today, the parameters that were described at
the beginning of this work could be used, rather than the physical remains, to establish
whether the road is original Roman or not. This change of mentality has been brought
about largely by the gradual increase in interdisciplinary studies, in which mainly archae-
ologists and engineers collaborate with professionals from other areas, plus the contri-
bution made by some researchers who have managed to change the way we approach
Roman roads.
If we quote only those who have played the greatest role in changing our mentality,
mention will have to be made to the Quilicis, in Italy, pioneers in integrating roads into
their territories in order to study them11; in France, Pierre Sillières (1995), who is re-
sponsible for the considerable progress made in the use of aerial photography, Raymond
Chevallier (1997) and Gerard Coulon (2007) and, in Spain, Isaac Moreno (2004). The
work by all the aforementioned persons has not only modified the way of associating
Roman ways with their territories and the landscapes that surround them, but have also
led to a new approach to the way the physical remains are analysed. Until only a few
years ago, the way of excavating a road consisted of cleaning the surface until the cobbling
was reached (if there was any), whereas nowadays the road tends to be sectioned, this
being the only way of finding out what construction method was used, what the infra-
structure was and how the ground was prepared.
As research has progressed in situ, breakthroughs have also been made in office work.
The use of aerial photography has been particularly helpful in identifying long straight
alignments that could give clues to the presence of Roman ways. The widespread use of
powerful tools, which are now available to the general public, has undoubtedly con-
tributed to this progress. However, this does not mean to say that flights from the past,
when many of the current infrastructures had not yet been constructed, should not be
re-examined, because it was then much easier to pinpoint a priori, the layouts that ought
to be studied as potentially Roman.
Likewise, the new technologies do not avoid one of the basic steps when it comes to
putting forward hypotheses about the layout of historic routes: reanalysing ancient maps.
Occasionally, certain routes are marked as «Roman way» or «Moorish way», a circum-
stance that often refers to a route that presumably dates back a long time. However, from
a statistical perspective this is nothing more than incidental, so researchers of ancient
history have to look for other toponymic clues: «old road», «rock carvings», «pavement»,
«old livestock track» or place names prefixed by «ctra-» will be indicating the presence,
at least according to tradition, of roads that are probably very old12.

FIG. 9 Roman roads and centuriation in the vicinity of Bolonia (Italy), according to QUILICI and QUILICI, 1994.
FIG. 10 Preparing the hypoth-

esis of the ideal Roman way lay-
out. In blue, Roman settlements.
In red, proposed route (surround-
ings of Calamocha, Teruel, Page
491 of the National Topographic
Map).
If the information obtained from mapping is combined with the data yielded by ar-
chaeology, the layout of a Roman way can also be established by the centuriations, which
were generally bordered by these roads. Although the study of centuriations in Spain is
only well developed in zones close to the Mediterranean Coast13 and in some regions
within the Ebro Valley, the constant developments made in the extremely useful discipline
known as «Landscape Archaeology» are helping to increase the amount of information
available on this subject [FIG. 9].
A combination of all these parameters plus the pinpointing of certain geographical
features that Roman routes generally avoided (steep slopes, marshland) and with the dis-
tribution of the Roman settlements known, will allow the preparation of a theoretical
framework that will enable researchers to select the most likely hypotheses when it comes
to the potential layout of a Roman way [FIG. 10].
In this regard, studying the distribution of the farming exploitation villae will be of
particular importance, because their implementation on the land was invariably condi-
tioned by the maxim established by Columela14, whereby a Roman villa had to be located
nec in uia nec in uia procul, i.e., at a reasonable distance from the road but not too far
from it [FIG. 11].
FIG. 11 Villae and Roman road in the vicinity of Warfusee-Abancourt (France), according to R. AGACHE.

FIG. 12 Plan view of the Tripontium mansio
(Rugby - GB), according to IRENE GLENDINNING.
Finally, when conducting a field

study of roads, certain parameters
must be taken into account that
have already been mentioned, – es-
pecially, the distribution of Roman
bridges and miliarios whose location
is considered in situ –, in addition
to the identification of the man-
siones. As they were infrequent, very
little is known about the mansio
from an archaeological viewpoint,
although it is known that these
buildings were usually quadrangular
with several rooms opening out onto
an inner courtyard, close to which
there was also a thermal building.
Known mansiones feature these pa-
rameters, especially those beyond
the frontiers of Hispania, yet the ones researched on the Iberian Peninsula, such as Mar-
iturri (Álava), Lancia (León), Ildum (Castellón) or Collado Mediano (Madrid), do not al-
ways fit exactly into this pattern, although their function as a service facility on a Roman
way is beyond any doubt15 [FIG. 12].
The study of Roman roads in Hispania has followed the guidelines set by break-
throughs in the research method that has just been explained. The origins, after certain
work was done in ancient times – including an edition by Jerónimo Zurita of Antonino’s
Itinerary, from the 16th Century, or the Tratado legal y político de caminos públicos y pos-
sadas [Legal and Political Treatise of Public Roads and Inns], published by Tomás Fer-
nández de Mesa in 1755 –, have to be sought in the contributions made by engineers
from the last third of the 19th Century, such as Francisco Coello and, particularly, Ed-
uardo Saavedra.
Saavedra (1829-1912) was responsible for systematising the study of the Roman road
network in Hispania, not only regarding the main source of information, the document
Antonino’s Itinerary, but also where the research method was concerned. Thus, it was
Saavedra who was the first to structure the thirty-four routes that constitute the Hispanic
part of the Itinerario, interpreting the layouts and allocating a different number to each
one16. Furthermore, as a good engineer, he applied engineering parameters to the study
of a specific section of route, the stretch between Vxama (El Burgo de Osma, Soria) and
Augustobriga (Ágreda, Soria)17, and most of his considerations and conclusions about its
layout are still valid today.
The trail set by the pioneer and enlightening work done by Saavedra was followed by
the Blázquez’s (Antonio and Ángel) and by Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, who, under the
auspices of the Junta Superior de Excavaciones y Antigüedades (JSEA) [Excavations and
Antiquities Board], carried out commendable fieldwork activities based upon exploring
Roman ways directly. However, that exhaustive task, often presented in the different vol-
umes published by the JSEA, with certain literary overtones, some even quixotic, gave
way – after the JSEA ceased its activities, and, especially, during the period that began
when the war ended, in 1939 – to a long and dark period for the study of Roman ways
in Hispania, in which there were no outstanding studies of a global nature and hardly
any reference was made to the road network in the activities associated with the publi-
cation of findings and results obtained when excavating specific archaeological sites.
That period of certain abandonment of the research into Roman routes on the Iberian
Peninsula, was to be interrupted in the 1960s and the early 70s, with the publication of
two works by José Manuel Roldán: a study of the Silver Route, in 197118, which involved
applying new research methods to a Roman route in Spain19, and, especially, the volume
Itinera Hispana, published in 1975, which compiled for the first time in one single book,
the ancient sources used to study Roman Roads in Hispania, i.e. Antonino’s Itinerary,
the Tabletas de Lépido, the Vases from Vicarello, the Anonymous from Ravenna, the Guido-
nis Geographica and the Tegula de Valencia. It also included, in the form of an appendix,
an attempt to catalogue the numerous mansiones quoted by the itinerary sources, con-
ducting a location test for each one, on the basis of the state-of-the-art at that time.
Perhaps it was because this publication structured the available information in an
easily accessible way, the fact is that it paved the way for a renaissance in the study of
Roman roads on the Peninsula, particularly during the 1980s, when a large number of
monographic works were published governed by territorial criteria on the basis of the
current political divisions.
A publication also appeared in Cadiz as early as 1963, which paid very little attention
to the established standards, called El Miliario Extravagante, under the directorship of
Gonzalo Arias Bonet. This periodical publication appeared quite by chance, as a by-prod-
uct arising from the main aim of the researcher, which was to put together a Historic
Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula, yet the work ended up by taking on its own identity and
overshadowing its parent project, which remained uncompleted. Based on the author’s
own research and the contributions made by «correspondents», a dense network of col-
laborators making contributions during the journal’s forty years of existence, the project
led to a sort of self school, extravagant in the strict sense of the term however making
notable breakthroughs in the knowledge about the Hispanic road network. The publica-
tion was split into four «periods», the first of which (1963-1968) was embellished with
mythical overtones, as it consisted of 14 typewritten issues illustrated by hand, edited in
Paris where its exiled and unrepeatable author lived, before being distributed in Spain.
On that first stage, which was gradually lost down through the years, Arias made a com-
pilation in 1987 that later, reprinted and updated in 2004, ended up by being a summary
of all his work20, with a few innovative considerations, some of which were brilliant and
witty, such as the above-mentioned grammatical interpretation of Antonino’s Itinerary,
while others were debatable, like the origin of the City of Madrid being put down to its

position at the crossroads of two
Roman roads, all of which served to
liven up the research debate into the
roads [FIG. 13].
However, given that its role as a
forum for all those who were devoted
to the study of Roman roads in His-
pania seemed ideal, once El Miliario
Extravagante ceased publication in
2004, several subscribers to the jour-
nal decided to take over and brought
out a new publication, El Nuevo Mil-
iario21, which, sponsored by the Fun-
dación Juanelo Turriano, is certainly
different in nature, although it does try
to conserve some of the essential char-
acteristics of El Miliario Extravagante.
The large number of studies that
were conducted in the 1980s, which
led to the holding of the Tarazona
Symposium22, gave rise to the develop-
ment, in the last few years of the 20th
FIG. 13 Gonzalo Arias. Photography by GIACOM GILLANI.
Century, of studies that became in-
creasingly more specific in nature,
brought together not only in the form
of monographical works (to the extent that every Autonomous Region has its own detailed
study on the subject), but also in scientific meetings. Furthermore, initiatives have
emerged that, without being strictly devoted to publicising the results of research into
Roman roads, occasionally make contributions that are of great interest to those who are
interested in this subject. Such initiatives include two series of periodical meetings, the
Congresos de Caminería Hispánica and, especially, the series of Congresos de Obras Públi-
cas Romanas that have been taking place organised by the Colegio de Ingenieros Técnicos
de Obras Públicas.
At present, in the first decades of the 21st Century, apart from dealing with the layouts
of very specific routes23, there has been a certain return to the basics, in view of the fact
that projects of a global nature are again being considered that, in the light of the epis-
temology, had emerged towards the end of the 19th Century. Undoubtedly, the potential
for accessing more powerful technologies and the ease with which it is now possible for
researchers to exchange information, makes it much easier for them to undertake con-
troversial projects from a broader perspective. It is thus advisable to mention, apart from
the epigraphic compilations referred to in the preceding pages, such mapping initiatives
as the Tabula Imperii Romani or the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, as
well as projects that deal exclusively with itineraries, such as the website run by Pedro
Soutinho about the Portuguese road network24, the work coordinated by Isaac Moreno
about the Roman roads of Castilla y León25 or the Itinera Hispana, which is an update of
the old Itineraria Hispana that once again, is being coordinated from the Universidad
Complutense by José Manuel Roldán.
All in all, this is not the place to get side-tracked into giving details about the Roman
ways of Hispania, a task often controversial and always substantial, that would take not
just a short work like this one but one or more monographs and that has been the re-
search subject to which more than one erudite has devoted his life. The general impres-
sion is that, in spite of all the work carried out, there is still a lot more to do, but as is
nearly always the case with research, the tasks still to be done look very exciting.
NOTES
1. DURÁN, 2005.
2. Collected in ARIAS, 2004, and in the Appendix to El Miliario Extravagante entitled: «An Extravagant Approach to Roman
Roads», 2004.
3. In this sense, reference can be made to C. CABALLERO: La ciudad y la romanización de Celtiberia. Zaragoza, 2003, page 115 et
seq., or to A. CAPALVO: Celtiberia. Zaragoza, 1996.
4. ROLDÁN, 1975, page 102 up.
5. ROLDÁN, 1975, page 143 up.
6. This hypothesis can be followed in L. ZAPICO: «Was Antonino’s Itinerary prepared for cartographic purposes?», El Nuevo Miliario,
6, 2006 (See also, Revista de Obras Públicas, 3,289, which is where it was originally published). Further data in Chapter V
(«Marco Vespasiano Agrippa and his Orbis Pictus») from the book Mina y Gigante, Madrid, 2009.
7. The Vases from Vicarello would be from around the change of era (See ROLDÁN, 1975, page 153).
8. In print, this work was published with an interesting contribution from CARMEN FERNÁNDEZ OCHOA, ÁNGEL MORILLO and FER-
NANDO GIL, 2012, with the results from the dating of the tablets using thermoluminescence and the interpretation of the itin-
eraries contained in it. This analysis could modify the interpretation that is given to this epigraphic document.
9. J. LOSTAL: Los miliarios de la Provincia Tarraconense. Zaragoza, 1992.
10. A. RODRÍGUEZ COLMENERO, S. FERRER and R. D. ÁLVAREZ ASOREY: Miliarios e outras inscricións romanas do noroeste hispánico. Santiago,
2004.
11. See, amongst others, L. QUILICI, 1992, and L. QUILICI-S. QUILICI, 1994.
12. In this sense, the summary of the mapping sources made by MANUEL TRUJILLO is particularly illustrative: «Fuentes cartográficas
para la identificación de los caminos públicos», which can be downloaded from the following website: www.elnuevomiliario.eu
13. See the volume Catastros, hábitat y vías romanas. Valencia, 2006.
14. COLUMELA, De agri cultura, I, 5, 2.
15. Articles on mansiones can be found in Issue no. 5 of El Nuevo Miliario, which contains several works on different mansiones
of the Roman Empire.
16. In brackets, it would be advisable to say that Saavedra’s structuring of the routes into independent epigraphs numbered con-
secutively has an unwanted effect: the fact that many now believe that allocating numbers to the routes is inherent to An-
tonino’s Itinerary, so nowadays it is possible to read, in some tourist publications and on many posters that mark out Roman
routes, how reference is made to them being identified as Route XXIII or XXXI, when the truth is that the numbering came
from Saavedra’s work, and it would be completely out of order to resort to Roman numerals.
17. E. SAAVEDRA: Descripción de la vía romana entre Uxama y Augustóbriga, 1864 (re-edited in Soria in 2000).
18. J. M. ROLDÁN: Iter ab Emerita Asturicam. El camino de la Plata. Salamanca, 1971.
19. Apart from giving, to a certain extent, origin to the «Silver Route» myth, about which the author himself reflected for a long
time afterwards J. M. ROLDÁN: «El camino de la Plata: ¿iter o negotium?», Gerión, vol. Extra, 2007.
20. G. ARIAS: Repertorio de caminos de la Hispania romana, 2004.
21. www.elnuevomiliario.eu
22. Simposio sobre la red viaria en la Hispania romana. Zaragoza, 1987.
23. In this sense, it is likely that the Silver Route is the one that has generated the most extensive bibliography, See the Exhibition
Catalogue Vía de la Plata. Una calzada y mil caminos, held in 2008.
24. Roman Roads in Portugal: http://viasromanas.planetaclix.pt/index.html
25. Roman Roads in Castilla y León: http://www.viasromanas.net/

BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. ARIAS: Repertorio de caminos de la Hispania romana. Ronda, 2004.

G. CASTELLVÍ (ed.): Voies romaines du Rhône à l’Ebre: via Domitia et Augusta. 1997.
R. CHEVALLIER: Les voies romaines. Paris, 1997.
G. COULON: Les voies romaines en Gaule. Saint-Amand-Montron, 2007.
M. DURÁN: La construcción de puentes romanos en España. Santiago, 2005.
C. FERNÁNDEZ OCHOA, A. MORILLO and F. GIL SENDINO: «El Itinerario de Barro. Cuestiones de autenticidad y lec-
tura», Zephyrus, LXX. 2012.
I. GONZÁLEZ TASCÓN and I. VELÁZQUEZ: Ingeniería romana en Hispania. Historia y técnicas constructivas. Madrid,
2005.
I. MORENO: Vías romanas. Ingeniería y técnica constructiva. Madrid, 2004.
L. QUILICI (dir.): Tecnica stradale romana. Roma, 1992.
L. QUILICI and S. QUILICI (dirs.): Strade romane. Percorsi e infrastrutture. Roma, 1994.
G. RADKE: Viae publicae romanae. 1971.
J. RODRÍGUEZ MORALES: «Las vías romanas en la erudición moderna: reivindicación de Nicolás Bergier», V Congress
on Roman Public Works. Córdoba, 2010.
J. M. ROLDÁN: «Sobre los acusativos con “ad” en el Itinerario de Antonino», Zaphyrus, no. 17. 1966.
— Itineraria Hispana. Valladolid, 1975.
E. SAAVEDRA: Discursos leídos en la Real Academia de la Historia en la recepción pública de D. Eduardo Saavedra.
Madrid, 1862.
— Descripción de la vía romana entre Uxama y Augustobriga. Soria, 2000.
P. SILLIÉRES: Voies de communication de l’Hispanie meridionales. Paris, 1995.
Back to Contents
5
Design and Construction of
Roman Bridges in Hispania
MANUEL DURÁN FUENTES

