FONS
FONS (
κρήνη) signifies originally
a natural spring of water, but both the Greeks and Romans had artificial
fountains, made either by covering and decorating a spring with buildings
and sculpture, or by making a jet or stream of water, supplied by an
elevated cistern, play into an artificial basin. Such fountains served the
double purpose of use and ornament. Among the Greeks, they formed the only
public supply of water except the rain-water which was collected in cisterns
[
AQUAEDUCTUS]; and at
Rome, the poorer people, who could not afford to have water laid on to their
houses, no doubt procured it from the public fountains.
Several examples of natural springs, converted into ornamental fountains, in
the cities of Greece, have been mentioned under
AQUAEDUCTUS They were covered to keep them pure and
cool, and the covering was frequently in the form of a monopteral temple:
there were also statues, the subjects of which were suggested by the
circumstance that every fountain was sacred to some divinity, or they were
taken from the whole range of mythological legends. That at Megara, erected
by Theagenes, is described by Pausanias as worth seeing for its size, its
beauty, and the number of its columns (1.40.1). That of Peirene at Corinth
was adorned with covered cisterns of white marble
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Fountain of Peirene, Corinth.
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like grottoes, out of which the water flowed into the open air,
and with a statue of Apollo, and was enclosed with a wall, on which was
painted the slaughter of the suitors of Ulysses (
Paus.
2.3.3; see a paper by Göttling, on the present state of
this fountain, and of the
Craneion, with an engraving of the
source of the Peirene, in Gerhard's
Archäologische
Zeitung for 1844, pp. 326, 328; the engraving is given above).
Corinth contained numerous other fountains; over one of which was a statue
of Bellerophon and Pegasus, with the water flowing out of one of the horse's
hoofs (ib. § 5); over another, that of Glauce, was the Odeium (ib.
§ 6); and another was adorned with a bronze statue of Poseidon,
with a dolphin at his feet, out of the mouth of which the water flowed,
(
Paus. 2.2.7, s. 8). In the same city was
another fountain on a still grander scale; namely, that of Lerna, which was
surrounded by a colonnade with seats for those who desired a cool retreat in
summer; the water was no doubt collected in a spacious basin in the centre
[p. 1.871](ib. 4.5; see also 5.1). Several other
fountains of a similar kind to these are described or referred to by
Pausanias (
2.27;
4.31,
33,
34;
7.5,
21),
among which two deserve special mention, as they were within temples;
namely, that in the temple of Erechtheus at Athens, and of Poseidon at
Mantineia, which were salt-water springs (1.26.5; 8.10.4). Vitruvius
mentions the fountain of Salmacis as among the admirable works of art at
Halicarnassus (2.8.12).
The Romans also erected edifices of various degrees of splendour over natural
springs, such as the so-called grotto of Egeria, near Rome, where the
natural cave is converted by the architect into a sort of temple (comp.
Plin. Nat. 36.154), and the
baptistery of Constantine, now called
S. Giovanni in Fonte,
adjoining the Lateran. A simple mode of decorating less considerable springs
was by covering them with a vault, in the top of which was an opening,
surrounded by a balustrade, or by a low wall adorned with marble
bas-reliefs, one example of which, among many, is seen in a relief
representing the twelve gods, now in the Capitoline Museum. In all cases, a
cistern was constructed to contain the water, either by cutting it out of
the living rock, or (if the spring did not rise out of rock) by building it
of masonry. Vitruvius discusses at length the different sorts of springs,
and gives minute rules for testing the goodness of the spring, and for the
construction of the cisterns (8.3, 7). The observations of Vitruvius apply
chiefly to those springs and cisterns which formed the sources of the
aqueducts.
At Rome, a very large proportion of the immense supply of water brought to
the city by the aqueducts was devoted to the public fountains, which were
divided into two classes; namely,
lacus, ponds
or reservoirs, and
salientes, jets of water,
besides which many of the castella were so constructed as to be also
fountains. (See
AQUAEDUCTUS
p. 155
b, and the wood-cut called the
“Trophies of Marius.” ) Agrippa, who during his aedileship
paid special attention to the restoration of the Roman waterworks, is said
to have constructed 700
lacus, 500
salientes (old edd. read 105), and 130
castella, of which very many were magnificently
adorned; they were decorated with 300 bronze or marble statues, and 400
marble columns (
Plin. Nat. 36.121).
There were also many small private fountains in the houses and villas of the
wealthy (
Plin. Ep. 5.6). At Pompeii the
fountains are extremely numerous, and that not only in the streets and
public places, especially at the junctions of streets (
in
biciis, in triviis), but also in private houses. The engraving on
p. 152
b represents a section of one of these
fountains, in which the water pours into a basin; that now given, in which
the water is thrown up in a jet, is taken from an
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Jet, from a painting at Pompeii.
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arabesque painting on the wall of a house at Pompeii: in the
painting, the vase and pedestal rise out of a sheet of water, which may be
supposed to represent the
impluvium in the
atrium of a house. (Respecting the fountains of Pompeii, see
Pompeii, vol. i. p. 131, vol. ii. pp. 71, 78; and
Sir W. Gell's
Pompeiana, vol. i. pp. 390, 395,
plates 50, 53.) The proof which these fountains afford, of the acquaintance
of the ancients with the chief law of hydrostatics, is noticed under
AQUAEDUCTUS p. 152
a.
The forms given to fountains were as numerous as the varieties of taste and
fancy. The large flat vases were a common form, and they are found of 5, 10,
20, and 30 feet in diameter, cut out of a single piece of some hard stone,
such as porphyry, granite, basanite, breccia, alabaster, and marble. An
ingenious and elegant variety, of which there is a specimen in the
Capitoline Museum, is a tripod, up the centre of which the jet passes, the
legs being hollow to carry off the water again. Very often the water was
made to flow out of bronze statues, especially of boys, and of Tritons,
Nereids, Satyrs, and such beings: several of these statues have been found
at Pompeii; and four of them are engraved in
Pompeii, vol. i. p. 104, one of which is given below. On the
Monte Cavallo, at Rome, is a colossal statue of a river-god, probably the
Rhine, which was formerly in the forum of Augustus; it pours a stream of
water into a basin of granite twenty-seven feet in diameter. The celebrated
group known as the Toro Farnese, now in the Naples Museum, probably once
adorned a fountain. Mythological subjects were
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Bronze Fountain. (Pompeii.)
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also sculptured over the fountains, as among the Greeks; thus at
Rome there were the fountains of Ganymede and Prometheus, and the Nymphaeum
of Jupiter. (Stieglitz,
Archäol. d. Baukunst, vol.
ii. pt. 2, pp. 76, 79; Hirt,
Lehre der Gebäude, pp.
399, 403.)
[
P.S] [
W.W]
