Page 1: The Roman Obsession with Water and Fountains
It is not surprising that a thing so beneficent as a spring of water should be connected with religion, and among the early Greeks such springs were commonly enshrined in temples, and dedicated to gods and goddesses, nymphs and heroes; so that we may clearly trace the beginnings of the architectural adornment of fountains from the Greek shrines built over favored sources. We lack any very definite descriptions of these early fountain-temples, but their elaborate construction is evident from the brief mentions made of them.
The Spring of Pirene at Corinth, for instance, a city of many fountains, was surrounded, we are told, by "white stone" from which the pleasant water flowed from a number of outlets into an open basin; and at the spring near the statue of Bellerophon the water jutted from the hoofs of the winged horse, Pegasus. Another Corinthian spring was adorned by a bronze statue of Neptune standing on a dolphin from the mouth of which the water flowed. A fountain built by Theagenes at Megara, was remarkable for its size and decoration; and one at Lerna was surrounded by pillars within the enclosure of which a number of seats formed pleasant resting places in the heat of the summer. religious associations with its sources, the Greeks clearly recognized the necessity to man of wholesome water, and of its transportation and distribution in constancy, purity and plenty throughout the populous quarters of the cities; so We know too that a fountain at Patrae was reached from without by flights of descending steps; and that the water flowed from the fountain of Ennea-krounos at Athens through nine pipes.
Indeed it seems logical that long before they had outgrown their "primitive" status, it is not surprising to find the Pausanias naming the presence of fountains as a test of civilization, and asking with reference to Panopeus, if it could be properly entitled to rank as a city when it had no public fountains of water. As to the Romans, one of the greatest manifestations of their practical power was in the arrangements they made for the water supply of the Capital, and the more important subject cities. The remains of the aqueducts which stretch across the Campagna are amongst the most striking monuments in Italy; and the importance which the Romans attached to the subject is attested by the minute particulars given by Vitruvius of the methods they employed in the discovery, testing, and distribution of water via fountains, and their investigations into the medicinal properties of different springs.
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