The Man Who Found Rome's First Water
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The story in brief
Rome's first aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, dates to around 312 BC, and almost all of it ran underground, out of sight. This video tells the story of the two men behind it: Gaius Plautius, known as “Venox”, who found its springs, and his colleague Appius Claudius, who ended up with the credit.
It starts with Rome before plumbing, follows the hunt for the springs and the building of a channel you couldn't see, and then explains how Plautius lost his share of the fame. The story is told through the account of the Roman water commissioner Frontinus, and it ends with what survives today.
Where the sources are uncertain, including a stretch of channel found during the Metro C excavations in Rome and the question of why it was buried, the video says so.
Chapters
Sources
- Frontinus, De Aquaeductu (The Aqueducts of Rome), Book I, translated by C. E. Bennett (Loeb, 1925; public domain), on LacusCurtius: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Frontinus/De_Aquis/Bennett/1*.html
- Wikipedia, "Aqua Appia": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_Appia
- Excavators' report: Morretta, Palazzo and Ferrandes, "Un tratto di acquedotto repubblicano rinvenuto negli scavi Metro C di Piazza Celimontana, Roma" in "Roma medio repubblicana" (2020), pp. 51-74: https://iris.uniroma1.it/handle/11573/1469868
- La Repubblica, 4 April 2017, on the Metro C find: https://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/04/04/news/scavi_metro_c_a_roma_scoperto_acquedotto_romano_sotto_al_celio-162182328/
Where the sources are uncertain (the Metro C channel, why the channel was buried), the video says so.
Full image and music credits are in the video description on YouTube.
Narration is AI-generated. Scripts are AI-assisted and fact-checked against the sources listed.
Thumbnail: "Aqua appia planlatium" (Droysen 1886 base map, route overlay by Coldeel 2008), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; tinted and cropped.