Civil Engineer (ETSICCP), Universidad de A Coruña
INTRODUCTION
The construction of public works, and especially roads and thus bridges, was essential to
guarantee the smooth running of the Roman Administration, complex and efficient for
those early times. The grandeur of Roman engineering was not based upon the use of
innovative techniques and construction types, but on the effective and systematic use of
foreign materials and technologies that the Romans themselves gradually improved and
applied more extensively.
Romans were outstanding builders of masonry bridges, because they managed to per-
fect them from a formal, aesthetic, material and construction perspective, as can be seen
from the works that are still with us today. Bridges were erected to be symbols of the
maiestas imperii [grandeur of empire] and the publica magnificentia [public magnifi-
cence] of the Roman people, solid and stable, without any concessions to frivolity and
with a clear intention to make them long-lasting «forever over the centuries of this world»,
in the written words of architect Caius Iulius Lacer, constructor of the Alcántara Bridge.
In the course of time, this outstanding construction performance has turned Roman
bridges into the epitome of strong, long-lasting and beautiful works.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Many of their construction techniques and systems came from Greece, which was, in
turn, closely linked to Egypt from eras prior to the Egyptian Ptolemies. The Pharaohs
from this dynasty employed Greek engineers in Egyptian construction work for the tech-
87
nical superiority they had over their former masters thanks to the new technological in-
ventions, according to the German archaeologist Dieter Arnold. Ever since the first dy-
nasties the Egyptians used construction systems and details that many centuries later
would be applied to Greek and Roman construction.
It was the experienced and renowned Greek architects who were the major figures in
transferring the technology to Rome since the times of the Republic, as can be seen from
the formal similarities between the two architectures and through the knowledge, mainly
thanks to Vitruvius, of the names of some of the individuals involved in Roman works.
The first contacts occurred in the 3rd Century BC, in Magna Graecia, in the south of the
Italian peninsula and on the island of Sicily, but it was only after the conquest of Greece,
at the beginning of the 1st Century BC, when this influence was consolidated, enhanced
by the systematic plundering of the latter’s architectural heritage, which often meant
transferring the stonework itself to Italy. The sacking of Syracuse, in 212 B.C. by Mar-
cellus, was the first of these acts of pillaging. Strabo states that most of the statues that
could be seen in Rome in times of Augustus came from Corinth.
A large number of architects, artisans and artists also arrived in Rome, some as
hostages from the wars and others of their own free will, and once they began to provide
their services to the Army, the Roman Administration or private individuals, they gave
new forms to the construction that rapidly established themselves owing to their con-
vincing proselytism. One example of a Greek architect who reached Rome in 146 B.C.
from Macedonia as a result of the military actions of Metellus Macedonicus, was Her-
modorus of Salamis, to whom a variety of monuments are attributed, constructed with
materials and by artisans brought from the Aegean regions (ADAM, 1996, 114-115). Just
after he took up his post as Governor, Pliny the Younger sent letters to Trajan from Bithy-
nia in which he asked for an engineer expert in canals or an architect to be sent from
Rome. In answer to a request to send a technician to carry on with the works on a theatre
in Nicaea, the Emperor wrote back saying «you cannot possibly be lacking in architects.
There is no province that does not have expert and talented men; unless you think that
it is quicker to send them from Rome, when it is even normal that they come to us from
Greece» (PLINY THE YOUNGER, 2005, 510-511).
The different works should be designed, according to the Latin author Vitruvius, with
the aid of Architecture, given that without this science, based on numerous teachings
and instructions, it would not have been possible to complete them with skill, proportion,
harmony and beauty. The economic aspect is also present in Roman works, because as
Vitruvius wrote «the administration of the materials and land, as well as tight budgets
and reasonable costs in performing the works had to be taken into account». He regrets
that architects were not penalised for carelessness regarding the final cost of public
works, as they were in Greece, and specifically in Ephesus. As a result of a Law passed
there, as soon as an architect accepted responsibility for works and submitted his per-
formance quote, his possessions were transferred to the magistrate until the works were
completed; if the actual cost was equivalent to the quote submitted, the architect was
rewarded with «honours and complimentary statements». If the final cost exceeded the
initial price quoted by up to 25%, the difference was paid out of public money and the
architect was not penalised. However, if the cost excess was over 25% «the architect had
to pay the extra amount with his own goods». Vitruvius wished that a similar law had
been in force for private works.
Certain uniformity can be observed in the way the different Roman buildings were
constructed, that was undoubtedly achieved by adapting the typologies to their objectives.
All the typologies that functioned satisfactorily were conserved and developed, while
those that failed were modified. All in all, what was good and correct was found out by
trial and error, as in any other process of experimentation, although, as has already been
pointed out, the constructional precedents reached Rome after having been well tried
out and successful.
THE ROMAN BRIDGES IN HISPANIA
The folded surface of the Iberian Peninsula, its extensive river network and the use of
the territory, were the basic determinants for establishing land communications in the
past. The construction of works to span water courses has left a rich heritage where ty-
pologies are concerned, as well as a variety of materials and construction systems that
have been subject to change through the centuries. The rivers on the peninsula are well
known for their extremely irregular discharges, especially the ones that flow into the
Mediterranean, which alternate between having insignificant or zero discharges at one
moment in time, and having very high or even devastating rises in another. Such floodings
caused by the meteorological phenomena inherent to the zone accounts for the fact that
hardly any Roman bridges are left standing.
To carry out the desirable and essential task of preserving the historic bridges as part
of a country’s Cultural Heritage, it is first necessary to keep an inventory of the works
that remain and then make sure they are listed in a catalogue, including the geographical
and historical data concerning each bridge, as well as information about the roads, tracks
and surroundings, plus the dimensional and constructive characteristics, and, on the
basis of all this, their present status and the measures required to preserve and protect
them. An important part of the historical study involves allocating them into a specific
construction period, so an identification process will have to be carried out, which in the
case of Roman bridges was hardly ever performed until recent times. There is a lack of
systematic studies that can define the type of construction for each period or time in his-
tory, and the same applies to statistical studies that relate and compare them.
Design
According to P. Pontones, bridges are «roads over the waters» which have to be connected
to the roads on the ground, composed of masonry walls whose pieces have been laid in
a particular order, in which openings have been created to enable the water to pass
through. The construction of a bridge in a natural environment could have a negative
impact on the value of the place, but the harmony and beauty of its structure, shape and
composition can have the opposite effect, by bestowing character and uniqueness on the
environment concerned and enhance its landscape value.
DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF ROMAN BRIDGES IN HISPANIA 89

FIG. 1 A Ponte Velha in Vila For-
mosa (Portugal).
On analysing the masonry used to construct bridges that are known to be Roman, not
only in Hispania but also in the rest of the Empire, it has been found that their design
was approached in a systematic and practical way, with solutions that had already been
tried out while at the same time taking into account the singularity of each one. The sim-
plicity, strength and the structuring of the parts with each other and as a whole, and the
aesthetics arising from their functionality and harmony, are clear evidence of the sense
of strictness in the construction process, which Fernández Casado so much admired in
his faithful defence of such professional behaviour and ideal. Viollet-le-Duc said of
Roman architects that «their spirit was too regulatory and their mentality too straight,
but they were so good administrators that they found it impossible to build useless struc-
tures», and the French engineer Auguste Choisy wrote that «the genius of the Romans
invariably knew how to reconcile a passion for major tasks with economic factors; size
with devising methods that were easy to carry out» [FIG. 1].
Territorial Location
When approaching the design and building process for a bridge, Roman engineers studied
and overcame a series of unavoidable preliminary problems, such as selecting the exact
construction spot and the materials to be used. A zone on the river that was suitable for
laying the foundations and the potential for using nearby materials were excellent starting
points, albeit in the case of the materials this was not a deciding factor, given that it
would always be possible to transport them from a certain distance although this would
make the works more expensive. This economic factor had a greater effect than might
have been thought, because the preconceived idea that the resources were almost infinite
and not decisive is not correct. When these initial decisions were taken, the type of works
in question were also considered, as they could be of a temporary or permanent character.
Other basic factors that came into play when selecting the site for a bridge were the
road layout, the presence of a settlement by the river or the founding of a new city or
colony. The point where the road reached the river was the spot that indicated a more or
less extensive zone where the bridge could be constructed and this was later narrowed
down on the basis of the way the land lay on the riverbanks and the geotechnical conditions
of the ground. As the engineer Eugenio Rivera pointed out «ever since the dim and distant
FIG. 2 Upstream view of the Alcántara Bridge. FIG. 3 Bridge over the Guadiana, in Mérida.
past, bridges were located at points where rivers were not as wide, which was where the
banks are usually firmer». The works in such locations were shorter, more economical and
long-lasting, the road layout being adapted to the bridge and not the other way around.
This firmness was eagerly sought using specific knowledge, fortunately enabling the engi-
neers to construct in predetermined zones where the geological conditions were the best
that could be expected. The Galician bridges of Pedriña and Cigarrosa are good examples,
as is the Alcántara Bridge (Cáceres), when it spans the River Tajo, in the most suitable
spot from a topographical and geotechnical viewpoint, on a hard Pre-Cambrian shale-
greywacke (sandstone) outcrop at the narrowest point along the watercourse. It was the
same zone that two thousand years later the engineers who constructed the Alcántara Dam
were to choose as the ideal spot for implementing the dam should it not have been for the
presence of the Roman bridge [FIG. 2]. However, this right choice has not always been
achieved and a lack of good ground conditions has brought about serious deterioration to
the masonry, and sometimes the complete disappearance, of bridges that were constructed,
for example, on the Peninsula’s Mediterranean watershed, caused by the phenomenon of
thermal inversion and the tremendous subsequent floods at the beginning of autumn.
The presence of a settlement or the establishment of a new one could have made the
constructors reconsider the technical solution. The bridge over the Guadiana, in Mérida,
constructed at one of the exits from the city, made it necessary to improve the foundations
along some stretches of the riverbed and to construct a very long bridge in view of the
layout of the valley at this particular spot [FIG. 3].
Materials
When bridges were constructed for warfare and were thus temporary and provisional,
wood was the material used because it adapted best to the cutting, transporting and work-
ing requirements. The only condition was that there had to be forests nearby. The bridges
constructed by Julius Caesar in the war against the Gauls and by Trajan in the war against
the Dacians are well known examples of timber bridges. In Spain, the remains of the
piers that supported A Pontóriga Bridge in Gallaecia have been preserved, although this
was constructed for the exploitation of gold in the Valdeorras area, across the River Sil,
not for warfare purposes.

In Hispania the most extensively
used material was stone, not only the
granites and slates of the west, but
also the sandstones, marls and lime-
stones of the south and east. The most
easily identified bridges are the ones
constructed with dry stone blocks, be-
cause the working and bonding had
qualities that were favourable. Rubble
stone and slate slabs were not used
FIG. 4 The Old Odiel Bridge (Huelva). without mortar in the manufacturing
process, because their shape and size
made them unstable if no binding ma-
terial was used. This type of masonry
was undoubtedly used to construct
bridges, not only during the Roman
period but also down through the sub-
sequent centuries. The fact that there
was no dressing of the stonework and
that a timeless technique was used
makes difficult to pinpoint the origins
of the works constructed in this way.
It is necessary to resort to formal and
construction comparative analyses
FIG. 5 Torre Astura Bridge Aqueduct (Italy). and, above all, to the dating of the
mortar utilised through the use of pro-
cedures that have made much progress in recent years.
Concrete prepared with hydraulic lime was one of the major breakthroughs made in
Roman times, but it was only used as a filler in bridge construction, not as the sole ma-
terial. The Torre Astura Bridge-Aqueduct near Terracina in Italy, is the only one preserved
that is constructed mainly with concrete, although the vaults are made of brick. This was
another material that was used for both road bridges and aqueducts, and when they were
built in this way, identifying them as Roman works is plagued with difficulties, as is the
case with those were slate was used. One such example is the Old Odiel Bridge, near
Aracena, in Huelva; considered to be Roman. It is difficult to demonstrate this entirely
through its manufacturing process, although it does have two features, its typology and
the small arch, which are similar to the Roman Sewers in Mérida. However, without ab-
solute proof, this bridge remains undefined in time. Dating the bricks or the mortar by
thermo-luminescence would give us a greater insight into its actual construction date
[FIGS. 4 and 5].
Applying analytical systems to the identification and dating of historic masonry bridges
will be extremely enlightening, in order to get construction dates, regardless of whether
they corroborate current datings, or at least to enable us to know the construction period
albeit within a broad time range.
Formal composition
From Roman times and right up to the end of the 19th Century, bridge composition was
determined by a variety of circumstances beyond the engineer’s will, such as, amongst
others, the lay of the riverbed and riverbanks, the availability of suitable foundation con-
ditions, how the floodwaters drained away and the economic factors.
Amongst these un-resolved variables, the drainage was the variable that stood out
most owing to its imprecision, in view of the fact that numerical procedures were not
available to calculate the discharge of a particular flood. An awareness of low, average
and high water levels constituted the basic initial data for the engineer, who, on the basis
of his skill and experience, determined the size of the bridge, its gradient, where to posi-
tion the buttresses and the number of arches to provide. As late as in the 1930s, the en-
gineer José Eugenio Ribera reflected the state of the art when he examined the
undermining of the buttresses caused by the high flow rate when drainage facilities were
insufficient, a cause for the destruction of many bridges. He did not trust the hydraulic
theories of the times, because he did not believe that they could be applied owing to their
fantasy, and recommended that engineers relied more on the data obtained from nearby
bridges and on the information about the levels reached by the most severe flooding re-
membered by the local inhabitants.
Roman engineers undoubtedly had this type of information, although this did not al-
ways mean that they were successful in ensuring that some bridges would last for thou-
sands of years, like the Alcántara or the Bibei Bridge, which have probably never been
overtopped by a flood. As Fernández Casado wrote, when referring to the Alcántara Bridge
,«at a first glance it would appear to be disproportionate to the hydraulic conditions of
the river, but when this is put into the context of the maximum flood levels, it proves to
be perfectly functional». Something similar happens with the Bibei Bridge, which demon-
strates that their designers were right in both cases [FIG. 6].
The economic factor was also decisive, since considering one solution or another
could make a big difference were expense was concerned. Therefore, they must have ex-
amined several solutions
varying the number of piles
and the shape of the arches,
the steepness of the slope
and, thus, the size of the
bridge, etc., and would have
chosen the most economi-
cal one from the perspective
of resources, materials and
labour force.
FIG. 6 Upstream view of Ponte Bibei

(Ourense).

FIG. 7 Improvements to the
foundations on the left section of
Mérida Bridge.
Construction
Once the design stage was completed and the construction stage of a bridge in Roman
times commenced, we believe that the basic aim of the builders was to construct a strong,
durable and economical bridge that would suitably fulfil its function, would last forever,
just like the Empire and, if possible, it should also be beautiful. In order to achieve this,
the first question to be solved was to find a suitable place to lay the foundations, a task
at which they were not always successful at the first attempt, so they had to perform sup-
plementary works that would improve the geotechnical conditions or otherwise adapt the
type of foundation to the prevailing conditions. Solid ground was not found on the left
bank of the Guadiana, where the third section of Mérida Bridge was built, so the engi-
neers had to construct an artificial foundation with concrete masses. The fourth pier on
the ancient and disappeared Ourense Bridge also had to be directly settled on the alluvial
layers or on artificial rubble stone, because it was not possible to reach the granite rock,
which we now know lies at a depth of 12 metres. In other zones of the Empire, such as
parts of Gaul or Germania, where the terrain was not hard, deep foundations were often
laid by driving in piles whose tips were reinforced with metal points, as was the case with
the old Treveris Bridge (CÜPPERS, 1969). Vitruvius devoted his attention to it and advised
that the driving process be carried out using «stakes made of poplar, olive or oak,
scorched, and then hammered in by machine». This pile-driving technique for laying
bridge foundations was extensively used from then right up to the present days [FIG. 7].
The search for a strong firm required a great technical and economic effort that in
later periods was not always made. This state of affairs has been demonstrated during
the recent rehabilitation works carried out on Ponte Vella in Lugo: the original Roman
piers were seated on the riverbed rock whereas in the reconstruction of one pier, probably
in the 18th Century, it was directly seated on the ruins of the previous construction,
namely one vault, without any type of improvement or cleaning [FIG. 8].
Buttresses are the parts most prone to local undermining of the ground on which they
are seated and the most exposed to the erosion caused by the action of water. The first
problem was overcome by laying the foundations on hard or artificial (concrete) ground
FIG. 8 Reconstruction of the left pier of A Ponte Vella FIG. 9 Dovetail joints on A Ponte Vella (Lugo).
(Lugo).
that could withstand the erosive force of running waters with turbulences caused by their
presence in the middle of the river. The second problem was dealt with by controlling
the quality and hardness of the materials used and the way they were placed on the works.
Piers withstand the pressure from the river water in a way that is directly proportional to
their size, shape and to the water velocity, and this is achieved better if they act as one
single solid body. Roman engineers managed to do this successfully if they used materials
with a stone lining and concrete fill, but not as effectively if they used stone ashlars laid
without mortar; in the latter case they improved the binding with construction techniques
such as alternating the coursing work with ropes and headers, the use of linkages, possibly
of hard timber, in the form of double dovetails, or with metal clamps [FIG. 9].
One characteristic feature of Roman bridges was the cutwater, which although not
an invention of that period, was used to the best advantage by the roman engineers. Its
function was to reduce the pressure of the water on the pier and to enable the waters to
flow past without causing harmful turbulences. A suitable shape for a cutwater is pointed
or triangular, a less effective shape being circular, which was the type used for the bridges
in Mérida or Lugo, the advantage of circular cutwaters being that floating matter did not
get so easily entangled in the construction.
From the viewpoint of overall bridge stability, the wider the piers are the better. How-
ever, this leads to reducing the outflow capacity with all the drawbacks involved, espe-
cially where the risk of undermining is concerned. In the case of the bridges in Hispania,
no uniform ratio has been observed between the thickness of the piers and the spans of
the contiguous vaults, that ratio ranging from 1:1 to 1:5.
The abutments are the bridge components that are subjected to the greatest unbal-
ancing forces insofar as the arch arrangement is concerned, because, unlike the piers,
they only receive the support and thrust from one single vault. Their stability depends
only on their mass and thus their weight, which combined with the sloping thrust from
the vault, manages to make it more vertical the bigger it is, thereby achieving greater sta-
bility.
The most outstanding characteristic of Roman bridges is the use of arched masonry
structures, with all the mastery of those who have understood its correct structural func-

tioning and its great technological de-
velopment throughout the course of
time. Romans only used circular
forms, either semi-circular, in most
cases, or depressed, a lot less frequent
yet just as important, given that this
amounted to a major technical break-
through, since they were not used
again until the 18th Century. Romans
also developed a variety of systems
that improved vault stability, such as
FIG. 10 Reinforced interior of a vault on Ponte Freixo
(Ourense). doubling the arch rings (Alcántara),
partially reinforcing the vault from the
back (Ponte Freixo), arranging larger
voussoirs at the lower parts of the
vaults (Cáparra or Chaves), or erect-
ing longitudinal walls inside the span-
drel that bound the lower parts of the
vaults together (Ponte Lima). The in-
terior fill made of stonework or mass
concrete also served to greatly im-
prove vault stability [FIG. 10].
Bridge arches in Hispania gener-
ally have small spans, 80% of them
ranging from 6 to 10 m. The Alcántara
FIG. 11 Parapets on A Ponte Velha in Vila Formosa (Portugal). Bridge has the biggest arch with an
opening of 28.80 m, although the an-
cient Roman Bridge in Ourense might
have had a span of 33 to 34 m. Such a value would have meant that the opening was al-
most as wide as the 36.65 m for the San Martín de Aosta Bridge, possibly the biggest
span ever used on a Roman bridge.
The bridge decks in Hispania were mainly horizontal, although a minority were
slightly hump-backed bridges. There are none with a mixed gradient, i.e.: a horizontal
central section above the arches and a slope at the access points, like the well-known
Augustus Bridge in Rimini (Italy), a model Renaissance bridge. The pavement was large,
because the road was 6 or 7 m wide, like the Alcántara Bridge, which is 7.80 m or the
Lugo Bridge which was 7 m wide. More than 80 % of the bridges in Hispania were wider
than 5 m.
Hardly any information remains about what the original road pavement, sidewalks
and parapet walls were like on Hispanic bridges, because they were elements very prone
to being dragged away by flooding or parts being taken away and reused in other con-
structions. There is no trace of the original carriageway surface, the original sidewalks,
and neither is anything known about whether the parapetti [parapets] on some of them
are the original ones [FIG. 11].
FIG. 12 Cornices on A
Ponte Velha in Vila For-
mosa (Portugal).
As far as adornment was concerned, the simple tastes of Roman engineers prevailed,
because, according to Auguste Choisy, unlike the Greeks, they were able to separate the
construction from the architecture and their eminently practical personality led them to
forget about ornamental embellishments. The rustic bossage of the stonework was the
technique most extensively used to obtain an effect of robustness and a play of light and
shade that fitted in well with Roman tastes. The decorative elements used most often
were the springer or cornice, whose alignments finish off and separate the different parts
and, to the naked eye, underline the formal composition of the works. They were gener-
ally laid on the springing of arches (separating these from the buttress threads) and on
the edge of the facing of spandrels and walls, the external part marking the level of the
carriageway. Cornices were placed along the pier shafts to reduce their slenderness when
the piers themselves were rather large, as was the case with the Alconétar and Alcántara
Bridges. There are three basic types: one single layer of slightly protruding ashlars
(straight section of the Mérida Bridge and the Alcántara Bridge), with straight moulding
and inverted chamfering (Albarregas, Cáparra, Salamanca and Lugo) and with curved
moulding of the mixed type with straight ogee or top (Salamanca, Freixo, Vila Formosa,
Segura, Alconétar, Mérida, etc.) [FIG. 12].
IDENTIFYING THE BRIDGES IN HISPANIA
As has already been explained at the beginning, the task of identifying, let alone dating,
a Roman bridge is rather complex. To make progress in this process, the first stage started
by conducting a geometric and construction analysis and a formal study of the stone
bridges that are reasonably well preserved and which are generally considered to be of
Roman origin. A series of shared construction characteristics were extracted from the
stonework, which was the main and virtually the only source for identifying them, al-
though these characteristics were not always a common feature to all of them. The type

