removed. I am well aware that I ought to indicate in detail the manner of the new distribution; but this I will add when the additions are made; it ought to be understood that no account should be given until they are completed.
What shall we say of the fact that the painstaking interest which our Emperor evinces for his subjects does not rest satisfied with what I have already described, but that he deems he has contributed too little to our needs and gratification merely by such increase in the water supply, unless he should also increase its purity and its palatableness? It is worth while to examine in detail how, by correcting the defects of certain waters, he has enhanced the usefulness of all of them. For when has our City not had muddy and turbid water, whenever there have been only moderate rain-storms? And this is not because all the waters are thus affected at their sources, or because those which are taken from springs ought to be subject to such pollution. This is especially true of Marcia and Claudia and the rest, whose purity is perfect at their sources, and which would be not at all, or but very slightly, made turbid by rains, if well-basins[1] should be built and covered over.
The two Anios are less limpid, for they are drawn from a river, and are often muddy even in good weather, because the Anio, although flowing from a lake whose waters are very pure, is nevertheless made turbid by carrying away portions of its loose crumbling banks, before it enters the conduits—a pollution to which it is subject not only in the rainstorms of winter and spring, but also in the showers of summer, at which time of the year a more refreshing purity of the water is demanded.
- ↑ e.g. an artificial basin made to receive the water at its source
