was sold at an _as_ the _congius_, which is nearly three quarts;[64]
under the early Empire Columella (iii. 3. 10) reckoned the amphora
(nearly 6 gallons) at 15 sesterces, i.e. about eightpence That the
common citizen did expect to be able to qualify his water with wine
seems proved by a story told by Suetonius, that when the people
complained to Augustus that the price of wine was too high, he
curtly and wisely answered that Agrippa had but lately given them an
excellent water-supply.[65] It looks as though they were claiming to
have wine as well as grain supplied them by the government at a low
price or gratuitously; but this was too much even for Augustus. For
his water the Roman, it need hardly be said, paid nothing. On the
whole, at the time of which we are speaking he was fairly well
supplied with it; but in this, as in so many other matters of urban
administration, it was under Augustus that an abundant supply was
first procured and maintained by an excellent system of management.
Frontinus, to whose work _de Aqueductibus_ we owe almost all that we
know about the Roman water-supply, tells us that for four hundred and
forty-one years after the foundation of the city the Romans contented
themselves with such water as they could get from the Tiber, from
wells, and from natural springs, and adds that some of the springs
were in his day still held in honour on account of their health-giving
qualities.[66] Cicero describes Rome, in his idealising way, as "locum
fontibus abundantem," and twenty-three springs are known to have
existed; but as early 312 B.C. it was found necessary to seek
elsewhere for a purer and more regular supply. More than six miles
from Rome, on the via Collatina, springs were found and utilised for
this purpose, which have lately been re-discovered at the bottom of
some stone quarries; and hence the water was brought by underground
pipes along the line of the same road to the city, and through it to
the foot of the Aventine, the plebeian quarter. This was the Aqua