of hewing, the bonding and the superb workmanship are the first signs that attract at-
tention and that, in some way, when one has an overall view of the Roman construction,
enable one to recognise it. The presence of certain features, such as the notches for the
lever and the dove-tail holes, are such singular characteristics of the stonework that the
works can almost certainly be regarded as Roman. Summarizing, the presence of some
of these characteristics does not serve as conclusive proof that the works are Roman, but
the presence of all the singularities does confirm that they are.
The characteristic and singularities brought together after a systematic study of
Roman bridges in Hispania constructed with stone ashlars are as follows:
— Robustness and appreciable formal, constructive and technical qual-

ity.
— Symmetrical, proportionate, uniform or harmonious formal compo-
sition.
— Very frequent presence of bossing in the stonework.
— Dry-laid ashlars, rubblefree and provided with finely worked joints.
— Alternating arrangement for the ashlar layers, with a rope and header
bond.
— Devices for locking the stonework:
– Dovetail joint keys/linkages.
– Lead filled metal clamps or pins.
— Evidence of holes, on opposite faces, for the tongs.
— Evidence of notches on the edge and the bottom of ashlars, for levers
to be inserted and used.
— Absence of stone quarry marks, although Roman numerals and let-
ters can occasionally be seen, as well as engravings and indentations.
— Semi-circular or occasionally depressed circular vaults.
— Vaults wider than 4.50 m, frequently ranging from 6 to 7 m, of uni-
form thickness throughout the rings.
— Identical measure of vault opening and width in some cases of cul-
verts.
— Presence of cornices for adornment and composition.
— Horizontal or slightly humped gradient.
It is essential that this type of identification, based on evidence of certain features on

the masonry, be supplemented, to the extent that this is possible, with historic, archaeo-
logical, geological data and documentary evidence, etc., which can be directly or indi-
rectly associated with the works in question [FIG. 13]. Where Roman bridges are concerned,
and in view of their age, very little historic information remains, therefore data of an ar-
chaeological nature, not only about the bridge but also regarding its surroundings, are
needed, as they could be decisive.
A list of the construction details originated in Egypt is given below, as Egypt is the
country where Greek architects learnt to put them into practice, before they were taken
on and used in Roman construction [FIG. 14]:
FIG. 13 Notches to facilitate the use of a lever on the ash- FIG. 14 Linkage made with sycamore wood in Kom
lars of Ponte Freixo (Ourense). Ombo (Egypt).
— Dry-laid ashlars with very fine joints between the stone blocks.
— Hewing of notches so that levers can be inserted and used to lay the ashlars.
— Use of anathyrosis for dressing the joints between ashlars.
— Alternating of ashlar courses with ropes and headers.
— Increasing the internal binding of the stone blocks by means of wooden double
dovetail links.
— Bossing of the exposed faces of ashlars.
— Limited use of marks or graphite.
TWO IDENTIFICATION EXAMPLES
Recently, for distinct reasons, two bridges very different in style and materials and in
which greatly differing techniques were used, were studied. Both are found in Hispanic
territory but far apart from each other, one in the south of the Bética region and the other
in the north of Gallaecia.
The first one is on the Cotobro Culvert spanning the stream or rambla of the same
name, close to the city of Almuñécar, in Granada, which was built to make it easier – if
it proves to be of Roman origin – to reach the Item a Castulone Malacam Road, number
5 on Antonino’s Itinerary, between the mansiones called Saxetanum and Caviclum. It was
constructed with hydraulic masonry using irregular local stone and has a semi-circular
vault, whose span and width are both 4.90 m. The ring is supported on masonry abut-
ments that were constructed in horizontal layers 30 to 50 cm thick [FIG. 15].
Its identification is not easy because of the type of masonry used, of hard to know
origin as it has been carried out in a similar way down through the centuries. However,
it has been considered possible that the abutments and the vault are of Roman origin,
whereas the rest could be a result of later modifications or reconstructions that gave it
its current elevation and gradient. We have based our conclusions on the following argu-
ments:

FIG. 15 Cotobro Culvert
in Almuñécar (Granada).
— A first argument that would suggest that it is Roman bridge is the fact that it is
close to Sexi, the ancient Punic-Roman city, where abundant Roman archaeolog-
ical remains are found.
— The bridge lies on the old road that left Sexi heading west.
— The construction process is similar to the technique used for the aqueduct-bridge
constructed in the vicinity to supply the city. The span of the upper arches on one
of the bridges is the same width (4.90 m) (FERNÁNDEZ CASADO, 2008, 196).
— The way the stonework is laid in tiers, ranging from 30 to 50 cm thick, with the
upper face evened out to a horizontal plane, is similar to other Roman construc-
tions, such as the interior vaults of the Brigantium Lighthouse (A Coruña), the
Segóbriga Baths (Cuenca), the outer walls of the vaulted building in Centcelles
(Tarragona), etc., as well as the masonry of the aforementioned aqueduct.
— The vault’s span and width are the same. This is a feature of the Roman culverts
at San García and San Ciprián along a branch of the road from Milán to León,
number 1 in Antonino’s Itinerary, leading to Segasamunclo Mansion, located on
the Valdemoros Pass on the outskirts of Cerezo de Río Tirón. Furthermore, the
rings on these two culverts are equally 59 cm (two feet) thick which is also the
thickness in the Cotobro Culvert. The equality of the span and width is also a fea-
ture of the crossing works for Road no. 17 from Bracara to Asturica, at San
Lourenço and Ponte do Arquinho, in Portugal. The span of the end arches on Ponte
Freixo are also the same size as their width, 4.70 m.
Decisive data in this regard will be obtained from the result of the dating test carried
out on the binding mortar, using the thermo-luminescence technique.
The second bridge on which the masonry was analysed was the Ponte Vella in Lugo.
The first remnants identified as being Roman were recognised in 1996, and it was in the

summer of 2012 when there was an
opportunity to complete the study of
most of the original masonry that re-
mained, on the occasion of the re-
habilitation works that were being
conducted. The construction of a
cofferdam left part of the Miño
riverbed dry, so it was possible to ex-
cavate around the undermined piers
and get them underpinned again. It
is the bottom part of these piers that FIG. 16 Roman lower body of a pier in A Ponte Vella (Lugo).
still retain most of their Roman ma-
sonry, these consisting of square
stone blocks, the ashlars being
locked together with clamps in the
form of a double dovetail that we as-
sumed to be of timber as there were
no traces left. It was dry-laid, without
rubble, the joints being finely worked
to guarantee good contact, and with
alternating layers of stone blocks laid
with a rope and header bond [FIG. 16].
In spite of having found some
arch voussoirs when excavating the
riverbed around the piers, there is
FIG. 17 Roman stonework with a circular positioning line on its
not enough data to enable us to bed.
know what shape the Roman vaults
were. Plotting marks were detected
however on the ashlars that permitted to find out the dimensions of the pier body: 7 m
width (transverse to the bridge axis) and 4.70 m thickness.
The discovery of two ashlars with rounded faces and three others with circular posi-
tioning lines carved into their beds, made it possible to know that the original cutwaters
were semi-circular, similar to the ones on the Mérida Bridge. A couple of ashlars were
also found with one edge chamfered that could well have been from the cornice. This
type of springer can be seen on the Roman bridges of Cáparra and Salamanca [FIG. 17].
A large number of loose ashlars found on the riverbed, as well as quite a few from the
pier bodies, show evidence of notches to facilitate the use of levers to lay them in place,
which as has already been pointed out, is a singular feature of Roman masonry.
And finally, reference must be made to the discovery of some marks in the form of
letters, an engraving and a rough relief that appears to represent two propitiatory symbols
joined together, like a phallus and the fig, similar to the one that appears on the bridge
over the Guadiana and on the Los Milagros Aqueduct, both in Mérida.
Evidence of all these construction characteristics on the masonry of Ponte Vella in
Lugo confirms beyond all doubt that the bridge is of Roman origin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. P. ADAM: La construcción romana. Materiales y técnicas. León, Editorial de los Oficios, 1996.
S. ALVARADO BLANCO: «A Pontóriga. Sobre los restos de un antiguo puente romano cerca de Sobradelo de Valdeor-
ras». Boletín Auriense, tomo IX, Ourense, 1979.
S. ALVARADO, M. DURÁN and C. NÁRDIZ: Puentes Históricos de Galicia. Santiago, 1989.
J. M.ª ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ: El puente romano de Mérida. Monografías Emeritenses 1. Badajoz, 1983.
M. H. BALANCE: The roman bridges of the Vía Flaminia. Rome, The British School, 1951.
A. CHOISY: El arte de construir en Roma. Madrid, CEHOPU - Instituto Juan de Herrera, [1873] 1999.
H. CÜPPERS: Die Trierer Römerbrücken. Mainz, Verlag Phillip von Zabern,1969.
M. DURÁN FUENTES: La construcción de puentes romanos en Hispania. 2nd Edition. Santiago, Xunta de Galicia,
2005.
C. FERNÁNDEZ CASADO: Historia del puente en España. Puentes Romanos. Madrid, Instituto Eduardo Torroja, 1980.
— Acueductos romanos en España. Madrid, Colegio de Ingenieros de C. C. y P., 2008.
V. GALLIAZZO: Il ponti romani. Venecia, Edizione Canova, 1995.
P. GAZZOLA: Ponte Pietra a Verona. Ponti Romani. I-II. Florence, Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1963.
P. MENDES PINTO: Pontes Romanas de Portugal. Lisbon, Associaçao Juventude e Patrimônio, 1998.
C. O’CONNOR: Roman Bridges. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
A. PEREIRA BRANDÃO: Estradas e pontes romanas. Lisbon, Junta Autónoma de Estradas, 1995.
SEVERAL AUTHORS: «Puentes I», «Puentes II» and «Puentes III». Revista O. P. Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos.
Barcelona, 1991.
PLINY THE YOUNGER: Letters. Translation by Julián González Fernández. Madrid, Editorial Gredos, 2005.
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1997.
Back to Contents

6
Artifex.
Roman Engineering in Spain
BERNARDO REVUELTA POL

Architect. Managing Director of Fundación Juanelo Turriano
INTRODUCTION
The course «Roman Engineering. That the greatness of the empire might be attended with
distinguished authority in its public buildings», held in Segovia and jointly organised by
UNED and Fundación Juanelo Turriano, ended with a visit to the exhibition entitled Ar-
tifex. Roman Engineering in Spain, shown in the recently restored Casa de la Moneda
[Mint]. This exhibition was first opened at the Madrid’s Museum of Archaeology in 2002,
and after being adapted to enable it to travel, it has visited a variety of museums and cul-
tural centres throughout Spain, having been on show at 18 different venues so far.
Along with Fundación Juanelo Turriano, the exhibition was organised by the Min-
istries of Culture and Public Works, in the latter case via CEHOPU, a department of CEDEX
whose collection of mock-ups and models supplied the photographs that are featured in
this article. The curator of the exhibition and source for most of the texts used to prepare
this summary was the Civil Engineer and Professor at Universidad de Granada, Ignacio
González Tascón (1947-2006), whereas the author of this article has been responsible
for its design and setting up only.
The underlying idea behind this exhibition was for it to form part of a larger project
whose aim was to feature the entire history of engineering in Spain, examples of which in-
clude Felipe II. Ingenious Devices and Machines (1998) and Ars Mechanicae. Medieval En-
gineering in Spain (2008), also planned in Fundación by the same authors. The text that
follows is an abbreviated account of Roman Engineering as seen through the Artifex Exhi-
bition, a view that carries all the limitations and determinants inherent to an exhibition
format. Firstly, it has been necessarily foreshortened, which means that certain material of
undoubted value has had to be excluded. Secondly, the consideration that an exhibition of
103
such characteristics must have an educational role that makes it useful and appealing to a
broad target of the general public, but without compromising its scientific rigour. The secret
of its success or failure lies in finding a suitable balance between these two factors.
Furthermore, it happens to be the case that the subject matter being dealt with here,
engineering, is a dynamic reality, a continuity that reaches out through time and space.
Explaining engineering works means that it is necessary to talk about projects, construc-
tion, operation, improvements, adaptation to other uses, connections between some
works with others, integration into more general systems, etc., which involves certain
difficulties, because an exhibition is basically static, although dynamic elements such as
audio-visual aids or models in motion can be utilised. In view of all the aforementioned,
this exhibition, like the other referred to above, places emphasis on engineering as a
process. Therefore, when explaining an arched stone structure, what is stressed is the
decisive role of the carpentry work that is essential for constructing the centring, and if
it is the arcuationis of an aqueduct that are on display, it should not be forgotten that
these are just a small part of a complex water supply system. Although this is self-evident
to the well-informed observer, it is not so obvious to other sectors of the public whose
initial interest may be limited to the exhibit purely as a monument, not utilitarian, time-
less, of Roman works as they have survived until the present time.
The exhibition is organised into the following five areas:

Area I. Construction: materials and machinery.
Area II. Communications: roads, bridges, ports.
Area III. The city and its equipment.
Area IV. Mining and metallurgy.
Area V. Industrial techniques and arts.
Area I. Construction: materials and machinery

The first image that can be seen in this Area and the one that opens the exhibition is
that of a Greek sage, not a Roman one. It is an image that depicts the famous scene in
which a soldier is about to kill Archimedes during the taking of Syracuse, an act that
caused great displeasure to the Roman military leader Marcellus, who was no doubt look-
ing forward to putting the Greek man’s knowledge at his service. A mathematician and
constructor of devices and machines, Archimedes came to epitomise the philosopher of
nature who combined his status as a great thinker with practical activities that we would
now consider to be inherent to civil engineering.
As Professor Alicia Cámara points out in another one of these papers, during the Ren-
aissance, and even afterwards, outstanding engineers were often praised by being com-
pared to Archimedes, of which there are many famous examples, although it is quite
probable that the Greek sage would not have been too pleased about this, given that, ac-
cording to Plutarch, Archimedes considered the work of engineers and other practical
activities to be ignoble and only suitable for artisans.
Such was the dichotomy between intellectual and practical activities, that has per-
vaded history, the first manifestations of which include, amongst others and by way of

example, the explanation of the origins of mathematics. According to Aristotle, mathe-
matics was created by the Egyptian priest caste, which had spare time to devote to intel-
lectual speculation, whereas Herodotus also states that mathematics arose in Egypt, but
for land registry purposes, i.e. the reasons where of a practical nature. Whatever the case
may be, the aim was to make it clear that Rome owed much to Greece in the engineering
field, as well as in many other areas.
It must be pointed out that Roman engineering, in spite of the magnitude of its per-
formance, is not characterised by having made many contributions where purely technical
innovations are concerned. Firstly, the extensive and imaginative use of arches and vaults
are among the few that we can highlight, albeit not as inventions in themselves, and,
secondly, the use of concrete, especially hydraulic concrete.
Arches consisting of stone voussoirs supported by one centring assembly during the
construction process opened up hitherto unknown potential for architectural and engi-
neering works, as is the case with bridges. It is not known for certain who invented this
wonderful idea, although the first known arches with voussoirs where there is no doubt
about their construction period date back to midway through the 3rd Century B.C. and
seem to have appeared in the regions of Italy that were greatly influenced by the Etr-
uscans. Nevertheless, the idea was successful and rapidly spread not only throughout
the Western world but also in the Hellenic kingdoms of the East.
The arch construction process, once the piers on which it was to be supported had
been put in place, involved the erection of a robust and stable wooden centring, which
was laid in a suitable position with the aid of scaffolding and hoisting machines.
Exactly the same procedure was
used to construct barrel vaults and
groined arches, formed by the en-
counter between two orthogonal barrel
vaults and rarely used owing to the dif-
ficulties involved in cutting the stone
in the shape required and with the pre-
cision needed to construct the en-
counter. The first groined arches per-
formed with blocks of worked stone
appeared at a later date – midway
through the 3rd Century A.D. – in a
far-flung corner of the Empire, in Syria,
the first known example of this tech-
nique in Italy being the Mausoleum of
Theodoric, as late as 530 A.D. However,
in Hispania, an exceptional granite con-
struction of this type is to be found in
the quadrifons arch in Cáparra
(Cáceres) dating back much earlier (69-
96 A.D.), a scale model of which is on FIG. 1 Model of the quadrifons arch in Cáparra
display at the exhibition [FIG. 1]. (Cáceres).
ARTIFEX. ROMAN ENGINEERING IN SPAIN 105

The invention of concrete, a
doughy product, malleable and easy
to mould, that hardens to the consis-
tency of stone in contact with air, is
a genuinely Roman achievement.
For its fabrication, a wooden coffer
work is used, an idea borrowed from
the Carthaginians, and lime mortar
as a binder which, together with the
aggregates and water, made a plain
concrete known as opus caementi-
cium. However, the concretes made
with lime only cure when in contact
with air, so they cannot be used in
submerged works, so for these types
of works Roman technicians experi-
mented with manufacturing special
concretes that could harden while
under water. In an empirical way,
which still amazes us, they discov-
ered that if they replaced the usual
FIG. 2 Model of a crane operated by a treadmill.
sand in the lime mortar with some
dark ash of volcanic origin that they
called pulvis puteolanus [pozzolanic
ash], a miracle took place, and they obtained a special mortar that, when poured over
the aggregates, was able to set and harden under water. Pozzolanic ash or pozzolan was
only used on exceptional occasions, because transporting it from afar made the works
more expensive. It is the earliest record of hydraulic concrete in history, and there is no
evidence of another case – manufactured artificially – until 1824, when the English in-
ventor Joseph Aspdin patented Portland cement.
The Romans used many other construction materials (timber, ceramics, glass, etc.),
one of which is particularly worth mentioning because of its singularity, lapis specularis
[selenite], a transparent crystalline gypsum that is easy to exfoliate, whose main quarries
were in Hispania, close to the city of Segobriga (Saelices, Cuenca) and used, as an alter-
native to glass, for making the enclosure on ports and windows.
We will bring this brief summary to an end by mentioning the auxiliary machines
used for construction purposes, such as cranes, lathes or block and tackle to increase
the force, bucket wheels, spandrels, draining machines, cocks, Ctesibius’ pumps or
Archimedes’ screws, devices already known and used in Greece and Egypt and whose
design and construction were tasks commissioned to the mechanicus, the engineer
whose job was to construct devices and machines. The descriptions given by Vitruvius
have been used to make some of the scale models of these devices, although in some
cases it has been possible to study specific examples from their archaeological re-
mains [FIG. 2].

