Cloaca Maxima

Uh, he built bathhouses.

He, um, excavated the great old sewer that ran under Rome, the Cloaca Maxima, made it work.

Y-you know, um, his...

He wasn't just a, a winner of battles.

He renovated the aqueducts in Rome.

He, um, uh, and repaired the great sewer at the Cloaca Maxima that ran through the center of, uh, uh, Rome.

And, uh, he built a new aqueduct entirely, the Aqua Virgo.

Um, and by the time he had finished, the citizens of Rome were receiving more water per head than the city, uh, citizens of, uh, New York receive today.

The Etruscans who lived in what's now Tuscany used simple arches in their gates and drains.

The earliest example in Rome is the Cloaca Maxima, the Great Sewer, which dates back to around 600 BCE.

But the Etruscans never pushed the arch to its limits the way the Romans did.

So what made the Roman arch so special?

It's true, they love their toilets and waterworks.

They famously built public baths, aqueducts, public toilets, and their mighty sewer, the Cloaca Massima, moved millions of gallons of water and waste out of Rome every day.

Romans seem to have this reputation for creating advanced plumbing and wastewater disposal.

But if you really dig into the archaeology of toilets, it seems pretty obvious that the title of creator of the oldest toilet actually belongs to civilizations that existed almost 3000 years before the Romans.

The low ground between the hills of Rome were originally marshes.

Drainage projects traditionally associated with the early monarchs and especially the Cloaca Maxima, its famous sewer, helped transform the valley into the Roman Forum, which became the city's civic, political, commercial, and religious center.

Around five-fifty BC, Rome may have already contained roughly thirty to forty thousand inhabitants, making it one of the largest urban settlements in the Italian Peninsula.

Roman tradition says Rome was ruled by seven kings between seven fifty-three and five oh nine BC.

You hadn't invented this.

He repaired the Cloaca Maxima, the greatest sewer in Rome, built 700 wells, 130 reservoirs, six bathhouses, 500 drinking fountains.

gave 59 days of chariot races and circus maximus this is all true this yes

this is from the ancient sources uh chief chiefly uh plinny plinny's natural history um no he was um he was like one of those great victorian uh engineers you know he just built i mean not only therefore was he a brilliant military commander but he had a vision and uh He really remodeled Rome and he built the Pantheon and he built lots of other great, great buildings.

It was looked upon as the center of Roman religion and authority, and at times the Senate was convened in it.

During this reign, the famous Cloaca Maxima, or Great Sewer, extended to drain the Campania, is also said to have been constructed.

This sewer was so well built that it is still used.

Under the second king of this dynasty, Servius Tullius, the city was surrounded with a wall which included the Palatine, Quirinal, Coelian, and Aventine hills, and also the Janiculum, which was on the opposite side of the river and connected with the city by a bridge, the Pons Sublicius.

The first aqueduct, Aqua Appia, was built about 313 B.C. by Appius Claudius.

Sewers intersected Rome in all directions, and some were of immense size.

The Cloaca Maxima, built by Tarquin, was the largest, and is still in use.

Its innermost arch has a diameter of fourteen feet.

Well, uh, already in the late '30s, this is before Augustus has kind of won, right? He's starting a big program of aqueduct improvement, and he's sorting out the sewage system.

Now, one, one of the most famous monuments in Rome, um, is the Cloaca Maxima, the great drain into which, uh, actually the shit literally, um, falls.

Um, uh, and it was in a terrible state.

And there is, there is a wonderful little vignette, and it's only a vignette, of Agrippa getting in a boat and going through, himself, going through the Cloaca Maxima to inspect it personally, um, to see what, what should be done.

I mean, it must have been so disgusting, um, and so smelly.

Um, and you know, so germ-infested.

Um, but, but it's a wonderful image, I think, of, uh, Agrippa, um, having, uh, having an eye for detail, not just on the battlefield, um, but also in terms of, um, building infrastructure, water supply, drainage, all that kind of stuff.

I mean, in some ways, I think that, that image of, uh, Agrippa in his boat in the Cloaca Maxima kind of does set the tone, the s- for the next phase of his career, which is, as it were, post civil war, which we'll look at when we've taken a break.