Such was the splendour of Ravenna in the time of Augustus. His
achievement so far as Ravenna was concerned was to understand her
importance not only in regard to Italy and Cisalpine Gaul, an
importance already discounted by the universal peace he had
established, but in regard to the sea. He turned Ravenna into a
first-class naval port and based his eastern fleet upon her; and this
was so wise an act that, so long as the empire remained strong and
unhampered, Ravenna appears as the great base of its sea power in the
East.

In that long peace which Italy enjoyed under the empire we hear little
of Ravenna. We know Claudius built a great gate called Porta Aurea,
which was only destroyed in 1582; and we know that the great sea port
had one weakness, the scarcity of good water for drinking purposes.
Martial writes

"I'd rather at Ravenna have a cistern than a vine
Since I could sell my water there much better than my wine,"

and again:

"That landlord at Ravenna is plainly but a cheat
I paid for wine and water, but he served wine to me neat"[1]

[Footnote 1: Martial, _Fp_ iii. 56, 57. Trs Hodgkin]

This weakness would seem, however, to have been overcome by Trajan,
who built an aqueduct nearly twenty miles long, which Theodoric
restored, after the fall of the empire, in 524. This aqueduct, of
which some arches remain in the bed of the Bedesis (Ronco), seems to