A treatise, De Aquerductibus Urbis Roma, which is extant, was writ ten by Sextus Julius Frontinus (curator aquarunz about roo A. D., under Nerva and Trajan). From this it appears that the date of the first import ant enterprise of the kind (Aqua Apple?) was 313 B. c. Frontinus refers to nine different aqueducts, which were all that existed in his time, and which daily brought into the city twenty-eight million cubic feet of water. The abundant supply which modern Rome derives from the three now in use enables us to form an adequate conception of the vast scale on which the ancient city must have been provided with one of the most import ant appliances of civilization and refinement, when nine were employed to feed its baths and fountains.
According to some authorities, the number of aqueducts was after ward increased to nineteen; others make it twenty-four, probably includ ing branches or channels of which we possess no accurate information. Considering the population to be supplied, the combined capacity of all these works was very great. It has been estimated that not less than fifty million cubic feet of water were brought daily to a population which probably did not exceed one million.
The Romans also constructed aqueducts in different parts of their extended domain outside of Italy. Some of these surpassed in grandeur those which furnished water to the capital. The aqueduct at Metz, the
ruins of which still remain, was among the most remarkable. It origin ally extended across the Moselle, and conveyed to the city a supply of excellent water from the river Gorze so abundant that from it were filled basins sufficiently large to accommodate mock naval battles.
Conclusion.—The Romans were the last of the nations of antiquity to enter upon a career of civilization. They were the recipients of the early culture of the East, of Egypt, of Etruria, of Carthage, of Palestine, and, above all, of Greece. The Roman empire, by bringing many different nations into peaceful and intimate relations, was the means of concen trating, preserving, and diffusing their knowledge and ideas and the results of their varied activity. The special contribution made by Rome herself to the cause of civilization was her system of law, which, from a few simple and narrow regulations, the framework of her primitive organization, was gradually developed into a vast and elaborate code, founded on universal and immutable principles, and applicable to society in highly-advanced and complex conditions. It is everywhere either the basis or one of the main constituents of modern jurisprudence, and it thus remains the most enduring monument of ths' greatness of the Roman people.