One of the most striking things about traveling in Europe is the constant presence of relics from older civilizations. They give us a time perspective, a reminder that we are just one civilization among many and that, in the vast timetable of history, we have been around for about five minutes, and will probably be gone in another five minutes.
In France, for example, we can see the caves of Lascaux, with extraordinary art from 17,000 years ago, gothic cathedrals built in the twelfth century, where we can hear music composed in the ninth century, and vast palaces like Versailles from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The deep past is very much with us, and the most impressive traces were left by the ancient Romans, who colonized this territory in about 200 B.C., and ruled it for five hundred years.
One of our local walks takes us through a charming valley beside the medieval town of Uzès. At one end of the valley is the source of a stream that bubbles up and expands into a narrow river. The Romans were not about to neglect such a gift. Further down the valley we begin to see bits of Roman stonework, and then a deep stone-lined channel. These fragments represent the beginning of an extraordinary engineering project begun about two thousand years ago to bring water to the Roman city of Nimes, thirty miles away.
You need to think about this for a moment to appreciate how ambitious it was. They planned to build an aqueduct thirty miles long over arid, hilly territory, with no mechanical diggers or cranes, no pumps to move the water along, and no modern surveying equipment – and they did it. The whole aqueduct descends only forty-one feet over its entire length, just enough to keep the water flowing by gravity. The most impressive part of the structure is the Pont du Gard, a hundred and sixty-foot-high bridge that carries the aqueduct over a river valley. This huge bridge survives almost intact, and is now a World Heritage Site visited by millions of tourists.
The Roman emperors believed in infrastructure. It was part of their definition of civilization. If a place was to be properly Roman it had to have Roman roads, Roman villas, Roman temples, Roman heating system systems, and Roman water systems. To build was to claim the territory. So, these ruins appear all over the old empire, including in Britain, North Africa and the Middle East. Some Roman structures are still is use: their roads especially, and their health spas. In the city of Bath in England you can immerse yourself in the hot springs, established there by the Romans in 60 A.D. That’s what I call a legacy!
When infrastructure begins to collapse, it’s a sign that the civilization is going the same way. This was certainly true for the Romans, and it may be true for us There’s a lot of talk about rebuilding our own decaying infrastructure – which, let’s face it, was not built to Roman standards and is not going to last anything like as long. But who will dare to do it? Two of the most prominent Roman Emperors during the building of the great aqueduct were the madman Caligula and the tyrant Nero. There must be a lesson for us in this somewhere, but I can’t quite imagine what it is.
Copyright: David Bouchier
