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544 FONS. 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 by Ulysses, (Pans. ii. 3. § 3 ; see a paper by Gottling, on the present state of this fountain, and of the Craneion, with an engraving of the source of the Peirene, in Gerhard's ArclidologiscliQ Zeitung for 1844, pp. 326, 328; the engraving is given be­ low.) Corinth contained numerous other fountains ;

FONS.

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 aquae-ductus, p. 114, b, and the woodcut.) Agrippa, who during his aedileship paid special attention to the restoration of the Roman waterworks, is said to have constructed 700 lacus, 105 salientes, and 130 castella, of which very many were magnificently adorned ; they were decorated with 300 bronze or marble statues, and 400 marble columns. (Plin. //. AT.xxxvi. 15. s. 24. §9.) There were also many small private fountains in the houses and villas of the wealthy. (Plin. Epist. v. 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 biviis, in triviis) ; but also in private houses. The engraving on p. 109 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 arabesque painting on the wall

over one of which was a statue of Bellerophon and Pegasus, with the water flowing out 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. (Pans. ii. 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. (Ib. 4. § 5. s. 6 ; see also 5. § 1.) Several other fountains of a similar kind to these are described or referred to by Pausa-nias (ii. 27, iv. 31, 33, 34, _vii. 5, 21, viii. 1), among which two deserve special mention, as they were within temples ; namely, that in the temple of Erechtheus at Athens, and of Poseidon at Man-tineia, which were salt-water springs (i. 26. § 5, viii. 10. § 4). Vitruvitis mentions the fountain of Salmacis as among the admirable works of art at Halicarnassus. (ii. 8. § 12.)

The Romans also erected edifices of various de­grees of splendour over natural springs, such as the well-known grotto of Egeria, near Rome, where the natural cave is converted by the architect into a sort of temple (comp. Plin. H. N. xxxvi. 21. S..42), and the baptisterium of Constantine. ^ 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 Capi-toline 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 (viii. 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,

of a house at Pompeii: in the painting, the vase and pedestal rise out of a sheet of water, which may­be supposed to represent the implumum 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. GelPs 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. 109.

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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, which it refreshes with a stream of water pouring con­tinually into a basin of granite twenty-seven feet diameter. The celebrated group, known as

the Toro Farnese, originally, in Hirt's opinion, adorned a fountain. Mythological subjects were

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