Roman Demands For Water Quality
Romans preferred drinking water with a high mineral content, preferring its taste to that of soft water. Roman architect Vitruvius described the process for testing a source of drinking water:
Springs should be tested and proved in advance in the following ways. If they run free and open, inspect and observe the physique of the people who dwell in the vicinity before beginning to conduct the water, and if their frames are strong, their complexions fresh, legs sound, and eyes clear, the springs deserve complete approval. If it is a spring just dug out, its water is excellent if it can be sprinkled into a Corinthian vase or into any other sort made of good bronze without leaving a spot on it. Again, if such water is boiled in a bronze cauldron, afterwards left for a time, and then poured off without sand or mud being found at the bottom of the cauldron, that water also will have proved its excellence.
Vitruvius insisted, "Consequently we must take great care and pains in searching for springs and selecting them, keeping in view the health of mankind." The water from the Eifel aqueduct was considered to be some of the very best water in the empire.
Unfortunately, hard water tends to produce calcium carbonate deposits, and all areas of the aqueduct today have a thick layer of limestone-like deposits up to 20 centimetres (7.9 in) thick. Despite the reduction in the cross-sectional area of the aqueduct caused by these deposits, the aqueduct was still able to provide the necessary quantity of water for Cologne. In the Middle Ages, the layer of "Eifel marble" from the aqueduct was widely reused as building material.
Read more about this topic: Eifel Aqueduct
Famous quotes containing the words roman, demands, water and/or quality:
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Certainly for us of the modern world, with its conflicting claims, its entangled interests, distracted by so many sorrows, so many preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, the problem of unity with ourselves in blitheness and repose, is far harder than it was for the Greek within the simple terms of antique life. Yet, not less than ever, the intellect demands completeness, centrality.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before ‘tis a peascod, or a codling when ‘tis almost an apple. ‘Tis with him in standing water between boy and man.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I am not naturally ... “A bag of wind”; yet ... I mean deliberately and decidedly “to cut” in future all my old ideas on this head. I don’t think modesty “pays.” It is a good quality in a family, it is a domestic virtue, it makes a home happy after you have got a home, but it is not potent in getting homes. It is not a money-maker, neither is it lucky in gaining a reputation. I am of the impression that gaseous bodies do better.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)