Area II. Communications:
roads, bridges, ports
The communications that were made possi-
ble by the Empire, which provided its «back-
bone», as Carlos Caballero entitles his paper,
are viewed in this exhibition from the per-
spective of the infrastructures, emphasis
being placed on their technical and con-
struction aspects. As far as roads and land ve-
hicles are concerned, we can start by
mentioning here the model of the odometer,
which according to Vitruvius’ description
was a sort of cart that had a device attached
to one of its wheels, consisting of gears that
enable the user to know automatically when
the vehicle had covered one mile, or five FIG. 3 Model of the odometer.
thousand feet, which is the equivalent of
1,481 m [FIG. 3].
The most outstanding aspect of bridges, which were extensively dealt with in the paper
by Manuel Durán, is the description, by means of a model, of the construction process
for the pier of a bridge spanning muddy and not very solid terrain. The model shows a
cofferdam consisting of a dual palisade of wooden piles, the inside of which has been
filled with well-rolled clayey earth, which makes it possible to create an enclosed water-
proof zone from which the water can be extracted by a variety of draining devices. The
foundation that will support the pier has been laid on the bottom, this being half-com-
pleted in the model. Unfinished stone walls can be seen and these also act as permanent
formwork for the concrete filling. On the water there is a raft with a hammer to drive in
the row of piles for the next cofferdam [FIG. 4].
FIG. 4 Model of
a bridge pier under
construction.

FIG. 5 Model of
the centring for the
reconstruction of Al-
cántara Bridge.
FIG. 6 Model of a
coclea, the
Archimedes’ screw
or Egyptian snail.
Other interesting models include the one that shows the centring that was designed
in 1856 by the engineer Alejandro Millán for the reconstruction of the Alcántara Bridge
and the model of a coclea or Archimedes’ screw, a machine for raising liquids, which is
still used today. In this case, as in many others, it must be stressed that these machines
from Ancient Times are still utilised now with the same mechanical arrangement, albeit
constructed with other materials and driven by other sources of energy, which is the main
difference [FIGS. 5 and 6].

FIG. 7 Model of the hypothetical original
state of Tower of Hercules.
The Brigantium Lighthouse or Tower of Hercules is a singular example of the infra-

structure used for maritime communications that still remains in Spain. It is the only
Roman lighthouse that is still used for navigation aid purposes. The name of its designer
is also known, the architectus Gaius Sevius Lupus, from Aeminum [Coimbra], in Lusi-
tania.
The Tower of Hercules was originally a rough, 3-storey concrete structure, the first
two floors each being about 9.5 m high, the top one being 13.5 m. The three levels were
linked only by an external ramp that was supported between the central core, which is
the part that survives, and an outer wall. It was abandoned for centuries, until in 1685
the architect Amaro Antúnez carried out some refurbishments that enabled it to be
adapted to its former use. As the exterior wall (and thus the ramp) had already disap-
peared a long time before, an interior wooden staircase was built up to the top of the
tower, for which purpose Antúnez had to drill into the concrete vaults. A much more am-
bitious modernisation project was carried out between 1785 and 1791 by the engineer
Eustaquio Giannini, who replaced the humble wooden staircase with a stone one, which
is what is used today to reach the top. The outer wall was also covered with granite, leav-
ing a narrow stretch of stone still visible to remind visitors that the ramp had once existed.
That was when a smart flashing light was added, thus returning the tower to its former
glory and function as a lighthouse.
There is a model exhibited of the lighthouse, cut to show the strong outer wall and
the ramp used to carry firewood up to the top platform of the tower, where a fire was lit
to warn vessels [FIG. 7].

Area III. The city and its equipment
This section basically concerns the systems that supplied and distributed water for urban
use; these were complex systems that required Roman engineers to make the most of
their skill and, as a result, they have left some of the most outstanding Roman works that
still survive today. The subject is explained in detail in the papers prepared by Alonso
Zamora and José María Álvarez Martínez.
By way of an introduction to the subject, a few instruments are exhibited that were
used in the essential surveying work required for an aqueduct layout, including the choro-
bates [water level], an instrument fitted with a water level that we know about thanks to
the description given by Vitruvius in his famous treatise. It is composed of a wooden
frame 20 feet long (nearly 6 m), meaning that it is heavy and difficult to transport, which
it makes up for by being remarkably accurate with its measurements [FIG. 8].
The construction of cisterns that collected and stored rainwater so it could be dis-
tributed to nearby homes and public buildings, is one of the simplest water supply pro-
cedures that should be mentioned. The best kept records of this type of works in Hispania
are for Emporion (Ampurias, Girona), a settlement that did not have a public aqueduct
with water supplied by ducts either in the Greek polis period or in the Roman period.
Twenty-seven cisterns have been excavated in the Roman urbs, all of which are of the
underground type and covered to prevent dirt from entering and the sun’s action from
causing the water quality to deteriorate.
Roman tanks are easy to distinguish from the Greek ones, which are long and narrow
and just covered with one simple stone slab. However, Roman cisterns are much wider
and deeper, because their tops covered with lime concrete vaulting enabled them to span
greater distances. Furthermore, the vaults
transmit horizontal forces to the upper part
of the works, so it is possible to dispense with
inner diaphragms or ties that were frequently
used for Greek cisterns to prevent collapse
caused by earth pressure when they were
empty. This new type of Roman cistern, wider
and deeper, was much more rational and eco-
nomical, in view of the fact that it was possi-
ble to store a much greater volume of water
with the same surface area of side wall.
Although the use of wells and cisterns in
roman cities was widespread, the Romans
preferred water to be transferred publicly via
aqueductus. These were works of great polit-
ical significance, generally financed with
funds from the aerarium (public treasury).
The design was left to the architectus or hy-
draulic engineer, who could rely for their ex-
FIG. 8 Model of a chorobate. ecution on specialists in different subjects.

Before water could be supplied to towns a suitable source from which to draw it off
(caput aquae) was required. Sometimes fontes (springs) were used directly as they rose
to the surface, as long as their flow rates were sufficient to guarantee supply, even during
the summer months. This was the solution adopted in the city of Gades (Cadiz), which
drew off its water supply from the distant but excellent Tempul Springs.
However, the Romans resorted more frequently to groundwater as the source, and
this was generally drawn off by excavating galleries, which was already an old technique
in Roman times. This was the system used for the Segobriga or Sexi (Almuñécar,
Granada) Aqueducts. An in-depth working knowledge of the terrain was required to locate
the groundwater, hence the importance of the aquilegus, an expert water diviner able to
detect hidden springs and to assess the quantity and quality of their waters. Nevertheless,
in most cases, the engineers resorted to extracting the water flowing in rivers or streams
(fluminus cursus), which was diverted to a brickwork channel, either using a diversion
dam or small weir, or by means of an outtake from a reservoir.
When looking for water supplies on the Iberian Peninsula, Roman technicians steered
clear of the major rivers because of their irregular flows and the seriousness of their flood-
ings, which could easily wash away the works erected on the watercourses. That is why
Zaragoza was not supplied with the water from the Ebro, Toledo was not supplied with
resources from the Tagus, Mérida did not receive the waters of the Guadiana and Córdoba
was not supplied by the Guadalquivir. Instead of using the major rivers, they preferred to
tap the waters of minor rivers and streams, whose water discharge was carefully studied.
Once the river course had been selected, in order to channel the water to the artificial
duct that would convey it to the desired destination – also for irrigation or industrial pur-
poses – the most reasonable economic solution was to erect a saeptum (dam) in the
riverbed, generally not very high. These were minor works, sometimes consisting of loose
stones secured with tree branches, others were made of masonry or stonework, whose
purpose was not to store the water, but to divert it into the channel. The dam that diverts
the waters of River Frío into the Segovia Aqueduct is a well conserved example.
When the water supply could not be guaranteed all the year round, saepta (dams)
were built for regulation, storing the water in the rainy months so that it could be dis-
tributed throughout the year. Rather than choosing the beds of large rivers, Roman tech-
nicians often preferred sites with natural dips in the terrain, so they could erect the dams
in dry conditions and then fill the areas behind them by diverting the water from the
nearby rivers or streams into the hollow, thereby creating a reservoir. The importance,
diversity and state of conservation of the dams in Hispania was much better than any
other region in the Roman world, mainly because of mountainous nature of the Iberian
Peninsula and the excellent quarries providing stone for construction work.
The smaller Roman dams, not very high, were built with continuous masonry walls.
should they exceed some 2 m high, the engineers would find ways of saving on stone and
concrete by replacing the thick solid wall with a thinner one, reinforcing the downstream
face with buttresses that helped to withstand the water pressure. The Araya Dam, near
Mérida, with a maximum of 4 m high, is an example of this wall and buttress type.
Considerable progress was made when flat walls were replaced by small arches, which
are better able to withstand the water pressure, enabling the designer to increase the gap

between buttresses. The Esparragalejo Dam, also close to Mérida and just over 5 m. high,
is the best conserved dam of this kind, i.e. multiple arch buttress dams.
A third way of lightening dams and saving on materials was devised by replacing the
quarry stone and concrete with compacted earth. In these cases a slender wall was erected,
to which an earth shell was attached, adjoining the downstream face, which helped to
withstand the water pressure when the reservoir was full and the pressure was at its max-
imum. The Proserpina and Cornalvo Dams are of this type – wall and earth shell –, both
being 21 m high and constructed as part of the supply infrastructure for Augusta Emerita
(Mérida). Models of these dams can be seen in the exhibition [FIGS. 9 and 10].
In the case of not very high dams, a single opening or a rectangular outlet made in
the dam body was the only device needed for the extraction of water from the reservoir,
enabling it to flow into the channel. However, major works required the water to flow
out of large towers through a series of thick lead pipes located at different heights, con-
trolled by stopcocks.
FIG. 9 Model of Proserpina Dam, Mérida (Badajoz).
FIG. 10 Model of Cornalvo Dam, Mérida (Badajoz).

An aqueduct could only be
constructed once the layout (di-
rectura) had been defined with
great precision, after careful level-
ling, making sure that the drop
was sufficient to enable the water
to reach the city by gravity.
The water flowed down a
specus (masonry channel) from the
head catchment as far as the city’s
distribution cistern or castellum
aquae [water tower]. These chan-
nels varied greatly in length de- FIG. 11 Model of Segovia Aqueduct (Segovia).
pending on the place where abun-
dant drinking water was found.
The longest construction of this
type in Hispania was the Gades
Aqueduct, approximately 75 km
long.
The specus was invariably cov-
ered over in order to prevent pol-
lution, and it ran down a gradient
that was sufficiently steep to make
up for losses due to friction, and
the slope was as uniform as possi-
ble. To achieve this, at times it ran
underground, but sometimes it
was raised above ground, and this
FIG. 12 Model of Las Ferreras Aqueduct (Tarragona).
was done by means of masonry
walls (substructiones), if the height
that had to be cleared was limited,
or arches (arcuationes), if the ex-
cessive height made this advisable.
One single row of arches was nor-
mally sufficient, but in exceptional
circumstances, to span gullies or
river valleys, several superimposed
levels of arches were erected,
which led to the construction of
some of the most beautiful engi-
neering works ever constructed,
which are often identified as the
most characteristic element of
Roman aqueducts [FIGS. 11, 12 and 13]. FIG. 13 Model of Los Milagros Aqueduct , Mérida (Badajoz).

The impurities or limus (silt) that the water entrained was generally removed in the
final stretch of the channel, before entering the city. This activity took place in the piscina
limaria [settling pool], a decanting or desanding tank, where the hydraulic section was
greatly increased, the flow velocity decreasing thus enabling the sand and silt to settle
on the bottom. Free of impurities, the water could flow into the large distribution cistern,
located at the highest part of the city.
Whenever the ducts had to cross dips or deep canyons, the running water channel
solution was often given up in favour of the siphon, which ensured that the water was
piped at a pressure greater than atmospheric pressure.
Flowing from the channel to the siphon required the construction of two transition
boxes, where the change of hydrodynamic system took place, from free flow to pressure
piping. The most important and largest box is the one for the inflow to the siphon, which
has to guarantee that the pressurized pipe is always loaded, so that air bubbles cannot
enter that might cause turbulence and even throttle the flow. Furthermore, it has to be
equipped with an overflow (ladronera or almenara) to remove surplus water. The outflow
box is usually simpler, all that is required for it being to be located at a suitable elevation
in order to enable the water to flow into the channel at a suitable velocity.
A wide variety of materials were used to construct the siphon piping. Ceramic ducts
(tubuli) were used for Sexi; lead piping (fistulae) was the solution adopted for Caesarau-
gusta (Zaragoza), and even stone blocks with drill holes can be seen in situ for bringing
water to Gades, much of which flowed in siphon.
The most fragile part of a siphon is the lowest part, where the pressure is at its highest.
It has to be absolutely flat and horizontal to prevent air bubbles from being trapped that
could throttle the flow. The Romans constructed a carefully levelled «venter» at this part,
which generally fulfilled the twofold function of being a bridge and serving to support
the siphon piping.
The castellum aquae or water distribution cistern was then used to send the water
(erogatio aquarum) to the various districts in the city, by means of lead pipes, which con-
veyed the resources to the public baths and troughs and fountains where the citizens col-
lected their supplies. As the city grew, the water also reached the major public buildings
(such as theatres, amphitheatres and circuses), to the industries that required it, to the
most luxurious houses (domus) and, sometimes, to the basements of the humbler
dwellings with several storeys or insulae.
The users paid on the basis of the modulus or bore of the piping contracted, the basic
unit being the quinarius, which was a pipe whose inner diameter was 5/4 of a finger (dig-
itus), i.e. around 2.3 cm.
To ensure that the resource was fairly shared out, the water pressure had to be more
or less similar at all outtakes, so every so often surge tanks (columnarias) were provided
to prevent the districts at a lower altitude from receiving more than their fair share of
water.
The water officials fitted a special pipe called a calix, generally made of bronze, in
the intakes in order to prevent abuses and fraud, which often took place by citizens re-
placing the contracted piping with other pipes with a larger diameter; this pipe was sealed
externally with complicated bossage to make forgery more difficult.

Roman engineers were always concerned about two aspects of water associated with
the health of the cities’ inhabitants: the quality (bonitas) of the drinking water and the
advisability of rapidly draining away the waste water beyond the urban zone to prevent
disease from spreading. With the latter objective in mind they constructed model sani-
tation networks, which were not bettered for many centuries. The same careful levelling
and measurement processes used by the surveyors to convey water to the city and dis-
tribute it to the numerous districts, also served to protect and construct the underground
galleries that made up the sewer network that enabled the waste water and sewage to
flow away from the city, and with it the filth that it contained.
Water from latrines (latrinae) in houses and public places [foricae], also reached the
sewer network, arriving in much greater quantities from theatres, amphitheatres or cir-
cuses, as they filled up with spectators when shows were on. The sewage system also
took away the waste water from polluting industries such as the dye-works (tinctoriae) or
the factories where cloth (fullonicae) was milled.
Any rainwater collected in the street gutters and the surplus water that flowed out of
the troughs, fountains and nymphaeums also ended up in the network. Frontinus, in his
famous technical treatise De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae, pointed out the advisability of
letting the surplus water that overflowed from the fountains serve, «not only the health-
iness of our city, but also to clean the gutters and sewers».
Area IV. Mining and metallurgy

Although there were mines whose function was not to extract minerals from which metals
could be obtained – such as ornamental stone and lapis specularis –, the aim of most of
these exploitations was to find and obtain one of the seven metals known to the Romans:
gold, silver, lead, copper, tin, iron or mercury. This explains why the subject of metallurgy
and mining appear together in this section.
The Las Médulas gold mines stand out from the many other Roman mine exploitation,
because procedures were used that radically changed the landscape, as can be seen in
the audio-visual aid that is shown in the exhibition and as the numerous people who visit
this district in the Province of Leon can bear witness. The gold extraction method, which
Pliny the Younger called ruina montium or hill destruction, was based upon erosion, or
perhaps pressure, caused by water, which was poured in large quantities from tanks
through underground galleries. The water for these headwater tanks were supplied by a
network of channels simply dug in the ground and that were not covered over in any way.
The force of the water knocked over, washed away and decomposed the gold conglomer-
ate «The mountain, cracked open, collapses under its own weight and comes crashing
down making a noise difficult for the human mind to imagine» (Natural History, 33.70-
78). The gold is subsequently decanted, and the small stones removed, in washing chan-
nels. It must be pointed out that the amount of gold obtained was minimal if this quantity
is compared with the thousands of tonnes of earth moved, although it would undoubtedly
have been profitable in the economic context of the period.
The mine drain pumping machinery was an essential part of mining technology. One
of the models made for the exhibition is a rota (bucket wheel). Very little is known about

whether the origins of this device are Hellenic or
whether it dates back even further. Vitruvius de-
scribes it clearly and the fact that it has been found
in many archaeological sites serves as proof that its
use in Hispania was widespread. The set of rotae
(bucket wheels) found in the Riotinto Mines
(Huelva) are a good example of the perfection of
Roman mine-draining techniques. They consisted
of at least eight pairs of wheels, each one of more
than 4 m in diameter, raising the water 30 m. This
scale model (1:2.5) is based on the data taken from
the remains studied [FIG. 14].
Another singular exhibit is the replica, in the
same material – bronze – and identical dimensions,
of the Ctesibius pump, which is kept at the National
Archaeological Museum in Madrid. The Hellenic
FIG. 14 Model of a draining device sage Ctesibius of Alexandria is considered to have
(bucket wheel) from the Huelva mines. invented the sipho or dual-effect piston pump, i.e.
suction-impeller, midway through the 3rd Century
B.C. No texts written by the inventor remain, al-
though there are several descriptions of the ma-
chine, including articles in the Pneumatica by Hero
of Alexandria or De Architectura by Vitruvius. The
latter gives an accurate and detailed description of
the components that constitute a pump of this type,
indicating that the device raises the water to a great
height and is cast in bronze. Two identical cylinders,
FIG. 15 Replica of the Ctesibius pump each one with its own piston, converge on a shared
from Sotiel-Coronada.
chamber that contains the valves that open and
close to make the water-raising process continuous.
The machine was operated by hand, by means of a
wooden lever with a reciprocating movement. In an
alternating pace, the water ascended up one or the
other of the two pistons, being distributed from the
valve chamber. At least two pumps of this kind have
been preserved in Spain, one made of lead, found
in the lead mines of the Sierra de Cartagena, in
Murcia, and the other made of bronze, found in the
Sotiel-Coronada Mine, in Huelva. In the Romano
Oiasso Museum in Irún there is a valve, identical in
every way to those that were cast for this reproduc-
tion, that, once completed, was tested to verify that
it operates correctly in the way described by Vitru-
vius [FIG. 15].
FIG. 16 Stages in the casting of bronze using the lost wax procedure.
In compliance with the criterion expressed in the introduction concerning the im-
portance of considering engineering as a process, the technique of casting with the «lost
wax procedure» is explained, and visitors are taken through the nine steps sequence fol-
lowed to make a bronze sculpture, for which purpose the head of a nobleman dating back
to the 1st Century B.C. is used as the model; this sculpture was found in the necropolis
at Cabezo de Azaila (Teruel) and is preserved at the National Archaeological Museum.
The stages begin with the head modelled in clay by the artist and this is followed by the
preparation of successive gypsum or mortar moulds and countermoulds until the end
product emerges. The widespread use of lost-wax bronze casting became an art and tech-
nique during Roman times that enabled the artist to make a relatively numerous series
of copies in bronze at a reasonable price, from one single sculpture modelled in clay,
These pieces, together with the aforementioned Ctesibius pump, were created expressly
for the exhibition by the bronze-casters Marisa and Miguel Ángel Codina [FIG. 16].

