To browse Academia. This paper considers a largely ignored aqueduct that was one of Augustus' largest construction projects. The Aqua Augusta transferred a significant amount of water from a mountain basin, with consequent environmental and social impacts, to at least eight towns around the heavily settled, and geologically unstable, Bay of Naples.
The Augusta, rather than being focused on one urban centre, was a regional water supply network built to help secure the strategic area of Campania. In its creation and operation we see a complex interplay between municipal and imperial interests until the Augusta's demise in the fifth century AD. The Serino aqueduct is not well known because there are no remains of spectacular bridges, but it was a masterpiece of engineering and one of the largest aqueduct systems in the whole Roman Empire.
The Serino aqueduct was constructed during the Augustus period of the Roman Empire, probably between 33 and 12 BC when Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was curator aquarum in Rome, principally in order to refurnish the Roman fleet of Misenum and secondarily to supply water for the increasing demand of the important commercial harbour of Puteoli as well as drinking water for big cities such as Cumae and Neapolis.
The main channel of the Serino aqueduct was approximately 96 km long, and had 7 main branches to towns along its trace such as Nola, Pompeii, Acerra, Herculaneum, Atella, Pausillipon, Nisida, Puteoli, Cumae and Baiae. Since the total length of all the branches was approximately 49 km, the Serino aqueduct complex had a length of around km and therefore it should be considered the largest aqueduct system in the Roman world. The study of ancient hydraulic infrastructures e.
This method was applied in this study to one of the biggest ancient Roman aqueduct complex: the Augustan aqueduct in the Campania region of Southern Italy. The paper highlights which civitates or settlements were served and why some civitates, although in the same regional area, were instead excluded.
