Page - 157 - in The Power of Urban Water - Studies in premodern urbanism

SophieBouffier 10 SyracusanWaterNetworks inAntiquity Abstract:During a longperiod, until the beginning of the 21st century, a lack of interest about thehydraulics in ancient Sicilian townsprevailed: archaeologists andhistorians feltmore con- cernedby the traditional topicsofClassicalArchaeology.Nowadays, as environmental research has been booming, some specific cases have begun to be studied, like Syracusan aqueducts whichwereknownalmostexclusively fromFrancescoSaverioCavallariandAdolfHolm’smono- graph in 1883.Using recent results, thepaperwill focuson the topicsof theGalermiAqueduct, investigated by a French team of Aix-Marseille University, and some parts of other channels, studied by local teams of Syracusan speleologists and engineers, inside the Epipolai shelf and theAchradine district. The people of Syracuse,maybe under the rule of theDeinomenids and thenHieron II, hadbeen equippedwith pipelines of drinkingwater as early as the 5th century BC andhad increased themall through their history to cater for the needs of the fast-growing town, either for drinkingwater or craftsmanship. Introduction During the last fewyears, and in thecontextof current environmentaldebates, therehasbeen arenewalof interestaboutancient societies’behaviourconcerning thisvital substance,water. This revivalhaspromptedthereopeningofseveraldossiers, suchas thatof thewaternetworks in the ancient city of Syracuse. For a long time, it was not a central theme of archaeological research, althoughGreek philosophers such as Platon1 andAristotle2 pointed out theneed to providewater to thecommunity: according to them, theGreekcitymusthavewater inquanti- ty – to avoid scarcity – andquality – tomaintain the goodhealth of its inhabitants. As early as the5thcenturyBC,Hippocratesandhisschooldescribedpeople’shealthandenvironmental conditions and advised local physicians to consider this reality that changed depending on places. As Elisabeth Gruber argued in her paper about Danubian populations in theMiddle Ages,3 one could think thatGreekgovernments faced thenecessityofmanagingwater resour- cesandsupplying thepopulation, bothwithdrinkingwater andstaple foods.Onemighthave thought that the Greeks had designed their cities taking into account thewater resources of the chosen site and ensuring that the basic needs of the populationwere satisfied. Actually,4 it is not a relevant factor as some Greek towns are settled on sites that lacked water. The aimwas to choose a site naturally easy to fortify and the issuewas above all to prevent the Mediterranean torrential rains fromdestroying theurbanstructures.5 So, oneof themaincon- cerns of the local authorities was first to drain and channel the waters and store them for redistribution. The search for drinkingwaterwas left to the careof individuals.Greekgovern- ments seem to have realized the importance of the issue as the city becamemore structured 1 Pl. Leg. 5, 747d. 2 Aristot. Pol. 1330b. 3 SeeGruber, this volume. 4 I havedeveloped these aspects inpreviouspapers: Bouffier 2014;Bouffier –Brunet forthcoming. 5 See for example the city of Locri Epizephyrii: Elia 2019. Note: Thisworkhasbeenproducedwithin the frameworkof theUnit of Excellence LabexMed (10-LABX-0090). Thisworkhasbenefitted fromastategrant administeredby theAgenceNationalede laRecherche for the project Investissementsd’Avenir A*MIDEX (noANR-11-IDEX-0001–02). OpenAccess.©2020SophieBouffier, publishedbyDeGruyter. Thiswork is licensedunder theCreative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110677065-010