Area V. Industrial techniques and arts
In this final part, and to round off the exhibition, certain industrial or craftsmanship ac-
tivities are shown that, involving agriculture, fishing or livestock, are of special interest
due to their characteristics, as they give us insight into some of the everyday customs of
Roman civilisation.
Rome, which raised the sumptuous arts to cult status, revealed a liking for the most
expensive and exquisite dyes in their clothing and the textiles that they used to adorn
their homes. The city of Rome obtained the very best raw materials from among the ones
that could be found in each one of the Empire’s provinces and made the most exotic
products from the Far East arrive along the silk routes. Numa Pompilius, the legendary
king of Rome (c. 715 - c. 672 B.C.) is considered to have set up the first craftsmen’s
guilds, including the Collegium tinctorum, where practicing of the profession was struc-
tured and legislated. It was split into categories: the infectores, who created the colours,
and the offectores, whose job was to re-dye worn or faded garments. The infectores had
their own specialities depending on the techniques that were required to handle the dif-
ferent raw materials, such as the flammarii, that dyed red from a blond root and the ker-
mes insect, the crocotarii, that dyed yellow with saffron, or the purpurarii, that dyed
purple with sea snails.
The social status of the owner of an officina tinctoria [dye-works] was that of a re-
spectable and well-off citizen who had at his service, the workers, often slaves, who car-
ried out the physical work. In Hispania, the main archaeological remains of a Roman
officina tinctoria recovered and documented are the Barcino Dye-Works in Barcelona,
dating back to the second half of the 2nd Century A.D.
Apart from use in the dye-works, tannins were utilised in the manufacture of atra-
mentum, the black ink for writing purposes. The preparation process involved crushing
products rich in tannin, such as oak apples or grape skin, boiling them in water, adding
iron sulphate or acetate and, once the black ink had been obtained, it was thickened with
gum Arabic. Papyrus, amongst other materials, was used for writing on, and this was ob-
tained from an aquatic plant that grows spontaneously in Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia
and along the banks of the River Nile. Although the invention is Egyptian, the Romans
also used it to write on. At that time there was considerable trade in papyrus throughout
the Mediterranean, it being a major industry in Rome. In about the 2nd Century A.D. pa-
pyrus began to challenge parchment (charta pergamena), which was manufactured with
different types of skin. Around the 4th Century A.D. papyrus gradually fell into disuse.
Glass is a material obtained artificially from three basic ingredients that are melted
at high temperatures in special furnaces. Most of the mixture is composed of clean sand
abundant in many parts. The second ingredient in importance is a fusion agent – soda
or potash – which is needed to lower the melting point and save fuel. In the analyses of
Hispano-Roman glass hardly any potash is detected, but there is plenty of soda, which
was obtained by burning types of plants frequently found in brine basins in hot zones,
known as salsola soda or barilla plants. The third ingredient in glass was limestone, which
turns to caustic lime or quicklime into the furnace, used to make sure the glass is not al-
tered by moisture and other corrosive agents. For many centuries only small pieces of

glass were manufactured, until midway through the 1st Century B.C., the new technique
of blown glass appeared in the Syria-Palestine Region, first blown in the air and, soon
afterwards, inside moulds, which made it easy to manufacture on a large scale, jars, bot-
tles, glasses, jugs and other types of containers, such as cinerary urns.
Since time immemorial fish was cured, so that it could be consumed without having
to depend on irregular catches. The traditional fish preserving process involved drying
the fish in the open air or smoking it, although it was also kept in salt and brine or, once
cooked, conserved in oil or vinegar. There were many brine factories throughout the
Mediterranean, but particularly on the southern coast of Spain – Cádiz, Málaga, Carta-
gena – the main brine exporter to Rome. Garum, a salted and highly-spiced fish paste
was one of the main cured fish products of the period. It could be kept for a long time
and was sent by sea to Rome, where it was greatly appreciated.
There were important garum factories in Hispania in Sexi, Baelo Claudia (Bolonia,
Cádiz), Barcino or Cartago Nova (Cartagena), where they manufactured garum sociorum
[garum of the allies] using the scomber, a type of mackerel, a fish that has lent its name
to the present Murcian island of Escombreras. With a view to ensuring that the fish re-
mained fresh for the longest possible time, they were kept alive in those factories and
fattened until they were killed in large tanks full of salt water that were known as piscina
amara or piscina salsa, which are also hydraulic structures. Garum was exported in very
distinctive amphorae, via wholesalers who dealt with this product.
This visit to Artifex. Ingeniería romana en España would not be complete without
mentioning the book of the same title that accompanies it and that is not merely a cata-
logue of exhibits, since it provides a greater in-depth insight into the exhibition and elab-
orates upon the matters addressed therein in a different format.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARISTOTLE: Metaphysics. Buenos Aires, Espasa Calpe. 1943.

M. J. BERNÁRDEZ and J. C. GUISADO: «Las explotaciones mineras de lapis specularis en Hispania», Artifex. Ingeniería
romana en España, Ministerios de Cultura y Fomento. Madrid. 2002, pages 273-298.
MARISA and MIGUEL ÁNGEL CODINA: «La fundición de bronce a la cera perdida», Artifex. Ingeniería romana en Es-
paña, Ministerios de Cultura y Fomento. Madrid, 2002, pages 299-302.
J. FERNÁNDEZ PÉREZ: «Algunas especies vegetales de uso industrial en la época romana», Artifex. Ingeniería romana
en España, Ministerios de Cultura y Fomento. Madrid, 2002, pages 315-330.
T. F. GLICK: «La tecnología del siglo XVI en España: algunas observaciones», Fundación Juanelo Turriano, 1987-
2012, Fundación Juanelo Turriano. Madrid, 2012, pages 29-39.
I. GONZÁLEZ TASCÓN: «La Ingeniería Civil Romana», Artifex. Ingeniería romana en España, Ministerios de Cultura
y Fomento. Madrid, 2002, pages 33-176.
I. GONZÁLEZ TASCÓN and I. VELÁZQUEZ: Ingeniería romana en Hispania. Historia y técnicas constructivas. Madrid,
Fundación Juanelo Turriano, 2005.
HERODOTO: Los Nueve Libros de la Historia. Biblioteca Virtual Antorcha, 2006.
A. ROQUERO: «Tintorería en la antigua Roma. Una tecnología al servicio de las artes suntuarias», Artifex. Ingeniería
romana en España, Ministerios de Cultura y Fomento. Madrid, 2002, pages 353-382.
F. J. SÁNCHEZ-PALENCIA and I. SASTRE: «La red hidráulica en las minas romanas de oro del noroeste hispano: Las
Médulas», Artifex. Ingeniería romana en España, Ministerios de Cultura y Fomento. Madrid, 2002, pages 241-
254.
Back to Contents

7
Ingenious comparisons:
the look of the Renaissance*
ALICIA CÁMARA MUÑOZ

Professor of Art History
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)
«If we come to Spain, we will find traces of them showing how great
they were, such as the Alcántara Bridge and the Segovia Aqueduct,
that amazing construction that they created just to support a water
duct to supply the city»1.
Those words by Cristóbal de Villalón in 1539, the year of his Ingenious comparison be-
tween old and new, associated the engineering works of Roman Hispania with other con-
served works from ancient times that were even more famous, but also wrote about the
relocation of St. Peter’s Obelisk, an engineering work admired by all the men of its times.
Comparisons were inevitable … Had the same heights of perfection been achieved? ...
Had they been exceeded? When considering the way that the Spanish Renaissance looked
upon the engineering of ancient times we are going to resort to the testimonies that we
have been given by both historians and engineers, and find out that there was a shared
view, invariably one of admiration, but also diverse in its historical and scientific rigour.
Myth will coexist with history and with the genesis of archaeology, and engineers will
seek an emulation of those ancient works whose remains were visible in many places,
because they felt an essential and very active part of an empire that had surpassed the
ancient ones.
Comparison as a method of acquiring knowledge was widely used in the Renaissance.
That is why Cristóbal de Villalón felt the need to mediate in the controversy between
those who considered that «wise men in science and arts, both speculative and mechan-
ical» of the time went at least one step beyond their ancient counterparts, on the one
hand, and those who begged to differ, on the other hand, the latter basing their conflicting
121
FIG. 1 Close-up of the device by
Juanelo Turriano on the view of Toledo in-
cluded in G. BRAUN and F. HOGENBERG:
Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1572-1617, on an
engraving by JORIS HOEFNAGEL from 1566.
opinion on the history that they read about antiquity, to announce in the prologue that
«God should be thanked for each of the two ages for having formed them so well»2.
This sort of pact between old and new after having compared them, in which each
was equally admirable, satisfied everybody, but most of all it served to elevate the present
time, i.e. the 16th Century, to the same level of universal greatness as Roman Antiquity.
Furthermore, the term «ingeniosa» [ingenious], which is the word that appears in the
title of Villalón’s work, has a host of meanings, because in man’s «ingenio» [ingenuity]
lies the ability to invent. In this sense, in Nebrija’s Dictionary, Dictionarium latino his-
panicum, the term «ingenium» means not only «nature or natural genius», but also «by
the natural condition of every individual». In that dictionary, «ingenero» [engineering] is
the action that is developed as a result of ingenium [ingenuity], and is translated by «en-
gendrar adentro» [to breed within]. We can deduce that the term «ingeniero» [engineer]
came into existence during the Renaissance to refer to men with natural ingenuity that
enables their knowledge to lead to this talent for fathering or creating things3. Sometime
later, in 1611, the following appeared in the Tesoro de la lengua castellana by Covarrubias,
«we use the term ingeniero [engineer] to refer to he who manufactures machines to de-
fend himself from the enemy, and to attack him … The same machines invented with
great skill we call ingenios [devices], such as the device that conveys water up from the
River Tagus to Toledo’s Alcazar, invented by Ianelo, another Archimedes… Finally, any-
thing that is manufactured with understanding and that makes it easier to do what, when
using force, was difficult and costly, is called ingenio» [FIG. 1].
With respect to the extraordinary value bestowed on an engineer’s expertise in the
Renaissance, it should not be forgotten that the seven wonders of the world, which Vil-
lalón also wrote about, were large buildings, walls, or the Colossus of Rhodes and, we
might add, the eighth wonder of the world, as the Monastery of El Escorial was called
years after, owes part of its sobriquet to what we now call engineering, given that it would
not have been possible to construct it without the machines and devices used, If it was
possible to construct it in six years and its «grandeur surpasses everything that Antiquity
enjoyed», as Vander Hammen recalls4, it was thanks to such devices.
Now that we are fully focused on ingenios [devices], ingenieros [engineers] and on
the ingeniosas [ingenious] comparisons between old and new, we can start to consider
how the Spanish Renaissance viewed that old world engineering, of which so many rem-

nants are still with us today. One exceptional source are the cities’ historians, a breed
that enjoyed unprecedented success in the 16th Century, and even more so in the first
half of the 17th Century, when all cities wanted to have their story told, and sought their
greatness not only in the saints who protected them, their famous citizens or major his-
toric events, triumphant entries, etc., but also in mythical foundations entrusted to heroes
who faded away in the obscurity of time, and in what remained of that ancient world,
those public buildings that could turn them into new Romes or new Troys.
We are not going to dwell on those archaeological remains and the general appraisal
they received and neither are we going to be speaking about antiques collections, what we
are going to do is talk about cities and public works, and how historians and engineers
viewed those works. Because the second observation platform is the one that concerns itself
with the writings and works of the engineers themselves. The vision of those buildings and
infrastructures is sometimes lost in the written accounts of the era, whose authors were
more preoccupied with reflecting other perceptions of Antiquity. That is why it is necessary
to use the testimonies of the engineers, and that is why it is necessary to go back to Vitruvius,
whose definition of architect enables us to so often identify the engineers of the Renaissance
as men who possessed universal knowledge, but also because his definition of public works
requires us to redefine certain traditional parameters used when studying the history of ar-
chitecture. In the translation of Vitruvius’ work undertaken by Miguel de Urrea, published
in 1582, we can read «the public buildings have three different perspectives. One is for de-
fence, another is for religion and the third one is for opportunity or recreation», and he
goes on to explain each one of them. Renaissance engineers took care of all of them, espe-
cially the ones concerned with defence, essential in a Europe at war, but also the second
one, as engineers have been involved in the construction of many churches in the modern
era, and of course the third perspective, which translated as being preoccupied with «com-
fort», the translator going on in detail: «they are ports, markets, gates, baths, theatres, clois-
ters, and all those other things of that kind, which are usually built in public places», and
all of them must be given strength, utility and beauty5 [FIGS. 2 A and B].
FIG. 2 A & B M. VITRUVIUS: De

Architectura. Alcalá de Henares,
1582. Front cover and aqueduct.
INGENIOUS COMPARISONS: THE LOOK OF THE RENAISSANCE 123

Strength guaranteed that constructions like aqueducts were still being used in the
th
16 Century. Therefore, it was not in order to talk about conserving them in the same
way as historians and clever archaeologists did with other types of works where the only
real value was preserving the memory of the past, and that, nevertheless, proved to be
excellent sources of materials for new works. A bridge, a road or an aqueduct could not
be turned into a quarry. They were still in use. We know that the Segovia Aqueduct was
utilised for centuries, and the Mérida Aqueduct brings to mind Ambrosio de Morales
who, when Pedro de Esquivel was in that city studying the measurements used by the
Romans, he used the distances between the aqueduct arches or openings to find out ex-
actly how long a Roman foot was, discovering that it was somewhat longer than the old
Spanish foot. At that time, «the water that now serves the city, comes from one league
away via an old Roman building, although some parts of it are destroyed, and repaired in
our times»6. Accounts like this reveal to us that in matters concerning public works, an-
other value, no less admirable, was added to the Vitruvian ones of utilitas, firmitas, venus-
tas, namely the value of historic reconstruction of the past under a scientific mentality.
THE HISTORIANS
According to historians, in the 16th Century the Spanish monarchy was at its height, be-
cause «The Crown and the Empire tightened its control over the land, having taken pos-
session of the Kingdom of Portugal», so Felipe II «with his arms and Empire embraced
the entire roundness of Earth». Thus the Spanish Crown had surpassed «all the monar-
chies of the old days: Medos, Persians, Babylonians, Greeks or Romans»7. An Empire
that could outdo all the empires of the past, and especially the Roman Empire, was worth
having its history recorded, often resorting to those ingenious comparisons, all the more
so where engineering works were concerned.
Let’s begin with the false accounts of history that, with scientific pretext, sought to
discover the origins of Spain and its cities. Hercules had been the major founder of Span-
ish cities; however, as Luis Ariz pointed out in his Historia de la ciudad de Ávila, dated
1607, the first thing that had to be found out was which of the forty-three Herculeses
was the oldest, the one that was to marry an African woman and whose son founded
Ávila. Because as Hernando de Soto wrote in his Emblemas Moralizadas in 1599, there
were no less than forty-three Herculeses according to Marco Varrón, and six according
to Cicero8. The Tower of Hercules in A Coruña is named after one of those mythical
foundations, given that, after slaying the giant Gerion he erected the tower over his skull,
and A Coruña was born of this building. It was a tower that was said to have been rebuilt
afterwards by Julius Caesar9. Major engineering works were supposed to have been cre-
ated by demigods like Hercules, but so many Herculeses eventually became too many,
and the stories that continued using them proved to be rather unreliable. Perhaps that is
why Gómez Bravo, in his history of Mérida in 1638, stressed how tired historians like
himself were, as they attempted to write history in a scientific and well informed way,
when they found that there were no rivers, mountains or cities where the name of Her-
cules did not appear, when it would be «simpler and more noble to admit (as Cicero said)

