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Event details

installation	Valens aqueduct bridge
name	Valens aqueduct bridge – Restoration
event type	Restoration
start date	766
end date	766 (Fixed date)
date comments	767 according to the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium.
persons	Constantine V - Restorer (741-775)
description	After the water supply system had been out of service since 626 it was fully restored by Constantine V (r. 718-775).
comments	There is a myth about Constantine V slaying a dragon guarding the aqueduct. Gero (1978) notes how this anecdote combines folkloristic patterns such as ‘slaying a monster’ with less fablelike elements, such as the use of the actual aqueduct bridge as backdrop.

Literature connected to this Event

#	Code	Page	Excerpt
1	Calvus 762	236	They say that this Constantine was a pretty tough man in that he killed a lion, a very ferocious beast, in fighting it, while one (the dragon) was blocking an aqueduct with its bulk and overcoming many men with its stench, and he could find no other strategy, Constantine in front of them all gave himself to the danger, placing himself to be in conflict with the snake. And he made for himself a breastplate equipped with curved swords which he provided with the sharpest razors on every side, and he went down to the place where the very horrible snake was resting. Without any delay, he left his men and approached it alone.
2	Crow, Bardill & Bayliss 2008	19-20	p. 19 The situation changed in the first great siege of Constantinople in 626. Threatened from the east by the Sassanians, a large Avar army besieged the city from the Thracian hinterland and Theophanes reports that the aqueduct of Valens was cut, not to be restored until the reign of Constantine V in 766. p. 20 The restoration by Constantine V reinstated the long-distance Thracian supply for the city at a period of greater confidence and improving civic life...
3	Gero 1978
4	The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium	501	See section 'Constantine V'.
5	Theophanes 814	608	(Chronicle AM 6258) On 16 November of the same 5th indiction (766) the eunuch Niketas, a Slav was unlawfully ordained by the emperor's decree patriarch of Constantinople. There ensued a drought, such that even dew did not fall from heaven and water entirely disappeared from the City. Cisterns and baths were put out of commission; even those springs that in former times had gushed continuously now failed. On seeing this the emperor set about restoring Valentinian's (Valens') aqueduct, which had functioned until Herakleios and had been destroyed by the Avars (in 626). He collected artisans from different places and brough from Asia and Pontos 1,000 masons and 200 plasterers, from Hellas and the islands 500 clay-workers, and from Thrace itself 5,000 labourers and 200 brickmakers. He set taskmasters over them including one of the patricians. When the work had thus been completed, water flowed into the City. Comment by Crow 2008: The types of labourers mentioned in this passage are discussed by Dalman (1933), 6.