There was a TV show on Discovery or PBS —or maybe National Geographic—about a huge long tunnel in Asia Minor (Modern Turkey) I saw not long ago.
Built by Roman army troops it brought water over a very long distance through a mountain or something.
Then there are the waterworks in Spain, where the largest Roman gold mine was mined by hydraulic pressure. See
www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_20790.shtml -
Their engineers used a technique known to Pliny the Elder as Ruina Montium, literally destroy the mountain, using the force of water to exploit the rich mineral resources of the area. It was an amazing feat of engineering which led Pliny to say when he first arrived there, What happens in Las Médulas is far beyond the work of giants.
The Roman engineers constructed a vast hydraulics network to channel water from as far away as 100 kilometres up the face of the mountains. There, the water was stored in large reservoirs until the sluice was opened to wash down the soil in a sudden rush of water either along trenches or grooves cut into the mountain side - bringing with it the gold.
Another technique was applied within the mountains, where thousands of men dug galleries and channels out of the rock. There was only one exit where the water was let in to bring down the mountain and release the gold-bearing rock as the enormous pressure caused the mountain to explode.
There’s a topic on the Samos tunnel, but that wasn’t built by the Romans. :’)
There’s at least one (older) topic about that Roman mining operation you mentioned. It’s on here. Somewhere. :’)