FIG. 3 A & B Tower of Hercules. A Coruña.
Roman Interior. Exterior from the 18th Century.
that we don’t know what we don’t know, rather than causing tiresome for everybody by
telling these prefabrications»10 [FIGS. 3 A and B].
Hydraulic works were a source of almost unlimited admiration, and the fact that aque-
ducts were so visible meant that they featured on the pages of these historical accounts.
The Tarragona Aqueducts were among the antiquities that most attracted the attention
of Cock, who travelled through Felipe II’s Spain11. Some years before they had been the
subject of studies, with scientific archaeological pretensions based not only on measure-
ment and in situ examination of their characteristics, but also on reference to the
archives, carried out by Luis Pons d’Icart in 157212. An engraving showing the Les Fer-
reres Aqueduct illustrates the work by Jeroni Pujades on the Principality of Cataluña, in
160913, contributing to the dissemination of works that did not always use images, often
being limited to written descriptions. In Valencia, Cock also referred to «the sewers that
Scipio order to be constructed», and also mentioned the temples and inscriptions bearing
witness to their great age14.
Travellers arriving in Segovia never ceased to admire and depict the aqueduct in images,
but the city also had its own historian who gives us great insight into understanding how
this magnificent work came to be incorporated into the city’s origins. His name was Diego
de Colmenares, «San Juan’s parish priest», who wrote his well-known Historia de la insigne
ciudad de Segovia y compendio de las historias de Castilla between 1620 and 1634, which

was published in 1637. It includes an image of the
aqueduct, apart from the one that appears on the
cover, but funnily enough the image inside the
book appears to form part of an illustration refer-
ring to the Guadalajara Gate in Madrid [FIG. 4].
It is the historical memory of an event that the
Madrid historian Jerónimo de la Quintana relates,
to prove it wrong, explaining how the Segovia
Coat of Arms appeared on this Madrid Gate. Ac-
cording to Quintana it was not true that the Sego-
vians conquered the Villa of Madrid, which was
in the hands of «the Moors» in the 11th Century,
since in 1083 Segovia was not inhabited, so its in-
habitants could not have taken part in the con-
quest. However, at that time there still existed in
living memory witnesses to the fact that to com-
memorate the deed, King Alfonso VI put the
Segovia Coat of Arms not only on the Guadalajara
FIG. 4 DIEGO DE ASTOR. The Guadalajara
Gate depicting the Segovia Aqueduct. 1629. In Gate but also on other locations of the city. This
D. DE COLMENARES: Historia de la insigne ciudad
de Segovia y compendio de las historias de Castilla.
is also refuted by Jerónimo de la Quintana, who
Segovia, DIEGO DÍEZ, 1637, f. 88 vº. states that these coats of arms never appeared on
the now disappeared Guadalajara Gate15. How-
ever, it re-emerges in the history written by Col-
menares, who states that the Segovian Coat of Arms was there until 1542, that it was
never again put back on the gate in spite of the repeated requests to do so from the City
of Segovia16. Anxious to increase the stature of Segovia and the Segovians, as Quintana
was to do for the inhabitants of Madrid, all we can say is that, was although a fruit of ri-
valry between cities and disagreements between historians, yet this is one of the very few
images that remain of the Segovia Aqueduct from the 17th Century.
Segovia, just like any other great city, was founded by Hercules, who it was claimed was
responsible for «constructing the wonderful Bridge, or Aqueduct, that our Segovian ances-
tors called the Dry Bridge, in ancient writings and reports. We are aware of the differences
of opinion as to who was the designer of that wonderful construction, that in grandeur and
antiquity matches the most famous ones on Earth and has outlived them, because the oth-
ers only live on in name, whereas this one has withstood the test of time through the cen-
turies and remains at its primary function»17. This made such works the object of great
curiosity for travellers, because it was not a question of it being just a handful of remains
where only the name mattered, as in this case all the stonework remained in place, so Col-
menares could claim that it surpassed the most famous wonders of the world.
The historian then goes on to make an observation that is astute enough to give us
insight into the incipient world of Renaissance scientific archaeology, which cannot go
unmentioned. He states that where the sculptures of the Virgin and St. Sebastian now
lie, and on the highest pillar «that has been known as Açoguejo» since 1520, there were
statues of Hercules «and it is true to say that there used to be statues in those niches

FIG. 5 Model of
the Alcántara
Bridge. Artifex Exhi-
bition. Government
of Extremadura.
that if the forebears, when they removed them, kept a record (as they should have) of what
they had taken away, would add light to our darkness» (the italics are ours)18. It is curious
to note that he casts aspersions on any of the works being Roman if they are not in keep-
ing with any of the architectural orders (he mentions: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan
and compound), or inscriptions, when, for example, the Alcántara Bridge spanning the
Tagus has seven inscriptions, which repeat the name of Trajan. A bridge «so magnificent
and splendid that those who have seen the bridges of Rome, and all the famous ones in
Europe, have never found one to be as large and wonderfully built», according to Am-
brosio de Morales19 [FIG. 5].
All in all, Colmenares found everything about the foundation of this work uncertain,
but according to him the stone used was the same, albeit more worn, as the stone used
for a statue of Hercules that was conserved, which made him think that it dated back to
pre-Roman times. The detailed description he gives of the aqueduct shows that he studied
it in depth, from its source until it reaches the Alcazar [FIG. 6].
FIG. 6 ANTON VAN DEN WYNGAERDE. Segovia, 1562. Close-up of the aqueduct. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum.

The Celebration of Power, in this case a tri-
umphant entry into the city, becomes a new
historical document that has to be added to
that construction of Segovian history carried
out during the Renaissance, always revolving
around the aqueduct. Colmenares tells us that
during the triumphant entry of Anna of Austria,
the aqueduct was reproduced on one of the
ephemeral arches of triumph, depicting the
three figures of its possible constructors: Her-
cules, Hispan and Trajan, and showing them
(and he did this using texts) arguing about
which one had created the aqueduct. Hercules
claimed that as he had founded the city in a
high place, from the very start he needed the
aqueduct to supply it with water. Hispan, who
had been the first king of Spain, was the only
one who had had «power and time to create
such a major work». Finally, Trajan argued
against the other two «the poverty of their
FIG. 7 JAN CORNELISZ VERMEYEN, view of the
Segovia Aqueduct, 1525-1550. Engraving. London, Kingdom, and the roughness of their age: using
British Museum.
in his favour the grandeur of Rome». However
Minerva, who crowned the arch, «as authoress
of arts and sciences, stated in the verses of a
Poem that she had created such an outstanding work»20. To cut a long story short, in
view of the difficulty involved in knowing who had constructed it on the basis of highly
unreliable historical sources, the author of the iconographic program led the admiring
spectator of the Celebration to conclude that it was wisdom, personified by Minerva,
who was the real constructor of such a wonder. Such well-known humanists as Alonso
de Cartagena or Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada had taken part in this debate about the origins
of the aqueduct that Colmenares includes in his work, and they considered the aqueduct
to be the work of Hispan21. And the truth is, if many others such as Tubal or Tarsis are
credited with the mythical founding of the Spanish nation, Hispan can be regarded as
the most «credible» candidate, so associating his name with the aqueduct was a way of
linking its construction with the origins of the nation22 [FIG. 7].
With respect to the sources provided to us from travellers such as Vermeyen or Van
den Wyngaerde, who drew it, Andrea Navagero, in his journey around Spain between
1524 and 1526, also wrote that «it is one of the most notable things in Spain, and the
Spanish consider it to be just that, although they base their admiration on absurd rea-
soning, calling the aqueduct a bridge, and they say that the bridge in Segovia is a great
wonder because it is an upside down bridge, as all other ones are built for the water to
flow under and this one is constructed for the water to go above». This is one of «the
three wonders of Spain». The others are considered to be just as fantastic as this one: a
city of fire, that is Madrid («my walls of fire are …» was part of the original text on the

FIG. 8 JAN CORNELISZ VERMEYEN: Tríptico de la familia Micault, 1534. Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts.
first Madrid coat of arms), and a place they call a bridge because the rams grace over the
River Guadiana23, so he would probably be referring to Ojos del Guadiana, as though it
were some sort of underground river [FIG. 8].
The aqueduct was conserved in Segovia, but without any doubt the best conserved
Roman city was Mérida, where very important public constructions could be seen.
Praised by Nebrija and compared to Carthage, whose aqueducts were compared to those
in the city of Extremadura to make its grandeur known24, according to Bernabé Moreno
de Vargas, who published its history in 163325, the city had been founded by Tubal,
Noah’s grandson, long before the Romans reached Spain26. «The famous and admirable
bridge» spanned the Guadiana there, All that he could say about its age being that «it is
the work of the Romans, the Architecture is very strong, and it is very old … I know it
was founded when the way was laid, the Military road that we generally refer to as the
Silver Route … because as this road was a wonderful construction, it would have been
incomplete if bridges had not been built over the rivers». Moreno de Vargas quotes Abra-
ham Ortelio, who on his maps says that it is a Roman bridge, and Antonio de Guevara,
who wrote in his biography of Trajan that it was the work of that emperor. However,
Moreno de Vargas says that, although he is a «very serious historian», «he was misled
over many things» and «he confused eras», although he does agree with him that part
of the bridge was the work of Trajan «because its architecture is very similar to the ma-
sonry dating back to that period», and he recalls that it was reconstructed after a flood
at the beginning of the 17th Century, in 1603, the works being completed in 1610. Once
again we find that resorting to comparison, in this case with works that we know for
certain are dated back to Trajan’s times, helped to reconstruct the history of ancient
buildings.

As far as the Roman roads are concerned, he writes that remains of them can be seen
in many parts of Spain. He quotes St. Isidore, who said that «these roads were military
ways, laid on the ground and cobbled, in such a manner that they were flat». He was fa-
miliar with Antonino’s Itinerary27, and of course he keeps referring to the «aqueducts and
water ducts», recalling that Esquivel was sent by Felipe II to describe one of the aque-
ducts, that he had read about in Ambrosio de Morales. The other one, very well conserved
«is so outstanding and famous, that they call it of the miracles, as though the works them-
selves were miraculous». And as its streets were paved with stones, he compares Mérida
with «the African Carthage» described by Virgil28, along similar lines as the aforemen-
tioned comparisons to the North African city that we have seen.
King Felipe II’s visit on his way to Portugal is of particular interest. He took «masters»
with him who testified that the antemurale, or vantage point overlooking the River Gua-
diana, was «the strongest in the world», and considered that the Romans must have had
at that spot «a poplar grove or gardens with their fountains, altars and obelisks, some
stones being found there that bore witness to this. In this sense, Mérida could compete
with the Walls of Babylon, which had trees and orchards on top of them that they called
pensiles». The king was only there for fifteen days, during which «he saw and admired
the Roman buildings», but this was the one he admired most «because it is made of very
large grained stones, well fitted together, that do not have lime, not even for their dura-
tion, and what keeps them firmly in place is the way they are locked together and the
wonderful way they have been wrought by the craftsman. And as proof of this, it should
be known that the Guadiana has been flowing past these walls for more than one thou-
sand years, and although in the winter the river has very fast currents, they have not
washed away one single stone. Those masters said that this masonry was from the Em-
peror Trajan’s times, because that was when architecture was at its height, and that the
architecture used for this building has been lost, and now there is nobody who could
construct again like he did»29. And as if admiration from one of the monarchs best ac-
quainted with Architecture in his time was not enough to grant universal value to the
public works in the City of Mérida, we can go back again to Vitruvius, because this trea-
tiser, almost legendary to Renaissance architects, mentions «the castles, or water storage
facilities … referring to the ingenio [device] and its shape, so that by the action of the
water, the same water can be raised to the highest point», as could be seen in Mérida.
All in all, that this city, like so many others described in the 16th and 17th centuries, was
«another Rome in Spain»30.
Perhaps one of the most widely recognised «new Romes» was Seville, and the histo-
rians set their sights on «Old Seville», i.e., Italica, the birthplace of Trajan, Hadrian and
Theodosius as Rodrigo Caro recalls31. Years earlier, Juan de Mal Lara stated that the re-
mains of paved roads from the time of Hercules were conserved in Seville32. This careful
look that historians took at the remains from ancient times, even if they did mix them up
with Hercules, helped to build-up the «memory of past centuries» of which Argote de
Molina spoke in 158833. In that context, the studies that we could already describe as
being archaeological, progressed in such a way that the public works, associated with the
expansion of the Empire, were well known to the engineers, who enthusiastically read
all the writings that had been conserved from the Roman era.

THE ENGINEERS
Codices and manuscripts of machines were passing through the hands of experts in the
16th Century at the same time as there was a boom in the dissemination of printed works,
and their authors appropriated the technical knowledge they inherited from the past to
insert it in their own experience, as cultural heritage and even as an expression of social
prestige. Recent sources such as Valturio, Taccola and Francesco di Giorgio, and classical
ones like Archímedes, Euclid, Philo, Frontinus, Vegetius, Hero or Vitruvius, were the
persons continually referred to in the texts of the Renaissance engineers34 [FIG. 9].
In the 15th Century, Luca Pacioli had already referred to Archímedes of Syracuse as
a model for engineers and «inventors of new devices» and to Vegetius and Frontinus35 as
experts in fortification due to their knowledge of mathematics. In Spain, Cristóbal de
Rojas, after studying many other matters related to his profession as an engineer, turned
to the question of how to form squadrons, for which purpose he used Vegetius as a ref-
erence, although the «art of squadrons stemmed from Homer, and was passed down to
other famous Greek Captains»36. When we mention Rome, we are invariably referring to
it as the epitome of public architecture, but data we have received from Rojas pursuant
to Greece, and other information, often in the words of the engineers, establishing a
comparison between the present grandeur and other cultures and empires of old, should
make us think about the fact that Rome was not the only benchmark that had to be used,
because no matter how little was known about Greece, Egypt or Persia, it would be well
worthwhile trying to trace the impact that they had had on the Renaissance culture in
which the engineers concerned lived, and on
the imperial conception of the Spanish
monarchy.
It was not possible to make comparisons
with Antiquity in matters concerning engi-
neering only when dealing with fortifications,
because artillery had changed everything.
That is why Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola,
in his praise of Cristóbal de Rojas, wrote
«what names and titles does the learned Rojas
deserve, that from the hidden arts he offers
the most difficult part to his country? His
strong masonry is not designed to defend as
in olden times, against the battering ram or
the catapult, but against the awful artillery,
that in such a variety of terrible ways, vomits
hell every day». The destruction caused by ar-
tillery fire was often associated with hell at
that time, and military architecture had to
adapt to these news arms, bringing about a
change that was so radical that anybody could FIG. 9 Cover of the treatise by C. DE ROJAS: Teórica
y práctica de fortificación. Madrid, 1598.
distinguish a high medieval fortress from a

fortress from a later period, with its
geometrical shapes that became lower
all the time until, with the passage of
time, they were practically buried un-
derground and invisible to the human
eye.
When looking back on classical an-
tiquity, we cannot forget that engineer-
ing and architecture occupied the
same area, whose common base was
mathematics, so Cristóbal de Rojas, in
his treatise, wrote that Juan de Herrera
was «such an excellent, well versed ex-
pert on mathematical sciences, that
Spain could pride itself on having such
a son as did Sicily with Archimedes
and Italy with Vitruvius»37. Archímedes
was used as a model for engineers and
Vitruvius for architects, but the great-
est figures, like Juan de Herrera, pos-
sessed the expertise that was needed
for both professions.
There were certain writings that
were always cited as with scientific au-
FIG. 10 FRANCESCO DI GIORGIO MARTINI. Dinócrates. Flo- thority for the new Archimedeses of
rence, Biblioteca Nacional. Códice Magliabechiano, II.I.141, h. the times. In this sense, following a
1490.
historical tradition, Rojas states that
geometry, essential to the engineer,
was invented by «Merys King of Egypt (even here this science wanted to take advantage,
that a King was its inventor) and later it was the famous Pythagoras who expanded upon
it, finding the potency of the right-angled triangle, thereafter backed up by the most eru-
dite Archimedes, dealing largely with proportions, machines and heavy bodies; and above
all the excellent Euclid, talented and shrewd, bringing together all the rules and writings
that he found»38. Going back to Villalón and his ingenious comparisons, among the ar-
chitects of antiquity he refers to those who constructed public buildings (according to
the Vitruvian classification), such as Archimedes, who thanks to his «instruments of war-
fare» defended Syracuse from the Romans for three years, or Democrates (he misspells
the name somewhat), who «surrounded Alexandria with impregnable city walls», yet he
also writes about temples, given that they were public works39. Archímedes and
Dinocrates were admirable, but probably the ones mentioned most often in the Renais-
sance Treatises were Vitruvius and Euclid [FIG. 10].
Juan de Herrera could be fairly compared with them, especially if we take a brief look
at his personal library. Among his many books on engineering and history of antiquity,
there was one in particular «de la conserbaçión de los aquadubtos, manoescripto, en por-

FIG. 11 Bridge in the Third Book by S. SERLIO: Tercero y quarto libro de architectura. Toledo, 1552.
tugués». Other titles were: «de los edifiçios del enperador Justiniano, por Procopio, en
latín» (two copies) and «las obserbaziones militares y ardides de guerra que usó Zésar,
traduzido en castellano por Graçián, manoescrito», «las termas de Diocleçiano, enperador,
en latín, con otros muchos deseós de fábricas», «diez libros de Roma tryunphante, de Blondi
Flavi, en latín», the Historia natural by Pliny the Younger, from Volume 26 to 37, the
Rhetoric by Cicero, comedies by Aristophanes, or Décadas by Tito Livio in Spanish. His
library also contained, «triunphos romanos dende Rómulo hasta carlo quinto, en latín»
and «títulos de la ciudad romana antigua». Apart from those, he possessed «discurso de
Juanelo sobre la nueva reformazión del año», and another discourse by the same author,
on exactly the same subject, hand-written in Italian, a «quaderno de diversos epigramas
en alabanza del relox de Juanelo», and works that specifically dealt with Antiquity and
the History of Spain, such as «Andrés de Poza, de antigüedades de la Cantabria y pobla-
ciones de España» and «letreros e insignias reales de los reyes de Vbiedo, León y Castilla
para el alcázar de Segovia, en romanze»40.
Francisco de Villalpando, in his translation of the Third and Fourth Book by Serlio in
1552, used the term architects to refer to those that we would now call engineers, be-
cause Vitruvius talked about architects. It was they, according to Villalpando, who made
victory and conquests possible with their «machines and industries», creating not only
the squadrons, but also buildings and sculptures41. Serlio is another writer of treatises
that contributed to an awareness of Ancient Times, to which he devotes his Third Book.
In this volume he describes and overpraises the values of the Nimes Aqueduct in France,
and includes descriptions with prints of works like the Pantheon, other temples, am-
phitheatres, bridges, etc. [FIG. 11].

FIG. 12 G. MAGGI and I. CASTRIOTTO:
Della fortificatione delle città. Venice,
1583.
The military architecture treatises, which deal with all engineering matters, not only
fortification, contain many references to Antiquity as a model. The treatise by Maggi and
Castriotto (one of the treatises quoted by and used by Rojas), contains a debate about
whether in Antiquity the layout of the City of Rome was square or circular, after which
it opts for the square arrangement after reference is made to several sources dating back
to that period, in spite of the fact that as far as new fortifications were concerned, the
more circular they were, the better the outer limits functioned42. Once again, the changes
imposed by the new weapons of war made it necessary to question the effectiveness of
the standard models coming from the Roman Empire [FIG. 12].
Comparisons provide a historical contents even to the most technical treatises and,
returning to Cristóbal de Rojas again, we read that the warlike achievements of the Span-
ish «leave the achievements of old as small»43, and that he would like to be able to write
like Julius Caesar, with the eloquence of Cicero and Demosthenes44. He does not hesitate
to compare the minor modifications that Juan del Águila made to his small army in Brit-
tany, with the changes that Cornelius Scipio made to his army before taking Numancia.
He also compares Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba and the Duque de Alba with great war-
riors such as Alexander and Hannibal45.

