O'Reili-y — Ancient Water-mills, Native and Foreign. 71 



of childi'en, and in the dwellings of the rich slaves were charged 

 therewith. But when luxury hecame introduced into Rome, and that 

 the requirements became greater in proportion to the riches of certain 

 individuals, whilst the people became poorer by so much, the great, 

 whose ambition it was to govern, set themselves to dominate public 

 opinion by giving magnificent festivals, with distributions of goods 

 and bread. 



(p. 92.) — It was then that hand-mills became insufficient. People 

 were obliged to have recourse to undertakers in order to be able to 

 supply these immense distributions. These men, covetous of gain, 

 were under the necessity of paying a great number of slaves, and even 

 employed criminal means to procure them. (Thedosius in 389 passed 

 a law to repress these disorders, which persisted even to his time 

 (Lebeau, History of the Low Empire, liv. 24), seeking the means 

 of diminishing the number of hands by the use of agents more 

 powerful and less costly, such as macliinery could furnish, and thus 

 water-mills were invented.) 



The period of this invention is fixed in a precise manner by the 

 following epigram, made on account of it (see MS. Anthologia of the 

 Imperial Library and Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions and 

 Belles Lettres, vol. ii., p. 408, edition in 8vo). "Girls, occupied in 

 grinding the com, cease thus fatiguing your arms ; you may sleep as 

 you list, and leave the birds to sing, announcing thus the return of 

 morning. Ceres has commanded the Naiads to do the work you were 

 engaged on : obediently they leap up to the top of a wheel, and cause 

 to turn an axle. The axle, by means of the spokes which surround it, 

 causes it to turn rapidly the weight of the hollow millstones which it 

 draws with it. Thus are we brought back to the happy times of oui* 

 primitive fathers, and gather, without labour, the fruits of the works 

 of Ceres." 



It would seem from this epigram of Antipater that the use of 

 water-mills had not commenced until the time of Augustus, and 

 Vitruvius, his contemporary, gives in his tenth book a description of 

 these mills, which might even serve as a commentary on the Greek 

 epigram. Strabo (Book 12) remarks also on a machine at that time 

 very rare, and of which he speaks as a singularity, when describing 

 the town of Cabires and the palace of Mithridates. It is not doubtful 

 that the mills which are yet to be seen in Asia Minor and all thi-ough 

 Greece are copies of these ancient mills, and for that reason it is of 

 interest to describe them. Moreover, it is probable that these same 

 machines have been transmitted to us by reason of the intercourse 



R.I. A. PROC, VOL. XIV., SEC. c] [6] 



