Roman Sanitation — The Discontinuity
By the first century CE, Rome supplied its citizens with water through eleven aqueducts. The Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer, still stands—the oldest working infrastructure in the world. Frontinus, appointed superintendent of aqueducts in 97 CE, left behind a technical manual on water management that reads like a modern utility document. The Romans understood that filth and disease traveled together. They built public latrines with running water. They regulated waste disposal. They organized the collection of garbage in the streets. …