Another subject for reflection where the ancients served as a benchmark for compar-
ison purposes was about matters of public interest being invariably associated with public
works. In this context, Vitruvius is once again the prime example, and for his translator
into Spanish, Miguel de Urrea, as Vitruvius dedicated his work to the Emperor, he ded-
icates it to the «Emperor of all the Spanish and best in the world», stating in the epistle
to the reader, how useful this work is for the common good46. Diego González de Medina
Barba, in his Examen de fortificación, asserted that «the common good must undoubtedly
be considered over and above the individual good, and one has to strive to achieve this.
Maintaining and defending Empires, Kingdoms, States and Cities that contain, not only
one life, one honour and one particular wealth, but a countless number of these, as is
plain to be seen, if for defending one life it is so much justified the defence, even if this
means injury and death to he who wishes to take this away, that to defend and protect so
many thousands of lives, honours and goods, it should be compulsory to find a way of
supporting and defending them»47. One
historian, Vander Hammen, in his history
of King Felipe II, recalls his «marvellous
works in the benefit of the common
good». There was of course the genius of
Juanelo, not to mention «The Mint in
Segovia, with his genius for making it
water-powered», the Alicante Reservoir
for irrigation, or the water device for till-
ing powder in Pamplona48. So, the com-
mon good, the public interest or
whatever other term any author might
choose to call it, was something that the
Ancients also excelled at and was to be
found in their own devices, machines
and public buildings [FIG. 13].
Yet the engineers knew a lot more
about Antiquity that they showed in their
treatises and their own works, demon-
strating this in other kind of writings.
They never ceased to praise such knowl-
edge, even in documents that were not
going to be published, as if they were
going to be seen by the king. They are
sometimes reminiscent of humanists like
Alvar Gómez de Castro, who narrated
the conquest of Oran and Mazalquivir as
if this were a feat carried out by the Ro-
mans; the king was visited by «some mil-
itary tribunes» who later directed the FIG. 13 POMPEO LEONI: Felipe II como emperador. 1568.
warfare and under his command there Palacio de Aranjuez.

were «maniple officers and centurion officers»49. With the same intentions, the engineer
Tiburzio Spannocchi defined the Spanish Armada sent against England as a venture wor-
thy of Ancient Rome, that should have even been announced to the Queen of England
by herald, as was done in Rome50. And this was not the fruit of sudden inspiration, be-
cause this consciousness of belonging to a profession that went back to Ancient Times
and constructed empires was also highlighted on the Latin inscription that appeared on
the map of Sicily that Spannocchi entitled «Regiarum Machinarum, atque Menium Opi-
dorum Structurae Potentisimi ispaniarum regis Magistro Supremo»51. It was a language
that they were particularly fond of in Felipe II’s times, and although he was a king, not
an emperor, he was often regarded as such, and he possessed such a number of kingdoms
that he regarded himself as the inheritor of the Roman Empire.
As we have pointed out, this ambition was repeatedly fulfilled by the reports that the
monarch’s engineers issued about wars and fortifications. According to Juan Bautista An-
tonelli, the Spanish Empire could be compared not only to the Roman Empire, but also
to the Assyrian and Persian Empires52, and another engineer who was forever resorting
to comparisons with Ancient Times in his historical writings was Leonardo Turriano. He
used Tacitus to argue in favour of the destruction of fortifications that could not be con-
served and put forward as examples the Romans and the Greeks (Scipio, Hannibal, Sulla,
Severus or Vespasian), so nobody should question the fact that Emperor Charles V de-
stroyed the city fortress in Africa, as the Turks had done with La Goleta. And in the in-
terests of comparison, he brings up the subject of the Arabs, who did likewise in North
African cities53. That fact that he used the term «incursion» to refer to the Arabs when
they carried out actions similar to the admirable Romans activities could suggest that
there was more than one way of viewing other cultures during the Spanish Renaissance.
In this context, the admiration that the sage Ambrosio de Morales had for the genius
Juanelo Turriano is hardly surprising. Morales left a written record for the coming cen-
turies giving account of how wonderful the machine was that the Cremonese inventor
constructed in Toledo. He describes the entire construction process of what he called an
aqueduct, which Juanelo had previously made a mock-up, a «model in small size», which
he showed to Morales, explaining the arithmetical basics of the invention. In it, he applied
an invention from the Treatise of Valturius (the Re Militari Treatise of 1472), although
(and this is what we find interesting) «the one invented by Juanelo has new sophistica-
tions and subtleties», given that Juanelo «added much more to it in terms of harmony
and silence in motion», as well as having fitted into the timbers long tin pipes, all of this
and a lot more being of his own invention. And, reflecting the anthropomorphic notion
of all that exists, Ambrosio de Morales compares it with a human body, with feet in the
river, with the «perpetual uniformity and consistency of the pulse that causes the inhala-
tion that enters through the mouth and moves the heart by the lungs». That is to say,
that it operates just like the continuous rhythm of respiration, as though it were alive54.
He compares it with works of Roman Times, not only by calling it an aqueduct, wonder,
etc., but also because «in a long stretch of a very wide street that the machine had to
cross, Juanelo once again built the wonderful wooden bridge that Julius Caesar had con-
structed during the siege of Marseille»55. Juanelo would outdo the Ancients, even
Archimedes, because apart from the famous device he created, he also made an astro-

FIG. 14 Engraving representing Juanelo Turriano´s device in Toledo, circa 1650.
nomical clock that he took twenty years to imagine and three and a half years to make
with his own hands56.
Agustín de Rojas also compared him to Archimedes, because if painters were new
Apelleses and architects new Vitruviuses, it could be argued that engineers were new
Archimedeses. He thus described the Toledo device: «This work is the most outstanding
and creative of its kind in the world. Its inventor was Juanelo Turriano, born in Cremona,
in Lombardy, who just for this one single work deserves exactly the same glory as
Archimedes, of Syracuse, or Archytas of Taranto, who was such a great mathematician
that he made a wooden dove fly all around the city, and we can see that for just the in-
vention of this device the timberwork required contains more than the thin wood in two
hundred carts, and it supports over five hundred weights of brass, and more than one
thousand six hundred pitchers of water»57. Or as Góngora wrote, Juanelo with his device
[genius] gave wings to the Tagus to rise up58 [FIG. 14].
It would be impossible to imagine Los veintiún libros de los ingenios y máquinas –
written towards the end of the 16th Century or at the beginning of the 17th Century –, a
book that devotes so many pages to hydraulic engineering, failing to make any references
to the Romans’ engineering. On the subject of aqueducts in particular, the author ex-
plains that, to transport the water, «huge arches were constructed to enable the water to
flow from one hill to another. And when they saw that one set of arches was not enough,
they invented the idea of creating two levels of arches, one on top of the other. They
sought a way of creating three levels to reach the water line, as can be seen in Spain, in

Italy, in France and even in Africa.
Aqueducts are thus buildings that
the ancients were very proud of, to
the extent that they used great skill
and adorned them with cornices, ar-
chitraves, friezes, column heads,
pedestals, figures with facias and
moulds all very exquisitely made
with different types of arches»59. He
goes on to explain in detail how they
FIG. 15 Aqueduct in Los veintiún libros de los ingenios y
were made, and this is what is of in-
máquinas. terest to us, that towards the end of
the 16th Century, and in view of the
fact that aqueducts were still being
built (such as the one in Teruel, constructed by Pierre Vedel midway through the 16th
Century), the Roman technique was still proving useful to the engineers of the age. In
fact, with respect to the drawings he includes, he states that he borrowed most of them
from ancient works, although in his manuscript he does not specify the locations. Caños
de Carmona is one place that he mentions in Spain, which makes it clear that he is talking
about an aqueduct, and «in Segovia, in Mérida and in a host of other places. In Aragón
close to Sádaba, ancient spots in Teruel, modern ones in the Kingdom of Valencia, in
Monviedro, in Catalonia, in Tarragona and many other places, which I omit because I
do not wish to appear long-winded»60 [FIG. 15].
Being able to show that one had an awareness of Imperial Rome was an added value
for any engineer who wanted to prosper in the Spanish Court. So, when Giovanni Battista
Antonelli, in his unpublished treatise of 1561, dedicated to Juan Marique de Lara, Captain
General of Artillery, described how to lodge armies, he said that to do this in an orderly
way it was essential to copy the Romans, who invariably did this in the same manner61.
Then there was Leonardo Turriano deliberating about whether or not the villa that
Antonelli destroyed in Mazalquivir to make the walls could really have been Roman, given
that, following Pliny the Younger, there was an absence of «that Roman luxury that are
manifest in all the ruins of the buildings that were constructed by the Ancients Latins in
these areas, especially as large gold medals bearing the Emperor Claudius on the face and
others even older have been found here, which suggest that those buildings were noble»62.
And when the excavations were being dug to lay the foundations for the citadel of
Jaca, designed by Spannocchi, old medals were found. The Captain General of the Aragón
Army then wrote to Felipe II telling him that one of them was of the first ever catholic
emperor, who was called Philippus, which meant he was a namesake of the king, and thus
they had made a good start to the works63. In this case, it was probably a figment of the
imagination, but the message is the same, that the great public works ordered by Felipe
II could better the Roman ones, which were becoming increasingly well-known [FIG. 16].
Military engineering also made a major contribution to the development of antiques col-
lection, examples of collectors being Diego Hurtado de Mendoza in Siena, and Vespasiano
Gonzaga in Cartagena, who boosted their collections with finds from the classic works that

FIG. 16 G. B. ANTONELLI:
Epitomi delle fortificationi mod-
erne, 1561. Toledo, Museo del
Ejército. A Roman camp.
had been uncovered when constructing city walls. These people who knew so much about
antiques, and the renaissance engineers, regarded looking back to Antiquity as an intellectual
attitude with political intent, because they had a lot to learn, but, above all, much to surpass
and with which to compare themselves, given that all of them worked for an empire that
looked upon itself and wished to be portrayed as an emulation of the Roman Empire.
Studying Roman engineering works that were still in use could also be associated with
the birth of archaeology. Many kept inscriptions, eagerly collected once it had been
checked that the remains were ancient, because, as Ambrosio de Morales wrote in 1575,
«if there are no traces and samples of antiquity at the site, looking for anything else is all
in vain; and on the contrary, if evidence of Antiquity is found, this begs the question what
once lay there, and what the name of that place was»64. Argote de Molina includes the
Roman inscriptions from Úbeda and Baeza in his work Nobleza de Andalucía, in 1588,
and Rodrigo Caro included in his works engravings from the medals found in the cities
whose histories he wrote. One of the most extensively studied engineering works, apart
from aqueducts and bridges, were the Roman roads, travelled along and measured by his-
torians like Antonio de Guevara, Jerónimo Zurita or Ginés de Sepúlveda. All of them tried
to find out exactly how long a Roman foot was65 in an imperial Spain that based its power
and control over territory on measurement and geometry. Ambrosio de Morales once again
proves to serve as a good example, when he indicates the need to know with precision
these Roman measurements, using for this purpose not only Vitruvius or Frontinus, but
also St. Isidore, and other contemporary authors such as Pedro Apiano, Antonio de Lebrixa
(Nebrija), Doctor Sepúlveda or Florián de Ocampo, yet it was the teacher Pedro de Es-
quivel who solved the problem, in spite of the difficulties involved in finding the equiva-
lents between the Roman measurements and those that were used in the 1570s66.
Comparison was the best possible proof of the identity between the Antiquity with the
present time, and in this case all the more so because it drew parallels for kingdoms being
able to measure their territories, as the Romans had done with their own Empire.

NOTES
* This work is part of the research project HAR2012-31117. El dibujante ingeniero al servicio de la monarquía hispánica. Siglos
XVI-XVIII (DIMH). Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad.
1. C. DE VILLALÓN: Ingenious comparison between old and new. Hecha por el Bachiller Villalón, dirigida al Illustre y reverendissimo
Señor don Fray Alonso de Virues, Obispo dignísimo de Canaria, predicador y del consejo de la cathólica y cesarea magestad. En
la qual se disputa quando ovo más sabios agora, o en la antigüedad, y para en prueba desto, se trae todos los sabios e inventores an-
tiguos y presentes en todas las sciencias y artes (Valladolid, 1539). Madrid, Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1898, p. 150.
2. «Vean a Puzol, y la gruta de Nápoles, y el Coliseo de Roma y el Septizonio que hizo Severo, y el aguja que está cabe Sant pedro,
que según dizen fue traída por la mar de Egypto y subida al Vaticano y enhestada sobre otra que está debajo, y sabemos que el Papa
Sixto dava mil ducados por cada passo que se la llevasen hasta ponerla en la plaza de Sant Pedro, y no ovo quien la osasse empre-
hender». Ibidem, pages 130, 149 and 150.
3. A. CÁMARA: «Military architecture and the engineers of the Spanish monarchy: aspects of a profession (1530-1650)». Revista
de la Universidad Complutense, no. 3, 1981, p. 255.
4. L. VANDER HAMMEN Y LEÓN: Don Filipe el prudente, segundo deste nombre, rey de las Españas y nuevo mundo. Madrid, Viuda de
Alonso Martín, 1632, f. 125 vº and 126.
5. M. VITRUVIO POLLION: De architectura, dividido en diez libros, traduzidos de Latin en castellano por Miguel de Urrea Architecto, y
sacado en su perfectión por Iuan Gracian impresor vezino de Alcalá. Alcalá de Henares, 1582, f. 11 vº.
6. A. DE MORALES: Las antigüedades de las ciudades de España que van nombradas en la corónica con las averiguaciones de sus sitios
y nombres antiguos, que escribía Ambrosio de Morales, cronista del rey católico nuestro señor don Felipe II. Tomo IX. Madrid,
Benito Cano, 1792, p. 107.
7. BALTASAR PORREÑO: Dichos y hechos del Señor Rey don Felipe Segundo, el prudente, potentíssimo y glorioso monarca de las Españas
y de las Indias (1628). ANTONIO ÁLVAREZ OSSORIO and PALOMA CUENCA (eds.). Madrid, Sociedad Estatal para la conmemoración
de los centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, 2001, p. 126.
8. A. CÁMARA: «History and myth: the city narrated in the Spanish Renaissance». En Imágenes, Palabras, Sonidos, Prácticas y Re-
flexiones. IV Jornadas de Estudios e Investigaciones. Instituto de Teoría e Historia del Arte «Julio E. Payró». Buenos Aires,
2000, p. 312.
9. S. HUTTER and T. TAUSCHILD: El faro romano de La Coruña. 1991, p. 15. Cited in A. CÁMARA: «Historia y mito…», p. 319.
10. A. CÁMARA: «Historia y mito…», p. 319.
11. A. MOREL FATIO and A. RODRÍGUEZ VILLA: Relación del viaje hecho por Felipe II, en 1585 a Zaragoza, Barcelona y Valencia. Escrita
por Henrique Cock, notario apostólico de la guardia del cuerpo real... Madrid, 1876, p. 114. About Enrique Cock, see A. ALVAR
EZQUERRA: «Enrique Cock. Humanista, corógrafo de Madrid, cronista de los archeros reales», 2011, http://www.proyectos.
cchs.csic.es/humanismoyhumanistas/enrique-cock
12. M. MORÁN TURINA: La memoria de las piedras. Anticuarios, arqueólogos y coleccionistas de antigüedades en la España de los Austrias.
Madrid, Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2010, pages 123-125.
13. Reproduced in M. MORÁN TURINA: La memoria de las piedras..., p.18.
14. Ibidem, p. 248.
15. JERÓNIMO DE LA QUINTANA: A la muy antigua, noble y coronada villa de Madrid, historia de su antigüedad, nobleza y grandeza...
Madrid, Imprenta del Reyno, 1629, ff. 87 vº - 90 vº.
16. D. DE COLMENARES: Historia de la insigne ciudad de Segovia y compendio de las historias de Castilla. Segovia, Diego Díez, 1637,
f. 89.
17. D. DE COLMENARES: Historia de la insigne ciudad de Segovia... f. 6.
18. Ibídem.
Benito Cano, 1792, pages 344-345.
20. D. DE COLMENARES: Op. cit., p. 554.
21. M. MORÁN: Op. cit., p. 192.
22. According to Kagan, all nations look for a founder linked to Antiquity, and especially to Noah, who would have given his de-
scendents certain qualities that made them see themselves as a nation. R. L. KAGAN: Los cronistas y la corona. Madrid, Centro
de Estudios Europa Hispánica and Marcial Pons, 2010, p. 363.
23. Juan de Arfe also mentioned the Segovia Aqueduct and the Mérida Bridge among other famous constructions that were con-
served in Spain dating back to Roman times. M. MORÁN: Op. cit., p. 193.
24. M. MORÁN TURINA: La memoria de las piedras... pages 61, 63, 66.
25. B. MORENO DE VARGAS: Historia de la ciudad de Mérida, dedicada a la misma Ciudad. Madrid, Viuda de Alonso Martín, 1633, f.
21 vº-22 vº.
26. Tubal was Noah’s grandson, son of Japhet and responsible for founding cities from Asturias to Cádiz after the Great Flood.
See A. CAMARA: «History and Myth», p. 313.
27. B. MORENO DE VARGAS: Historia de la ciudad de Mérida... f. 25.
28. Ibidem: f. 35 - 36 vº.
29. Ibidem: f. 38, 38 vº.
30. Ibidem: f. 39.

