Extensive and damaging floods were known to have ravaged the vicinity of Rome during the reign of the Roman emperor, Nerva (r. 96-98 CE). A contemporaneous statesman, lawyer, finance expert, and government official named Pliny the Younger (c. 61/62-113) witnessed it with his own eyes, and he made sure to describe the natural disaster in vivid detail through letters to friends. As told by Pliny, Rome’s Tiber River at that time had already been fitted with various irrigation and drainage canals that should have guarded against flooding. Yet, a terrible storm dropped so much rain on the imperial city that the Tiber, its canals, and tributaries all overflowed.
Waters rose above the Tiber’s riverbanks and flowed into the city, and the flooded canals and disrupted tributaries caused nearby fields and valleys to also be overrun. On this, Pliny the Younger wrote, “Can the weather be as bad and stormy where you are? Here we have nothing but gales and repeated floods. The Tiber has overflowed its bed and deeply flooded its lower banks, so that although it is being drained by the canal cut by the Emperor, with his usual foresight, it is filling the valleys and inundating the fields” (Pliny the Younger, Letters, 8.17). The floods did widespread damage to both nature and man-made structures. Buildings were toppled and trees were uprooted, and all of the resulting debris clogged the waterways and made the flooding all the worse. According to Pliny the Younger, the Anio River was one of the worst hit tributaries of the Tiber. Speaking of the Tiber and the Anio, Pliny wrote:
“Then the streams which it normally receives and carries down to the sea are forced back as it spreads to meet them, and so it floods with their water the fields it does not reach itself. The Anio, most delightful of rivers—so much that the houses on its banks seem to beg it not to leave them—has torn up and carried away most of the woods which shade its course. Where the banks rise high they have been undermined, so that its channel is blocked in several places with the resultant landslides; and in its efforts to regain its lost course it has wrecked buildings and forced out its way over the debris” (Pliny, Letters, 8.17).
Then, like now, overwhelming flood waters have the power to reduce picturesque settlements into unrecognizable fields of splintered timbers and toppled stones. In the farmlands, the rising waters wreaked havoc on the local livestock, and the pastures fared even worse, with miscellaneous debris piling up on grazing lands. On this damage to property, livestock, and pastures, Pliny stated, “People who were hit by the storm on higher ground have seen the valuable furniture and fittings of wealthy homes, or else all the farm stock, yoked oxen, ploughs and ploughmen, or cattle left free to graze, and amongst them trunks of trees or beams and roofs of houses, all floating by in widespread confusion” (Letters, 8.17). It was also reported in the letter that the wind, on its own, caused notable damage during the storm, meaning areas that were isolated from the floods still faced property damage due to strong gusts and rain.
Suffice it to say, Rome was devastated, and the damage expanded beyond Pliny’s focus on residential and farm districts. The flooding is known to have reached Rome’s famous Colosseum, for Emperor Nerva had to repair it after the natural disaster. He also had to do maintenance on roads, as well as aqueducts, which were no doubt damaged by the event. Nerva’s successor, Trajan (r. 98-117), carried on and expanded the reconstruction and building projects around Rome. Notably, Trajan expanded and added upon the canals and drainage systems for the Tiber River, likely to prevent any similar floods from occurring during his reign.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Northeaster, painted by Winslow Homer (c. 1836–1910), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the MET).
Sources:
- The Letters of Pliny the Younger, translated by Betty Radice. New York: Penguin Classics, 1963, 1969.
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nerva-Roman-emperor
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Trajan
- https://www.worldhistory.org/Nerva/
