This page was created by Avery Freeman. The last update was by Jeanne Britton.
Wall Along the Tiber that Secures the Outlet of the Cloaca Maxima
This flat and technical image depicts the Cloaca Maxima, or “great drain,” the outlet of Rome’s ancient sewers. This image’s lack of artistry strongly suggests it is the product of his workshop (Istituto Centrale per la Grafica), and its simplicity gives no hint of the interest that this structure and its network of underground channels held for Piranesi. His textual supplements to this image articulate the argument for Roman magnificence that other images make visually.
In the Index to the Map of Rome at the beginning of the volume, he supplies evidence for his claims about the drain’s magnificence. He describes some of his first-hand exploration of a channel that supplied Rome with water before the construction of the aqueducts that led from distant sources, noting that an apprentice from a paper mill near the Church of San Giorgio in Velabro showed him a section of the sewer, which led to a large passage of subterranean chambers. He then supplements these direct observations with a reference to the sixth book of Ovid’s Fasti that describes the flooding and draining of the forum. From this evidence, he challenges the claim of the “modern writers” he often disparages that the Spring of Juturna and the Lacus Curtius provided this water. (Index to Map of Rome, no. 168).
He also argues, citing Livy, that this structure nearly equals those of a later period in “magnificenze” (magnificence). The modern writers who would disagree, he says, have “defraudata ai Romani di’ primi tempi la gloria nella maestà delle opere.” In contrast to the simplicity of this image, the second and third plates of Piranesi’s Della Magnificenza ed architettura dei Romani (below) depict the same modest arch with layered scrolls, gesturing staffage figures, and vivid shading.
What Piranesi argues in the dispersed text of Le Antichità Romane’s first volume he presents visually in the layered images of this later work, restoring “glory” and “majesty” to the earliest Romans. (JB)
