Construction of the Aqua Appia, Rome's first aqueduct

Date

312 BCE

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

Italy (Rome)

Era

Classical Antiquity

Significance

The censor Appius Claudius Caecus began Rome's first aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, in 312 BCE (the same magistracy in which he started the Via Appia).

Running roughly 16 km from springs near the Alban Hills to the Forum Boarium cattle market, it descended only about 10 metres over its length and was carried almost entirely underground, both to maintain the precise gradient and to shield it from enemies during the ongoing Samnite Wars. Delivering on the order of 75,000 cubic metres of water per day, it inaugurated Rome's celebrated public water system, which would grow to eleven aqueducts supplying fountains, baths and latrines. The Aqua Appia established the engineering template - gravity-fed channels, careful surveying and gradient control - that defined Roman hydraulic infrastructure across the empire and shaped urban public health for centuries.

Empires active in 312 BCE

• Roman Republic
  509 BCE – 27 BCE
• Maurya Empire
  322 BCE – 185 BCE
• Kingdom of Kush
  1070 BCE – 350 CE
• Carthaginian Empire
  650 BCE – 146 BCE
• Odrysian Kingdom
  480 BCE – 46 CE
• Seleucid Empire
  312 BCE – 63 BCE

Related science, technology & invention events

• Euclid compiles the Elements at Alexandria
  c. 300 BCE
• Aristotle founds the Lyceum and systematises the sciences
  c. 335 BCE
• Inauguration of the Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre)
  80 CE
• Wootz crucible steel developed in South India and Sri Lanka
  c. 300 BCE
• Archimedes formulates the principle of buoyancy
  c. 250 BCE
• Eratosthenes measures the circumference of the Earth
  c. 240 BCE

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

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