Inside a tunnel of Rome’s sewer, the Cloaca Maxima.Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, CC BY-ND
Sewers managed excess water more than waste
The Cloaca Maxima in Rome was not part of a master plan to sanitize the city. Its purpose was removing water that pooled on the city’s uneven streets and draining water from low-lying areas when the adjacent Tiber River flooded, which happened quite frequently. Its main function was drainage – and what it drained ran right back into Rome’s major drinking supply before the aqueducts, the Tiber.
Roman sewers moved filthy water away from where it hindered cleanliness, economic growth, urban development and even industry. My work in the sewers of Herculaneum and Pompeii – both buried by the pyroclastic flow caused by Mount Vesuvius’ volcanic eruption in AD 79 – has brought me to the same conclusion.
At the bottom of one sewer under a street in Herculaneum, the first excavators found an ancient deposit of hardened sludge measuring about 1.35 meters high. No amount of water, however fast-flowing, would have been able to remove that. Several ancient sources state that Roman sewers needed manual cleaning from time to time, a job often done by city slaves or prisoners. I’d argue these urban sewer systems provided minimal sanitary benefits overall.
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