"But if anyone will note the abundance of water skilfully brought into the city, for public uses, for baths, for basins, for houses, runnels, suburban gardens, and villas; if he will note the high aqueducts required for maintaining the proper elevation; the mountains which had to be pierced for the same reason; and the valleys it was necessary to fill up; he will consider that the whole terrestrial orb offers nothing more marvellous." This is what Pliny the Elder had to say about the Roman invention of the aqueduct.
Such an aqueduct also existed in Mogontiacum, supplying the Roman garrison on the castel hill with fresh water from today's city district of Mainz-Finthen, whose name derives from "ad fontes". What the people of Mainz call "Römersteine" are the last remains of this aqueduct, which at its time was the highest such structure north of the Alps.
