The Roman Dams of Subiaco

The Cover Design THE ROMAN DAMS OF SUBIACO NORMAN A. F. SMITH Although the Romans are famous for their aqueducts, bridges, roads, harbors, and public buildings, their dam-building achievements have received much less attention, despite the fact that they were as competent in this branch of civil engineering as in the others. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the highest dam they built—the dam at Subiaco, depicted on the cover. In 1855 J. S. Rcnier published in Rome a folio of drawings entitled lmagerie du Sacro Speco. The work was dedicated to Pope Pius IX, and is a collection of line drawings representing various frescoes and paintings in the possession of the Monastery of Sacro Speco1 near Subiaco in central Italy, about 50 miles east of Rome. By all accounts2 Renter’s attempts to render the monastery’s art collection as line drawings and to provide an appropriate commentary and analysis was a failure. As a study in the history of art the book is of no value, but for the historian of technology it offers something of great interest; this is shown on the cover, a detail from plate 37 of Renter’s work (Fig. 1). The figure on the left is Saint Benedict, de­ picted fishing from the crest of a big dam. Figure 2 shows the original painting from which Renter’s line draw­ ing is derived.3 As far as can be ascertained it is the oldest surviving illustration of a dam. This painting, recently restored, hangs in the sacristy of the monastery; it illustrates incidents in the life of Saint Dr. Smith is Leverhulmc Research Fellow in the history of technology at Imperial College, London. 1 Also known as the Monastery of Saint Benedict. The monastery is built around the cave in which the saint lived for many years; hence the alternative name “Sacro Speco.” 2 See, for instance, F. Hermann, I Monasteri di Subiaco (1, pt. 3:411). The present monks at Sacro Speco do not rate Renier’s book very highly cither. 3 The author would like to thank the Monastery of Saint Benedict for permission to copy the painting and for much other help. 58 59 The Cover Design Benedict, including the years he spent meditating in a cave in the side of the gorge high above the River Aniene. Although we do not know who the painter was, the picture is generally believed to have been commissioned by Ludovico d’Aragona, Bishop of Majorca, in the year 1428.4 Renier is typically incorrect here in ascribing the work to Magister Conxolus, a 13th-century fresco painter. Also, Renier’s drawing is not particularly precise; the inclination of the saint’s fishing rod has changed, the proportions of the arched openings in the dam are different, the masonry of the structure is incompletely drawn, and so on. But these discrepancies are not too serious, for our purposes, 4 This is the view of O. Bonamore, II Sacro Speco e S. Scolastica (Venice, 1884), p. 139, and was confirmed when the painting was restored. Fig. 1.—This is pi. 37 of the book Imagerie du Sacro Speco, prepared by J. S. Renier and published in 1855. It shows Saint Benedict fishing from the big Roman dam of Subiaco while on the right-hand side stands Nero’s villa. Saint Benedict appears three times in the drawing: as the fisherman; to the left as a boy with (perhaps) Saint Ignatius; and above that as a hermit in the sacro speco. Courtesy of the Vic­ toria and Albert Museum. 60 Norman A. F. Smith even though they are surprising and (one would have thought) easily avoided. The real question is, what can the painting and the drawing tell us about the dam which once spanned the Aniene above Subiaco, very near the monastery of Saint Benedict? In the middle of the 1st century a.d., Nero established a villa for himself on the banks of the River Anio (the Latin rendering of Aniene) in the gorge above Subiaco. Remains of this villa and Fig. 2.—The painting which hangs in the Monastery of Saint Benedict (or Sacro Speco

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