D. 535, Rome was besieged by the Goths under Vitiges, Procopius,l the historian of the Gothic war, records that fourteen streams flowed into the city. It was

of course among the means employed by the barbarian invaders to induce submission, to cut off the accustomed supply of water, and Rome, in her 1289th year, and after enjoyof her fountains and aqueducts, was again ing for many centuries the lavish prodigality reduced to dependence on natural springs, the wells that had not been neglected and suffered to be filled up, and the yellow waters of the Tiber.

The great and permanent changes which such a calamity must have brought about in the habits of a numerous and luxurious people, can hardly be measured. The population, indeed, had been sensibly diminished from the period of Rome's ascendancy, for Gothic and Vandalic conquerors had already despoiled her of most of her wealth, and desecrated the lofty Capitol with the presence of victorious hordes of barbarians. But at the period of which we speak, it is conjectured that the city still had more than 600,000 inhabitants.

This barbarian interruption of these accustomed and hitherto unfailing streams, cutting off not only the luxuries of the baths, and of the fountains in all their daily and hourly uses for domestic purposes, in the gardens and the pools, necessarily changed at once the whole internal economy and arrangements of the city. Perhaps, among the causes which mark the final decay and fall of Rome, few exercised really greater influence than the Gothic destruction of the aqueducts.