Chap. 24.] 
THE MAECIAN WATEES. 
487 
it has been boiled ; as also, that water when it has once been 
heated, will become more intensely^^ cold than before — a most 
ingenious discovery. The best corrective of unwholesome 
water is to boil it down to one half. Cold water, taken inter- 
nally, arrests haemorrhage. By keeping cold water in his 
mouth, a person may render himself proof against the intense 
heat of the bath. Many a person knows by his own every-day 
experience, that water which is the coldest to drink is not of 
necessity the coldest to the touch, this delightful property being 
subject to considerable fluctuations." 
CHAP. 24. THE MAECIAN WATEES. 
The most celebrated water throughout the whole world, and 
the one to which our city gives the palm for coolness and salu- 
brity, is that of the Marcian^^ Spring, accorded to Eome among 
the other bounties of the gods : the name formerly given to 
the stream was the Aufeian," the spring itself being known 
as Pitonia." It rises^^ at the extremity of the mountains of 
the Peligni, passes through the territory of the Marsi and through 
Lake Fucinus, and then, without deviating, makes directly for 
Rome : shortly after this, it loses itself in certain caverns, and 
only reappears in the territory of Tibur, from which it is 
brought to the City by an arched aqueduct nine miles in 
length. Ancus Marcius, one of the Eoman kings, was the 
first^^ who thought of introducing this water into the City. 
At a later period, the works were repaired by Quintus Mar- 
cius Eex: and, more recently, in his prsetorship, by M. 
Agrippa.^^ 
^5 " Ma^is refrigerari." The experiments made by Mariotte, Perrault, 
the Academy del Cimento, Mariana, and others, showed no perceptible differ- 
ence in the time of freezing, between boiled and unboiled water ; but the 
former produced ice harder and clearer, the latter ice more full of blisters. 
In later times, Dr. Black, of Edinburgh, has from his experiments asserted 
the contrary. " Boiled water,'' he says, becomes ice sooner than unboiled, 
if the latter be left at perfect rest." Beckmann's Hist, Inv. Vol. II. p. 145. 
Bohn's Ed, is « Subtilissimo invento." 
1^ Or perhaps, as we say, " to the touch, and vice versa." The original 
is Alternante hoc bono." 
1^ A considerable number of its arches are yet standing, and it still in 
part supplies Rome with water. 
1^ At Sublaqueum, now Subiaco. 
20 u Primus auspicatus est." In obedience to the "auspices,'' probably. 
21 In A.u.c. 720. See B. xxxvi. c. 24. 
