A drainage tunnel, called an emissary in ancient contexts, is a tunnel or channel created to drain water, often from a stagnant or variable-depth body of water. It typically leads to a lower stream or river, or to a location where a pumping station can be economically run. Drainage tunnels have frequently been constructed to drain mining districts or to serve drainage districts.
Emissary comes from Latin emissarium, from ex and mittere 'to send out'.
Ancient world
An Etruscan emissary
The most remarkable emissaries carry off the waters of lakes surrounded by hills.
In ancient Greece, the waters of Lake Copais were drained into the Cephisus; they were partly natural and partly artificial. In 480 BC, Phaeax built drains at Agrigentum in Sicily: they were admired for their sheer size, although the workmanship was crude.
The ancient Romans excelled in the construction of emissaries, as in all their hydraulic works, and remains are extant showing that lakes Trasimeno, Albano and Nemi were all drained by means of emissaries. The case of Lake Fucino is remarkable in two ways: the attempt to drain it was one of the rare failures of Roman engineering, and the emissary is now completely above ground and open to inspection. Julius Caesar is said to have first conceived the idea of this stupendous undertaking (Suet.Jul.44). Claudius inaugurated what was to have been a complete drainage scheme, the Tunnels of Claudius(Tac.Ann.xii.57), but the water level dropped by just 4meters and stabilized, leaving the lake very much there. Hadrian tried it again, but failed; and it was not until 1878 that Lake Fucino was finally drained.
The initial text of this section was an abridgement from Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1875 edition, public domain).
Emissarium, the full article in Smith's Dictionary
Walter Dragoni, Costanza Cambi, Field Trip Guidebook for "Hydraulic Structures in Ancient Rome", field trip of the 42nd Congress of the International Association of Hydrogeologists, Rome, September 2015. full text
The Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing 406 km (252 mi) through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the River Aniene, to the Tyrrhenian Sea, between Ostia and Fiumicino. It drains a basin estimated at 17,375 km2 (6,709 sq mi). The river has achieved lasting fame as the main watercourse of the city of Rome, which was founded on its eastern banks.
The Appian Way is one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient republic. It connected Rome to Brindisi, in southeast Italy. Its importance is indicated by its common name, recorded by Statius, of Appia longarum... regina viarum . The road is named after Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor who began and completed the first section as a military road to the south in 312 BC during the Samnite Wars.
The Marsi were an Italic people of ancient Italy, whose chief centre was Marruvium, on the eastern shore of Lake Fucinus. The area in which they lived is now called Marsica. They originally spoke a language now termed Marsian and attested by several inscriptions.
The naumachia in the Ancient Roman world referred to both the staging of naval battles as mass entertainment, and the basin or building in which this took place.
The Cloaca Maxima was one of the world's earliest sewage systems. Its name is related to that of Cloacina, a Roman goddess. Built during either the Roman Kingdom or early Roman Republic, it was constructed in Ancient Rome in order to drain local marshes and remove waste from the city. It carried effluent to the River Tiber, which ran beside the city. The sewer started at the Forum Augustum and ended at the Ponte Rotto and Ponte Palatino. It began as an open air canal, but it developed into a much larger sewer over the course of time. Agrippa renovated and reconstructed much of the sewer. This would not be the only development in the sewers. By the first century CE all eleven Roman aqueducts were connected to the sewer. After the Roman Empire fell the sewer still was used. By the 19th century, it became a tourist attraction. Some parts of the sewer are still used today. Whilst still being used, it was highly valued as a sacred symbol of Roman culture, and Roman engineering.
The province of L'Aquila is the largest, most mountainous and least densely populated province of the Abruzzo region of Italy. It comprises about half the landmass of Abruzzo and occupies the western part of the region. It has borders with the provinces of Teramo to the north, Pescara and Chieti to the east, Isernia to the south and Frosinone, Rome and Rieti to the west. Its capital is the city of L'Aquila.
The Liri is one of the principal rivers of central Italy, flowing into the Tyrrhenian Sea a little below Minturno under the name Garigliano.
Alba Fucens was an ancient Italic town located at 1,000 m (3,300 ft) elevation at the base of Monte Velino, approximately 6.5 km (4.0 mi) north of Avezzano, Abruzzo, central Italy. Its ruins can be found in the comune of Massa d'Albe.
Lake Albano is a small volcanic crater lake in the Alban Hills of Lazio, at the foot of Monte Cavo, 20 km (12 mi) southeast of Rome. Castel Gandolfo, overlooking the lake, is the site of the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo.
