Difficulties of management 295 



thus damaging the fabric; or they drove local roads over it; or again 

 they blocked the access to working parties engaged in the duties of 

 upkeep. Frontinus quotes decrees of the Senate dealing with these 

 abuses and providing penalties for persons guilty of such selfish and 

 reckless conduct. But to legislate was one thing, to enforce the law 

 was another. Yet the unaccommodating 1 landlords had no excuse for 

 their behaviour. It was not a question of 'nationalizing' the side strips, 

 though that would have been amply justified in the interests of the 

 state. But the fact is that the old practice of Republican days was 

 extremely tender of private rights. If a landlord made objection to 

 selling a part of his estate, they took over the whole block and paid 

 him for it. Then they marked off the portions required for the service, 

 and resold the remainder. Thus the state was left unchallenged owner 

 of the part retained for public use. But the absence of any legal or 

 moral claim has not availed to stop encroachments : the draining away 

 of the water still goes on, wifh or without leave, and even the channels 

 and pipes themselves are pierced. No wonder that more severe and 

 detailed legislation was found necessary in the time of Augustus. The 

 writer ends by recognizing the unfairness of suddenly enforcing a law 

 the long disuse of which has led many to presume upon continued 

 impunity for breaking it. He therefore has been reviving it gradually, 

 and hopes that offenders will not force him to execute it with rigour. 



What stands out clearly in this picture of the water-service is the 

 utter lack of public spirit imputed to the landowners near Rome by a 

 careful and responsible public servant of good repute. There is none 

 of the sermonizing of Seneca or the sneers and lamentations of Pliny. 

 Frontinus takes things as they are, finds them bad, and means to do 

 his best to improve them, while avoiding the temptations of the new 

 broom. That a great quantity of water was being, and had long been, 

 diverted from the public aqueducts to serve suburban villas and 

 gardens, is certain. What we do not learn is whether much or any of 

 this was used for the market-gardens of the humble folk who grew 2 

 garden-stuff for the Roman market. It is the old story, little or 

 nothing about the poor, save when in the form of a city rabble they 

 achieve distinction as a public burden and nuisance. It does however 

 seem fairly certain that licenses to abstract water were only granted 

 as a matter of special favour. Therefore, so far as licensed abstraction 

 went, it is most probable that influential owners of suburbana were the 

 only beneficiaries. Theft of water with connivance 3 of the staff was 



1 impotentia possessorum. 



2 holitores as in Horace epist I 18 36. Later called hortulani as in Apuleius metam IX 31-2, 

 39-42. Girard, textes part ill ch 4 i e, gives an interesting case of a colonus hortorum olitori- 

 orum between Rome and Ostia, belonging to a collegium. The man is probably a freedman. 



3 de aquis 112-5. 



