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Fountains of Rome: "Oil Well Fountain"
Certainly, the theory of the "oil well fountain" alone takes too much for granted, because of the lack of adequate documentation. Nonetheless, before the archaeologists cry "Scandal!", I beg them to read what has been said about the popular story of the "oil well fountain". After all, they may not remember the tale too clearly and I would like them, above all, to pay attention to my conclusions.
Between 350 and 400, Saint Jerome, in his additions to the Chronicle – or history of the world written by Eusebius – which, would you believe, he began with Abraham himself as far back as 1980 BC, made the following note: "Oil gushed from the Taberna Meritoria [hostel] in Trastevere and flowed all day without interruption, a sign that the grace of Christ had been sent upon the people".
This marvel – one of those many wonders presaging great events, like, for example the birth of calves with two heads or statues of gods that suddenly began to perspire and occasioned so much joy or alarm amongst the Ancients, who seem to have been crazy about them – this marvel, as I said, was certainly not invented by Saint Jerome. What he did was christianise a story told by older historians including, probably, Dio Cassius. This gentleman, writing two hundred years or so earlier (Hist. Rom. XLVIII, 43) about the civil strife between Octavianus and his rivals, recounts that among the unfavourable events of 38 BC "oil sprang forth close to the Tiber" – and there is surely no doubt that Cassius too drew on similar insignificant events or on the works of other authors.
Paulus Orosius, who was a Christian writer contemporary with but a little younger than Saint Jerome, tells of the great ovation in honour of Octavianus-Augustus in Rome in 29 BC. Perhaps inspired by the above-mentioned passage from Saint Jerome, he writes with all the enthusiasm of a committed supporter, "For the past few days a large stream of oil has been flowing from the Taberna Meritoria. What could be more obvious than that this sign, in the days of Augustus, ruler of all the earth, announces that Christ will soon be born? Indeed, the word Christ means ‘anointed with oil’ in the language of his people"; and so Orosius goes on in this allegorical style.
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