Avezzano is a city and comune with a population of 40,785 inhabitants, situated in the Abruzzo region, province of L'Aquila, Italy. It is the second most populous municipality in the province and the sixth in the region. Avezzano was documented as an existing urban center in the ninth century. The city was destroyed by the earthquake of 1915. It was rebuilt after the 1944 Allied bombing. The city was decorated with the silver medal for civil merit, an award granted by the Italian Republic.
The Via Valeria was an ancient Roman road of Italy, the continuation north-eastwards of the Via Tiburtina from Tibur. It probably owed its origin to Marcus Valerius Messalla, censor in 154 BC.
The Romans constructed aqueducts throughout their Republic and later Empire, to bring water from outside sources into cities and towns. Aqueduct water supplied public baths, latrines, fountains, and private households; it also supported mining operations, milling, farms, and gardens.
Sanitation in ancient Rome, acquired from the Etruscans, was very advanced compared to other ancient cities and provided water supply and sanitation services to residents of Rome. Although there were many sewers, public latrines, baths and other sanitation infrastructure, disease was still rampant. The baths are known to symbolise the "great hygiene of Rome".
Cerchio is a comune and town in the province of L'Aquila in the Abruzzo region of southern Italy.
The Fucine Lake was a large endorheic karst lake between 650 and 680 m above sea level and surrounded by the Monte Sirente-Monte Velino mountain ranges to the north-northeast, Mount Salviano to the west, Vallelonga to the south, and the Valle del Giovenco to the east-southeast. Located in western Abruzzo in central Italy, the town of Avezzano lies to the northwest, Ortucchio to the southeast, and Trasacco to the southwest of the historic lake. Once the third largest lake in Italy after Lake Garda and Lake Maggiore, it was finally drained in 1878.
Avē Imperātor, moritūrī tē salūtant is a well-known Latin phrase quoted in Suetonius, De vita Caesarum. It was reportedly used during an event in AD 52 on Lake Fucinus by naumachiarii—captives and criminals fated to die fighting during mock naval encounters—in the presence of the emperor Claudius. Suetonius reports that Claudius replied "Aut nōn".
An aqueduct is a watercourse constructed to carry water from a source to a distribution point far away. In modern engineering, the term aqueduct is used for any system of pipes, ditches, canals, tunnels, and other structures used for this purpose. The term aqueduct also often refers specifically to a bridge carrying an artificial watercourse. Aqueducts were used in ancient Greece, ancient Near East, and ancient Rome. The simplest aqueducts are small ditches cut into the earth. Much larger channels may be used in modern aqueducts. Aqueducts sometimes run for some or all of their path through tunnels constructed underground. Modern aqueducts may also use pipelines. Historically, agricultural societies have constructed aqueducts to irrigate crops and supply large cities with drinking water.
The Tunnels of Claudius consist principally of a 6 km-long tunnel together with several monumental service tunnels which Roman Emperor Claudius had built by 52 AD to partially drain the Fucine Lake in Abruzzo, protecting riparian villages from floods and creating agricultural land. It was a massive engineering project involving 30000 workmen and slaves who completed it in just 11 years, and considered among the grandest in antiquity. It was the longest tunnel ever built until the inauguration of the Fréjus Rail Tunnel in 1871.
The Fucine Inlet is a monument built on the head of the main emissary of the Fucine Lake in Italy. It is made up of the three-arched bridge of the sluice gates and the about 7-metre-high (23 ft) statue of the Immaculate Conception rising above. It is situated in Borgo Incile, a locality south of the city of Avezzano, in the Fucine plain, Abruzzo, Central Italy. The facility, necessary for the drainage of the Fucine Lake, connects the outer drainage canal to the underground emissary which is served by the system of the Tunnels of Claudius in Mount Salviano. The monument was made in 1876 by architect Carlo Nicola Carnevali.
Argon Pedion is the geological name of a "closed karst basin" in the Arcadian highlands in the Peloponnese peninsula of southern Greece. The first known appearance of this name was in a publication by the ancient geographer Pausanias. He called it untilled plain, because the grassland and acres may be flooded beyond the time when annual vegetation starts. When the winter rains were very heavy, floods can even turn the plain into a temporary lake. Intensive karst formation prevents the formation of a permanent lake. In rare cases, even today, modern technologies can not prevent flooding.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
