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So, from what Marliani says about the fountain – apart from the remark about Hadrian which, maybe because they misunderstood, inspired later writers to attribute not only the reinstallation of the Alsietine aqueduct but also the erection of the fountain to that Pope – we see that in his day (1544) the fountain at Santa Maria was still supplied, if not with the old Aqua Alsietina itself (the water Augustus had diverted from Lake Martignano near Lake Bracciano), then certainly via the ancient conduits built to carry that water but which had perhaps later been filled from a different source. However, what I want to emphasize here is that the ancient conduit for the Aqua Alsietina which, as we shall see was unhealthy and unfit for drinking, continued from Augustus’ naumachia and arrived in the area of this piazza.
Frontino was a Roman author who has handed down to us a most important work (written in 97 AD) on the aqueducts, fountains, and various water sources. He writes as follows in regard to the Aqua Alsietina:
"I do not understand what reason Augustus, a prince as prudent as any other, would have had to bring in Aqua Alsietina (known as Aqua Augusta); the water is not at all pleasing, but decidedly unhealthy and therefore is not used by the people wherever it flows. Unless, when he [Augustus] undertook the building of his Naumachia he did not wish to reduce the supply of any of the more salubrious waters and thus had special conduits made for this water, then allowed the surplus from the Naumachia to be used for the irrigation of nearby gardens. As a matter of fact, every time the bridges have to be repaired and the aqueducts that cross from the other bank [of the Tiber] are interrupted, it has become usual, owing to necessity, to maintain the flow to the public fountains".
To summarise what has been said so far, we know that on the one hand Marliani saw with his own eyes the ancient conduit that carried the Aqua Alsietina underground from the nearby naumachia to supply the fountain in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere; on the other, we know from Frontino that this same water, no matter how unhealthy it was, was used in ancient times to supply the salientes or "fountains that gushed" nearby. Therefore, we might infer that a fountain, probably restored by Hadrian I, already existed in this ancient locality at the time of Augustus.
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