The Aqua Virgo was one of the eleven Roman aqueducts that supplied the city of ancient Rome.It was completed in 19 BC by Marcus Agrippa, during the reign of the emperor Augustus and was built mainly to supply the contemporaneous Baths of Agrippa in the Campus Martius.The aqueduct was called Virgo because a young girl led thirsty soldiers to a spring used as a source for the aqueduct , and it was capable of supplying 100,160 m (131,000 cu yd) of water per day.
The gens Vipsania or Vipsana was an obscure plebeian family of equestrian rank at ancient Rome. Few members of this gens appear in history, although a number are known from inscriptions. By far the most illustrious of the family was Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, a close friend and adviser of Augustus, whom the emperor intended to make his heir. After Agrippa died, Augustus adopted his friend's sons, each of whom was considered a possible heir to the Empire, but when each of them died or proved unsuitable, Augustus chose another heir, the future emperor Tiberius.
The Arch of Claudius was a triumphal arch in Rome built in honour of the emperor Claudius's successful invasion of Britain in AD 43. It was dedicated in AD 51 but had already been anticipated in commemorative coins minted in AD 46–47 and 49, which depicted it summounted by an equestrian statue between two trophies. However, the real structure was a conversion of one of the arches of the Aqua Virgo aqueduct at the point where it crossed the Via Flaminia, the main road to the north, just north of the Saepta.