An emissary is a channel, natural or artificial, by which an outlet is formed to carry off any stagnant body of water. Such channels may be either open or underground; but the most remarkable works of the kind are of the latter description, as they carry off the waters of lakes surrounded by hills.

In ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

, the most remarkable examples are the subterranean channels that carry off the waters of Lake Copais

Lake Copais

Lake Copais, Kopais, or Kopaida used to be in the centre of Boeotia, Greece, west of Thebes until the late 19th century. The area where it was located, though now a plain, is still known as Kopaida.- Drainage :...

 into the Cephisus

Cephissus (Boeotia)

The northern Cephissus river or Cephisus rises at Lilaea in Phocis and flows by Delphi through Boeotia and eventually issues into Lake Copais which is therefore also called the Cephisian Lake...

, which were partly natural and partly artificial; and those built about 480 BC by Phaeax

Phaeax (architect)

Phaeax was a celebrated architect of Agrigentum, who flourished about 480 BCE, and executed several important public works for his native city. Among the most remarkable of these works were the sewers, which were named after the architect....

 at Agrigentum in Sicily to drain the city: they were admired for their sheer size, although the workmanship was crude.

The ancient Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 excelled in the construction of emissaries, as in all their hydraulic works, and remains are extant showing that lakes Trasimeno

Lake Trasimeno

Lake Trasimeno , also referred to as Trasimene or Thrasimene in English, is the largest lake on the Italian peninsula south of the Po River with a surface area of 128 km2, slightly less than Lake Como...

, Albano and Nemi

Lake Nemi

Lake Nemi is a small circular volcanic lake in the Lazio region of Italy south of Rome, taking its name from Nemi, the largest town in the area, that overlooks it from a height.-Archaeology and history:The lake is most famous for its sunken Roman ships...

 were all drained by means of emissaries. The case of Lake Fucino is remarkable in two ways: the attempt to drain it was one of the rare failures of Roman engineering, and the emissary is now completely above ground and open to inspection. Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

 is said to have first conceived the idea of this stupendous undertaking (Suet. Jul. 44); Claudius

Claudius

Claudius , was Roman Emperor from 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, he was the son of Drusus and Antonia Minor. He was born at Lugdunum in Gaul and was the first Roman Emperor to be born outside Italy...

inaugurated what was to have been a complete drainage scheme (Tac. Ann. xii.57), but the water level dropped by just 4 meters and stabilized, leaving the lake very much there. Hadrian tried it again, but failed; and it was not until 1878 that Lake Fucino was finally drained.

The need for emissaries did not cease with Antiquity, of course, and modern examples abound.

The initial text of this article was an abridgment from Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1875 edition, public domain).

External links

• Emissarium, the full article in Smith's Dictionary