31. R. CARO: Antigüedades y principado de la ilustrissima ciudad de Sevilla y chorographia de su convento iuridico, o antigua chancil-
leria. Dirigida al excelentissimo señor Don Gaspar de Guzmán, Conde Duque de Sanlúcar la Mayor. Seville, Andrés Grande,
1634.
32. J. DE MAL LARA: Recebimiento que hizo la muy noble y muy leal Ciudad de Sevilla, a la c:r:m: del Rey D. Philippe N.S. Va todo
figurado. Con una breve descripción de la Ciudad y su tierra. Seville, Alonso Escrivano, 1570, f. 49 vº. With regard to Seville
the book by V. LLEÓ CAÑAL, a pioneer in these studies, is fundamental: Nueva Roma. Mitología y humanismo en the Renaissance
sevillano. (1979). Madrid revised edition, Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2012.
33. A. CÁMARA: Arquitectura y sociedad en el Siglo de Oro. Idea, traza y edificio. Madrid, Ediciones El Arquero, 1990, p. 20.
34. DANIELA LAMBERINI: «La fortuna delle macchine senese nel Cinquecento,» in Prima di Leonardo. Cultura delle macchine a
Siena nel Rinascimento. PAOLO GALLUZZI (ed.), Milan, 1991, p.139.
35. LUCA PACIOLI: La divina proporción. A. M. GONZÁLEZ MADRID (intr.) and J. CALATRAVA (translation), Akal, 1991, pages 34-35.
36. C. DE ROJAS: Teórica y práctica de fortificación, conforme las medidas y defensas destos tiempos... por el capitán Christoval de Rojas,
Ingeniero del Rey nuestro señor. Dirigida al Príncipe nuestro señor Don Felipe III. Madrid, 1598, f. 101 vº.
37. C. DE ROJAS: Teórica y práctica... Prologue.
38. Ibidem, f. 1 vº.
39. C. DE VILLALÓN: Op. cit., p. 147. He is confusing the name of Democrates with that of Dinocrates, the person responsible for
the layout of the City of Alexandria for Alexander the Great, and who is one of the references that constantly appears in
works on Antiquity written during the Renaissance when reference is made to that city.
40. L. CERVERA VERA: Inventario de los bienes de Juan de Herrera. Valencia, Albatros Ediciones, 1977, pages 169, 170, 171.
41. S. SERLIO: Tercero y quarto libro de architectura de Sebastián Serlio Boloñés. En los quales se trata de las maneras de cómo se puede
adornar los hedificios con los exemplos de las antigüedades. Agora nuevamente traduzido de Toscano en Romance Castellano por
Francisco de Villalpando architecto. Toledo, 1552, prologue for the reader.
42. G. MAGGI and I. CASTRIOTTO: Della fortificatione delle città. Venecia, 1583, f. 6.
43. C. DE ROJAS: Teórica... Prologue.
44. C. DE ROJAS: Compendio y breve resolución..., p. 250.
45. C. DE ROJAS: Sumario de la milicia..., pages 309-319.
46. VITRUVIO: Op. cit., f. 3 and 4 vº.
47. D. GONZÁLEZ DE MEDINA BARBA: Examen de fortificación, Madrid, Imprenta del Licenciado Várez de Castro, 1599, pages 3-4.
48. L. VANDER HAMMEN: Don Filipe el prudente. Madrid, 1632, f. 129 vº. Quoted in A. CÁMARA: «La arquitectura militar y los inge-
nieros de la monarquía española. Aspectos de una profesión (1530-1650). Revista de la Universidad Complutense, no. 3, 1981,
p. 267.
49. A. GÓMEZ DE CASTRO: De las hazañas de Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1569). Madrid, Fundación Universitaria Española, 1984,
pages 257 and 262.
50. A. CÁMARA: «Tiburzio Spannocchi, Ingeniero Mayor de los Reinos de España». Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, no. 2, 1988, pages
77-91.
51. T. SPANNOCCHI: Descripción de las marinas de todo el reino de Sicilia. Con otras importantes declaraciones notadas por el caballero
Tiburcio Spanoqui del Abito de San Juan Gentilhombre de la Casa de su Magestad. Dirigido al príncipe don Filipe nuestro señor
en el año de MDXCVI. BNE, Mss. 788, s. fol.
52. A. CÁMARA: Fortificación y ciudad en los reinos de Felipe II. Madrid, Nerea, 1998, p. 61.
53. Descripción de las Plaças de Oran y Mazarquivir..., f. 49. En A. CÁMARA, R. MOREIRA and M. VIGANÒ: Leonardo Turriano, ingeniero
del rey. Madrid, Fundación Juanelo Turriano, 2010, p. 85.
54. A. DE MORALES: Op. cit., pages 330-336.
55. Ibidem, p. 335.
56. Ibidem, pages 337-338.
57. AGUSTÍN DE ROJAS: El viaje entretenido. Libro II (1604). Madrid, Aguilar, 1964, pages 307-308.
58. «–GALEAZO: ¿Qué edificio es aquel que admira el cielo? –EMILIO: Alcázar es real el que señalas.
–GALEAZO: ¿Y aquél, quién es, que con osado vuelo a la casa del Rey le pone escalas? –EMILIO: El Tajo, que hecho Icaro, a
Juanelo, Dédalo cremonés, le pidió alas. Y temiendo después al Sol el Tajo, Tiende sus alas por allí debajo». LUIS DE GÓNGORA
in Las firmezas de Isabela, (1610) in J. C. SÁNCHEZ MAYENDÍA: «El artificio de Juanelo en la literatura española». Cuadernos His-
panoamericanos, no. 103, 1958, pages 73-93.
59. Los veintiún libros de los ingenios y máquinas de Juanelo Turriano. J. A. GARCÍA DIEGO (ed.), with transcription and a prologue by
P. LAÍN ENTRALGO. Madrid, Fundación Juanelo Turriano, Doce Calles, 1996, vol. I, p. 185.
60. Idem, p. 194.
61. G. B. ANTONELLI: Epitomi delle fortificationi moderne (a cura de M. Sartor). Udine, Forum, 2009, p. 353.
62. L. TURRIANO: Descripción... (transcription by D. CRESPO), in A. CÁMARA et alii: Leonardo Turriano..., p. 256.
63. A. CÁMARA: «La ciudadela del rey en Jaca», en Signos. Arte y cultura en Huesca. De Forment a Lastanosa. Siglos XVI-XVII. Catalogue
from the Exhibition. Diputación de Huesca, 1994, p. 93.
Benito Cano, 1792, p. 74.
65. M. MORÁN TURINA: La memoria de las piedras..., p. 123.
66. A. DE MORALES: Op. cit., pages 102-103.

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A. CÁMARA, R. MOREIRA and M. VIGANÒ: Leonardo Turriano, ingeniero del rey. Madrid, Fundación Juanelo Turriano,
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RODRIGO CARO: Antigüedades y principado de la ilustrissima ciudad de Sevilla y chorographia de su convento iuridico,
o antigua chancilleria. Dirigida al excelentissimo señor Don Gaspar de Guzmán, Conde Duque de Sanlúcar la
Mayor. Sevilla, Andrés Grande, 1634.
L. CERVERA VERA: Inventario de los bienes de Juan de Herrera. Valencia, Albatros Ediciones, 1977.
DIEGO DE COLMENARES: Historia de la insigne ciudad de Segovia y compendio de las historias de Castilla. Segovia,
Diego Díez, 1637.
A. GÓMEZ DE CASTRO: De las hazañas de Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1569). Madrid, Fundación Universitaria
Española, 1984.
D. GONZÁLEZ DE MEDINA BARBA: Examen de fortificación. Madrid, Imprenta del Licenciado Várez de Castro, 1599.
R. L. KAGAN: Los cronistas y la corona. Madrid, Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica and Marcial Pons, 2010.
D. LAMBERINI: «La fortuna delle macchine senese nel Cinquecento», in Prima di Leonardo. Cultura delle macchine
a Siena nel Rinascimento. PAOLO GALLUZZI (ed.), Milano, 1991.
Los veintiún libros de los ingenios y máquinas de Juanelo Turriano. J. A. GARCÍA DIEGO (ed.) with transcription and
a prologue by P. LAÍN ENTRALGO. Madrid, Fundación Juanelo Turriano, Doce Calles, 1996
V. LLEÓ CAÑAL: Nueva Roma. Mitlogía y humanismo en el Renacimiento sevillano (1979). Madrid revised edition,
Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2012.
G. MAGGI and I. CASTRIOTTO: Della fortificatione delle città. Venecia, 1583.
JUAN DE MAL LARA: Recebimiento que hizo la muy noble y muy leal Ciudad de Sevilla, a la C:R:M: del Rey D. Philippe
N.S. Va todo figurado. Con una breve descripción de la Ciudad y su tierra. Sevilla, Alonso Escrivano, 1570.
A. DE MORALES: Las antigüedades de las ciudades de España que van nombradas en la corónica con las averiguaciones
de sus sitios y nombres antiguos, que escribía Ambrosio de Morales, cronista del rey católico nuestro señor don Felipe
II. Tomo IX. Madrid, Benito Cano, 1792.
M. MORÁN TURINA: La memoria de las piedras. Anticuarios, arqueólogos y coleccionistas de antigüedades en la España
de los Austrias. Madrid, Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2010.
A. MOREL FATIO and A. RODRÍGUEZ VILLA: Relación del viaje hecho por Felipe II, en 1585 a Zaragoza, Barcelona y
Valencia. Escrita por Henrique Cock, notario apostólico de la guardia del cuerpo real... Madrid, 1876.
BERNABÉ MORENO DE VARGAS: Historia de la ciudad de Mérida, dedicada a la misma Ciudad. Madrid, Viuda de
Alonso Martín, 1633.
LUCA PACIOLI: La divina proporción. A. M. GONZÁLEZ (intr.) and J. CALATRAVA (translation). Madrid, Akal, 1991.
BALTASAR PORREÑO: Dichos y hechos del Señor Rey don Felipe Segundo, el prudente, potentíssimo y glorioso monarca
de las Españas y de las Indias (1628). A. ÁLVAREZ OSSORIO and P. CUENCA (eds.). Madrid, Sociedad Estatal para
la conmemoración de los centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, 2001.
JERÓNIMO DE LA QUINTANA: A la muy antigua, noble y coronada villa de Madrid, historia de su antigüedad, nobleza
y grandeza... Madrid, Imprenta del Reyno, 1629.
AGUSTÍN DE ROJAS: El viaje entretenido. Libro II (1604). Madrid, Aguilar, 1964.
C. DE ROJAS: Teórica y práctica de fortificación, conforme las medidas y defensas destos tiempos... por el capitán Chris-
toval de Rojas, Ingeniero del Rey nuestro señor. Dirigida al Príncipe nuestro señor Don Felipe III. Madrid, 1598.
J. C. SÁNCHEZ MAYENDÍA: «El artificio de Juanelo en la literatura española». Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, no.
103. 1958.

S. SERLIO: Tercero y quarto libro de architectura de Sebastián Serlio Boloñés. En los quales se trata de las maneras de
cómo se puede adornar los hedificios con los exemplos de las antigüedades. Agora nuevamente traduzido de Toscano
en Romance Castellano por Francisco de Villalpando architecto. Toledo, 1552.
T. SPANNOCCHI: Descripción de las marinas de todo el reino de Sicilia. Con otras importantes declaraciones notadas
por el caballero Tiburcio Spanoqui del Abito de San Juan Gentilhombre de la Casa de su Magestad. Dirigido al
príncipe don Filipe nuestro señor en el año de MDXCVI. BNE, Mss. 788.
L. VANDER HAMMEN Y LEÓN: Don Filipe el prudente, segundo deste nombre, rey de las Españas y nuevo mundo.
Madrid, Viuda de Alonso Martín, 1632.
C. DE VILLALÓN: Ingeniosa comparación entre lo antiguo y lo presente. Hecha por el Bachiller Villalón, dirigida al Il-
lustre y reverendissimo Señor don Fray Alonso de Virues, Obispo dignísimo de Canaria, predicador y del consejo de
la cathólica y cesarea magestad. En la qual se disputa quando ovo más sabios agora, o en la antigüedad, y para en
prueba desto, se trae todos los sabios e inventores antiguos y presentes en todas las sciencias y artes (Valladolid, 1539).
Madrid, Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1898.
M. VITRUVIO POLLION: De architectura, dividido en diez libros, traduzidos de Latín en castellano por Miguel de Urrea
Architecto, y sacado en su perfectión por Iuan Gracian impresor vezino de Alcalá. Alcalá de Henares, 1582.
Back to Contents

BOOKS PUBLISHED BY FUNDACIÓN JUANELO TURRIANO
JUANELO TURRIANO COLLECTION ON THE HISTORY OF ENGINEERING
2016
SÁNCHEZ LÓPEZ,Elena and MARTÍNEZ JIMÉNEZ, Javier, Los acueductos de Hispania.
Construcción y abandono.
2015
Cristiano, Juanelo Turriano, de Cremona a la Corte: formación y red social de un
ZANETTI,
ingenio del Renacimiento.
ROMERO MUÑOZ, Dolores, La navegación del Manzanares: el proyecto Grunenbergh.
LOPERA, Antonio, Arquitecturas flotantes.
MUÑOZ CORBALÁN, Juan Miguel, Jorge Próspero Verboom: ingeniero militar flamenco
de la monarquía hispánica.
2016
CÁMARA MUÑOZ, Alicia and REVUELTA POL, Bernardo (eds.), «Libros, caminos y días». El viaje
del ingeniero.
CÁMARA MUÑOZ, Alicia (ed.), El dibujante ingeniero al servicio de la monarquía hispánica.
Siglos XVI-XVIII.
English edition: Draughtsman Engineers Serving the Spanish Monarchy in the Sixteenth to
Eighteenth Centuries.
2015
NAVASCUÉS PALACIO, Pedro and REVUELTA POL, Bernardo (eds.), Ingenieros Arquitectos.
CÁMARA MUÑOZ, Alicia and REVUELTA POL, Bernardo (eds.), Ingeniería de la Ilustración.
2014
CÁMARA MUÑOZ, Alicia and REVUELTA POL, Bernardo (eds.), Ingenieros del Renacimiento.
English edition (2016): Renaissance Engineers.
2013
CÁMARA MUÑOZ, Alicia and REVUELTA POL, Bernardo (eds.), Ingeniería romana.
English edition (2016): Roman Engineering. «That the greatness of the empire might be
attended with distinguished authority in its public buildings»
OTHER BOOKS
2014
NAVASCUÉS PALACIO, Pedro and REVUELTA POL, Bernardo (eds.), Una mirada ilustrada.
Los puertos españoles de Mariano Sánchez.
144
2013
CHACÓN BULNES, Juan Ignacio, Submarino Peral: día a día de su construcción,
funcionamiento y pruebas.
2012
AGUILAR CIVERA, Inmaculada, El discurso del ingeniero en el siglo XIX.
Aportaciones a la historia de las obras públicas.
CRESPO DELGADO, Daniel, Árboles para una capital. Árboles en el Madrid de la Ilustración.
2011
CASSINELLO, Pepa and REVUELTA POL, Bernardo (eds.), Ildefonso Sánchez del Río Pisón:
el ingenio de un legado.
2010
CÁMARA MUÑOZ, Alicia (ed.), Leonardo Turriano, ingeniero del rey.
CASSINELLO, Pepa (ed.), Félix Candela. La conquista de la esbeltez.
2009
CÓRDOBA DE LA LLAVE, Ricardo, Ciencia y técnica monetarias en la España bajomedieval.
NAVARRO VERA, José Ramón (ed.), Pensar la ingeniería. Antología de textos de
José Antonio Fernández Ordóñez.
2008
RICART CABÚS, Alejandro, Pirámides y obeliscos. Transporte y construcción: una hipótesis.
GONZÁLEZ TASCÓN, Ignacio and NAVASCUÉS PALACIO, Pedro (eds.), Ars Mechanicae.
Ingeniería medieval en España.
2006
MURRAY FANTOM, Glenn; IZAGA REINER, José María and SOLER VALENCIA, Jorge Miguel,
El Real Ingenio de la Moneda de Segovia. Maravilla tecnológica del siglo XVI.
2005
GONZÁLEZ TASCÓN, Ignacio and VELÁZQUEZ SORIANO, Isabel, Ingeniería romana en Hispania.
Historia y técnicas constructivas.
2001
NAVARRO VERA, José Ramón, El puente moderno en España (1850-1950).
La cultura técnica y estética de los ingenieros.
1997
CAMPO Y FRANCÉS, Ángel del, Semblanza iconográfica de Juanelo Turriano.
1996/2009
Los Veintiún Libros de los Ingenios y Máquinas de Juanelo Turriano.
1995
MORENO, Roberto, José Rodríguez de Losada. Vida y obra.
Back to Contents
145
This book is the outcome of the course held in 2012 at
the Centro Asociado de la UNED in Segovia, as a result of
the collaboration between the University and the Fun-
dación Juanelo Turriano. Roman Engineering. «That the
greatness of the empire might be attended with distin-
guished authority in its public buildings», is the first work
in the series that contains the lectures given by well-
known specialists in these courses at university level.
This first publication aims to analyse, amongst other sub-
jects: communication in the Roman Empire; religious
matters where hydraulic engineering was concerned; the
effects of public works on the citizens’ everyday lives; or
water supply in towns and cities.
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JUANELO TURRIANO LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF ENGINEERING

Lectures given at the course:

English edition 2016

Design, modelling and production:

© of the edition, Fundación Juanelo Turriano

The Fundación Juanelo Turriano has made every

Victoriano Muñoz Cava

Pedro Navascués Palacio

José María Goicolea Ruigómez

José Calavera Ruiz

Francisco Vigueras González

BOOKS PUBLISHED BY FUNDACIÓN JUANELO TURRIANO ............. 144

THE WATER COLLECTION

FIG. 3 View of the Cornalvo

Rabo de Buey-San Lázaro

FIG. 16 Close-up of the piscina limaria

FIG. 18 Castellum divissorium in the Las

ALONSO ZAMORA CANELLADA

A FEW TRACES FROM THE CONSTRUCTION OF SEGOVIA’S AQUEDUCT 33

FIG. 3 An assembled holivela wedge. The specimen shown features three

A FEW TRACES FROM THE CONSTRUCTION OF SEGOVIA’S AQUEDUCT 35

FIG. 4 Raising of an ashlar by means of tongs. The weight of the

FIG. 5 One of the pillars, in Plaza del

A FEW TRACES FROM THE CONSTRUCTION OF SEGOVIA’S AQUEDUCT 37

DRESSING TRACES: CUTTING THE SURFACES

A FEW TRACES FROM THE CONSTRUCTION OF SEGOVIA’S AQUEDUCT 39

FIG. 7 View of the remains of the strip cut into the

A FEW TRACES FROM THE CONSTRUCTION OF SEGOVIA’S AQUEDUCT 43

A FEW TRACES FROM THE CONSTRUCTION OF SEGOVIA’S AQUEDUCT 45

J. P. ADAM: La construction romaine. Materiaux et techniques. Paris, 1984.

A FEW TRACES FROM THE CONSTRUCTION OF SEGOVIA’S AQUEDUCT 47

SANTIAGO MONTERO HERRERO

THE FOSSAE (CANALS) OF NICOMEDIA

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AND RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 51

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AND RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 53

Imp(erator) Caesar divi Nervae f(ilius)

FIG. 2 Commemorative In-

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AND RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 55

THE TRAJAN CANAL AND THE TIGRIS

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AND RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 57

FIG. 5 Trajan’s Canal, accord-

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AND RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 59

THE TRAJAN’S FOSSA

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AND RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 61

[Imp(erator) Caes(ar) diui] / Ne[ruae fil(ius) Nerua] / Tra[ianus Aug(ustus) Germ(anicus)]

FIG. 7 Trajan’s Fossa.

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AND RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 63

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AND RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 65

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AND RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 67

CARLOS CABALLERO CASADO

— WHAT A ROMAN WAY IS (AND WHAT IT ISN’T)

FIG. 1 The Besaya Road, with its

ROMAN ROADS: THE BACKBONE OF THE EMPIRE 71

way has been recently recorded in

ROMAN ROADS: THE BACKBONE OF THE EMPIRE 73

FIG. 7 Geographical interpreta-

ROMAN ROADS: THE BACKBONE OF THE EMPIRE 75

ROMAN ROADS: THE BACKBONE OF THE EMPIRE 77

— Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, based at what is known as the Centro CIL II at