Page - 158 - in The Power of Urban Water - Studies in premodern urbanism

158 SophieBouffier andorganized.Theprogressiveestablishmentofcommunity rulesalsoapplies towater resour- ces, because water is conceived as a resource to which every citizen has the right of access and which cannot be bought or exchanged, unlike other products. Some political regimes, such as theGreek tyrants, understood the challenge for their visibility and sustainability and developed great hydraulic programmes, as we shall see in this paper about the city of Syra- cuse. Syracuse, foundedby theCorinthians in thesecondhalfof the8th centuryBC,on the island of Ortygia and the nearbymainland of Achradina, grew rapidly, to the point of expanding in- land,where it built secondary colonies as far as the southern coast of Sicily. At the beginning of the 5th centuryBC, the tyrant ofGela, theDeinomenidGelon, seized the city and transferred his capital there, wishing to transform it into amegalopolis. To this end, he initiated a policy of concentrating eastern Sicilian populations in the city of Syracuse and launched an urban extensionprogrammedesigned towelcome thesepeople and toprovide thenecessary commu- nity services for theirwelfare.His successors continued this policy and the city evolvedduring periods of autocratic regimes and civil and foreign wars.6 It reached its definitive territorial control in the late 5th century BC, when the tyrant Dionysius the Elder surrounded the entire Epipolai plateauwith a fortificationofmore than 21km inperimeter,whichwas, nevertheless, a longwayfromtheexperienceof intensiveurbanization.7Betweenthebeginningof the5thcen- turyBCand the finalRomanconquest in 212BC, theurbanspaceexpanded fromanareaof 50/ 60ha to over 1,800ha, althoughprobably only 250hawere densely occupied. The population boomthat resulted fromtheoriginalSyracusansynoecismandenrichmentof thecitynecessar- ily forced the authorities to take into account the question of water supply and to consider a comprehensiveplan forwatermanagement.Thevariousgovernments,whether theDeinomenid tyrannyor successivepowers, alsohad tomonitor this issue closely. Originally, thecityhadaneasilyaccessible lowdepthwater tableandseveral sources inside Ortygia,8 and in particular an abundant source, Arethusa, which gave rise to an exceptional myth.9 Individual and public wells also supplied the population. On the mainland, a dozen sourceshavebeen identifiedon theperimeter of theEpipolai plateau,10 resulting fromthegeo- logical configurationof the substrate, suchas the sources of Tonnara, Targia,AcquaColombe; it is a significantnumber,but in thecurrent stateof research, theiruse inancient timeshasnot beenconfirmed.Furthermore, theyare ratherdistant from the settlement.Historiography, from the 16th centuryAD, reported thepresence of ancient aqueducts,more or less knownwith cer- tainty:11 the aqueducts ofNinfeo, theParadiso, Tremilia,within theurban space, and themost impressive, theGalermiAqueductofnearly30kminlength.Authors fromtheDominicanFather TommasoFazello12 to contemporary timeshavequestioned theactionsof thevarious leadersof thecityofSyracuse.Mostscholarsandhistorianshaveattributedtheseaqueducts to theGreeks, 6 Finally, on the variousphases of theurbannetwork:Basile 2012;Guzzardi 2011. 7 Literary sources differ from the archaeological documentation provided by Dieter Mertens and the German Archaeological Institute in Rome regarding the perimeter of the fortification of Epipolai plateau. According to Strabo, the fortification reached the lengthof 180 stadiumsor 33km (Str. 6, 2, 4). According toMertens, it should be evaluated at 21km. But these figures reflect only the intramural territory. One should also consider the entire area of influence of the city. According to Pietro Griffo, who gives an estimate a little higher than that of Julius Beloch,Syracusewouldhave includedanareaof4300km2withapopulationof 240,000peopleofwhichonly 1/3 lived in the townproper: about 80,000/100,000 in the 5th century BC; in the 3rd century BCunderHieron II, the citywouldhave counted 150,000/200,00 inhabitants. 8 Bouffier 1987;Bouffier 1992. 9 Bouffier 2019. 10 Arenaet al. 2018, 7f.; Aureli et al. 2005, 8–10;Aureli et al. 1989. 11 Cf. the state of the art, inBouffier 2000;Bouffier et al. 2018, 303–305. 12 Fazello 1558;Bouffier et al. 2018.