Posted on 07/21/2024 6:25:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Tunisia's Zaghouan Aqueduct, built to serve Carthage in the second century, is among the longest and most impressive of all Roman aqueducts. This video follows the aqueduct from the monumental fountain at its source to the grandiose baths at its terminus.
Following the Longest Roman Aqueduct | 3:20
Scenic Routes to the Past | 28K subscribers | 11,537 views | July 19, 2024
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Transcript 0:00 · Zaghouan, Tunisia is a small town about 60 kilometers south of Tunis. Here, 0:07 · on the edge of the Dorsal Mountains, stand the remains of a monumental 0:11 · fountain that marked the beginning of Africa's greatest Roman aqueduct. 0:16 · In the mid-second century, the leading citizens of 0:19 · Carthage – the most important city in the western provinces after Rome 0:23 · itself – decided to build an aqueduct fed by Zaghouan's mountain springs. When complete, 0:30 · this aqueduct extended 132 kilometers, making it one of the longest anywhere in the Roman world. 0:38 · At the aqueduct's source in Zaghouan, a semicircular portico was built. It was 0:44 · richly decorated with Corinthian columns, a mosaic floor, and statues. At its center, 0:51 · directly over the springs, was a small temple dedicated to the local nymphs. 0:57 · The spring water emerged into a pool shaped like a figure 8, 1:01 · which served as a settling basin for the water before it began the long journey to Carthage. 1:07 · Like most Roman aqueducts, the Zaghouan Aqueduct was subterranean for most of its length. Here, 1:14 · just below the nymphaeum, a short segment has been excavated. The channel was relatively 1:20 · small – about 90 cm wide by 130 cm high, just large enough for maintenance workers 1:27 · to crawl through and clean out the sediment traps in the channel floor. 1:32 · After falling steeply for the first few kilometers, the aqueduct channel leveled out, 1:37 · with a subsequent average gradient of only .15%. In several places, 1:43 · long lines of arcades were constructed to maintain the gradient over valleys. Here, 1:49 · at Mohamedia, the arcades parallel the modern highway. 1:53 · As you can see, the piers of the arcade were constructed from large stone blocks, topped by a 1:58 · masonry channel. Water took about a day and a half to flow from one end of the aqueduct to the other. 2:05 · On the outskirts of Carthage, the aqueduct flowed into the massive La Malga cisterns. 2:11 · There were originally 24 chambers. To judge from the surviving examples, 2:16 · each was a vault 95 meters long and 12.5 meters wide. Much of the water stored here 2:23 · was eventually channeled to the Antonine Baths, the aqueduct's final destination. 2:29 · Carthage seems to have had a water supply adequate for the needs of its residents before 2:34 · the aqueduct was built. It was probably the construction of the Antonine Baths, 2:39 · the largest anywhere outside Rome, that made the Zahgouan aqueduct necessary. 2:45 · The superstructure of the Antonine Baths is long gone, destroyed by medieval earthquakes 2:51 · and stone robbers. But the basement remains intact enough to provide a sense of the vast 2:56 · halls in which the water of the Zaghouan springs finally returned to the sun. 3:04 · If you're interested in visiting the Roman ruins of Tunisia and other historic destinations with 3:09 · me, check out the Toldinstone Trips page, linked onscreen and in the description.
http://www.romanaqueducts.info/aquastat/aquastatlength.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaghouan_Aqueduct
https://search.brave.com/search?q=longest+roman+aqueduct&summary=1
Too few people today appreciate just how brilliant, organized, and determined the Romans were.
Thank you for posting that. The work of the Romans is still impressive.
I cannot help but think that “baths” does not mean what we think it means, however. This seems consistent to me in archeology, that we do not understand what our ancestors were up to.
Aside from that, what have the Romans done for us?
Theodosian walls of Constantinople were unbelievable! Parts still stand. It took cannons to breach them.
The Roman baths, which they built all over the empire, were communal bathing facilities, Hot and cold pools to suit. Don’t know what else you think “baths” might mean. The Romans were great builders and engineers, writers and record keepers, and we do know pretty well what they were up to.
What have the bloody Romans ever done for us?
The aqueducts?
The roads?
medicine,
irrigation,
health,
cheese
education,
baths
and the Circus Maximus
—Monty Python
“Thank you for posting that. The work of the :Romans is still impressive.”
^
Not far from Lisbon stands a fantastic, multi-layered aquaduct. It’s so big and tall, it’s hard to get all of it into a frame...!
I suppose that I think they used the water and for a lot more than baths. The baths might be a formal and decorative ending, like the fountain where this started.
Maybe “bathing” was more than it is, today. Your clothes were cleaned and the lice were removed. Something like that. Those cisterns probably connected to a lot more than this.
Modern archeology seems to paint ancients as simpletons. I think this work was more justified than just “baths”. That’s all.
That’s cool too, 18th c date, a bit over 4K long, dunno if it’s still in use, but gravity fed so, should work even in a power failure. In Michigan, Grand Rapids and Wyoming (the city, which is actually older than the state of Wyoming) have water treatment out quite near Lake Michigan, and big buried pipelines pump their drinking water supply the 40 or so miles inland to the cities. Grand Rapids also (at least until recently, I may not be quite up to date, I noticed there’s construction going on when I drove by the other day) takes part of its supply from the Grand River.
My pleasure.
The baths were there to try to keep Roman B.O. down to a tolerable level, also were places to relax and chat. There were urinals throughout the city that were maintained and collected from by the fullers, as urine was (still is?) used for wool processing. Posh houses had their own lavatories and baths.
The big public baths include the monumental Baths of Caracalla, one of the emperors from the Severan dynasty, which capped off the earlier imperial period. Right after that there was the Crisis of the Third Century. Imperial order was restored, finally, by Diocletian, who also built a large Roman public bath complex (it sez here) and both continued to operate until the 6th century, when the city water supply was cut by the Ostrogoths (who didn’t use baths, figures).
Good points. Rome used circa 200 gallons of water per person per day, which is why new aqueducts had to be constructed from time to time. Geographically there was one particular route that had multiple aqueducts built along it at different times.
Getting rid of waste was also a role played by the incoming water. The main sewer, Cloaca Maxima, began as an open trench of sorts, wound up covered in the 3rd c BC by a miles-long Roman barrel vault with other covered passages feeding into it (again, rising population), and the waste got washed out into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Some of it is still in use, take that tree-huggers!
They got to be an empire thanks to having to respond to invasions and worse by earlier city-states in Italy, and later by the Gauls and the Carthaginians. The first ‘conquest’ by Rome was annexation of Ostia around 500 BC, and the final end to the Roman Empire was the fall of Constantinople in 1453, 39 years before Columbus set forth, iow a run of nearly 2000 years, of course with a lot of ups and downs.
Pic?
Didn’t appear.
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