Gardens and Neighbors: Private Water Rights in Roman Italy

Appendix B: Fishponds and Freshwater Supply

{ 262 } APPENDIX B FISHPONDS AND FRESHWATER SUPPLY To determine how commonly ‹shponds might have relied on servitudes for supplies of freshwater, I analyzed the evidence collected in the “Gazetteer of Fishponds in Roman Italy” in James Higginbotham’s Piscinae (69–226). I rely on that publication because it presents a comprehensive collection of the physical evidence for ‹shponds in Roman Italy and examines this archaeological evidence in the context of the relevant literary and epigraphical sources. A few ‹shponds are omitted from Higginbotham’s study, mostly those published after his work, and I include those in my analysis. The lists in this appendix, like Higginbotham’s gazetteer, are arranged geographically and cover theTyrrhenian coast from near Cosa in Etruria in the north to Paestum in Lucania in the south. A few of the sites have more than one ‹shpond, and in some of these cases, the freshwater supply seems to be connected with all the ponds. For example, at Formia, the “Villa of Cicero” has three ‹shponds, two near the villa on the shore and one in the sea on a small promontory, and all seem to have been supplied with freshwater from a source on the shore that also served the villa (Piscinae, 163–67). On other sites, each pond has its own freshwater supply. For example, at Torre Astura, the rectangular ‹shpond was supplied by an aqueduct from the shore (as mentioned in chapter 4 of the present study), while a freshwater spring rose inside the round ‹shpond (the so-called Piscina di Lucullo) to supplement the water from the sea (Piscinae, 151, 156). Among the ‹fty-four sites with ‹shponds examined in Piscinae by Hig- Fishponds and Freshwater Supply { 263 } ginbotham, there is ample evidence for freshwater supplies that could have relied on servitudes. Sixteen have remains of a channel that can be connected with a nearby, natural water source. Eight have remains of a channel but no indication of a water source. Six have channels from cisterns on the property that either collected rainfall or were fed by a local source. Thirteen are located where access to municipal water was possible and likely. Eleven have too little evidence to draw conclusions about the freshwater supply. The sites in the ‹rst two categories in the preceding list—sites with a channel and a local source and sites with remains of a channel—could have relied on servitudes to bring freshwater to their ‹shponds. Together, the twenty-four sites in these ‹rst two categories make up nearly half of the ‹fty-four sites in Higginbotham’s gazetteer. The third category, sites with cisterns, could also have been connected to local distribution systems that involved servitudes, bringing the total to thirty of ‹fty-four sites. In the fourth category, sites with access to municipal water, some sites may still have relied on servitudes at least in the republican era. In the city of Rome, no servitudes would be needed for the imperial properties on the Palatine. But in Campania—at Pompeii, Herculaneum, Puteoli, and Baiae—servitudes could have been used before the construction of the Serino aqueduct by Augustus, which brought municipal water.1 Similarly, a public water supply was brought to Capua by Augustus.2 Of the sites with access to municipal water, ten could have relied on servitudes in the republican period, and 1. For dating the Serino aqueduct to the Augustan period, see CIL 10.1805, with Sgobbo, “serino,” 78–79. See also Frederiksen, Campania, 42, 331, 334; D’Arms, Bay of Naples, 79–80; Potenza, “Gli acquedotti romani di Serino,” 93–97. On the later history (second through fourth centuries AD) of the branch of the Serino serving Herculaneum, see Pagano, “Alcuni acquedotti romani,” 101–3. On water from the Sarno and springs on the slopes of Vesuvius for Pompeii in the late republic, on dating the Augustan aqueduct serving Pompeii to around 35 BC, and for a survey of Pompeii’s water supply, see Eschebach, “Wasserwirthschaft in Pompeji.” 2. For the Augustan aqueduct for Capua, see Frederiksen, Campania, 331; D’Arms, Bay of Naples, 80. For the smaller, probably older aqueduct at Puteoli, see Frederiksen, Campania, 345 n. 133. { 264 } FISHPONDS AND FRESHWATER SUPPLY if these are added to the preceding categories, the total comes to forty. It is not unlikely that owners of ‹shponds would have developed the water supply , at least if, as in the gardens at Pompeii, there is...