FOUNTAIN (ante), a spring of water. The term is applied in a resqicted sense to such springs as, whether fed by natural or artificial means, have arrangements of human art at a point where the water emerges. Pure water is necessary to man; and the degree of plenty, constancy, and purity in which it is procured, transported, pre pared for use, and distributed in pOpulous districts is so fair a standard of civilization, that it seems not unreasonable in Pausanias to put it among the criteria, asking, with reference to Panopmus, if that can be rightly called a city which has neither ruler, gym nasium, forum, nor fountain of water. Among the Greeks we learn, mainly from Paus anias, that fountains were very common in the cities; and springs being very plentiful in Greece, little engineering skill was required to convey the water from place to place. Receptacles of sufficient size were made for it at the springs; and to maintain its purity, structures were raised inclosing and covering the receptacle. It is not surprising that so beneficent an object as a spring of water should be connected with religious belief. It is certain that until modern times fountains have been 'in some way connected with the religion of the people among whom they sprang, and dedicated to one or other of its personalities. In Greece, they were dedicated to gods and goddesses, nymphs and heroes, and were frequently placed in or near temples. The references to fountains by Pausanias are frequent, but he gives no full descriptions. That of Pirene at Corinth (mentioned also by Herodotus) was formed of white stone, and contained a number of cells from which the pleasant water flowed into an open basin. Legend • connects it with the nymph Pirene, who shed such copious tears, when bewailing her son who had been slain by Diana, that she was changed into a fountain. The city of Corinth possessed many fountains. In one near the statues of Diana and Bellerophon, the water flowed through the hoofs of the horse Pegasus. The folintain of Glance, inclosed in the Odeum, was dedicated to Glance because she was said to have thrown herself therein, believing that its waters could counteract the poisons of Media. Another Corinthian fountain had a bronze statue of Neptune standing on a dolphin from which the water flowed. The fountain constructed by Theagenes at Megara was remarkable for its size and decorations, and for the number of its columns. One at Lerna was surrounded with pillars, and the structure contained a number of seats affording a cool summer retreat. Near Phalle was a grove dedicated to Apollo, and in it a fountain of Water. Pausanias gives a definite architectural detail when he says that a fountain at Patrm was reached from without by descending steps. Mystical, medicinal, surgical, and other qualities, as well as supernatural origin, were ascribed to fountains. One at Cyanm, near Lyda, was said to the qualities of endowing all persons descending into it with power to see whatever they desired to while the legends of fountains and other waters of strange powers to heal are numerous in many lands. The fountain Enneacrunus at Athens was called Callirrhoe before the time the water•was drawn from it by.the nine pipes from which it took its later name. Two temples were above it, according to Pausanias, one dedicated to Demeter and Proserpine, and the other to Triptolemus. The fountain in the temple of Erechtheus, at Athens, was supplied by a spring of salt water, and a similar spring supplied that in the temple of Roseidon Hippias at Illantinea.
Though no doubt most tribes of other than nomadic habits of life must have con trived, in their settlements, appliances of some kind for maintaining the supply of water constant and pure, very few remains of these have been found that possess any degree of architectural importance. Layard mentions an Assyrian fountain, found by him in a gorge of the river Gomel, which consists of a series of basins cut in the solid rock, and descending in steps to the stream. The water had been originally led from one to the other by small conduits, the lowest of which was ornamented by two ram part lions in relief. The water-supply of Rome and the works auxiliary to it were on a scale to he expected from a people of such ghat practical power: The remains of the aqueducts which stretched from the city across the Campagna are amongst the most striking monuments of Italy. Vitruvins gives minute particulars concerning the methods to be employed for the discovery, testing, and distribution of water, and describes the properties of different waters with great care, proving the importance which was attached to these matters by the Romans. The aqueducts supplied the baths and the public fountains, from which last all the populace, except such as could afford to pay for a separate pipe to their houses„..oblained their water. These fountains were there fore of large size and numerous. They were formed at many 'of the castella of the aqueducts. According to Vitruvius, each castellum should have three pipes—one for public fountains, one for baths, and a third for private houses. Considerable revenue was drawn from the possessors of private water-pipes. The Roman fountains were gen erally decorated with figures and heads. Fountains were often also the ornament of Roman villas and country-houses; the water generally fell from above into a large mar ble basin, with at times a second fall into a still lower receptacle. To the remains of Pompeii we are indebted for much exact knowledge of Roman antiquity in its minutest particulars; and not the least interesting of the disinterred forms are those of the public and private fountains which the city possessed. Two adjacent houses in Pompeii had very remarkable fountains. One, says Gell, " is covered with a sort of mosaic consist ing of vitrified tessera of different colors, but in which blue predominates. These are sometimes arranged in not inelegant patterns, and the grand division as well as the borders are entirely formed and ornamented with real sea-shells, neither calcined by the heat of the eruption nor changed•by the lapse of so many centuries:" Cicero had, at his villa at Formic, a fountain which was decorated with marine shells. Fountains were very common in the open spaces and at the crossways in Pompeii. They were supplied with leaden pipes from the reservoirs, and had little ornament except a human or animal head, from the mouth of which it was arranged that the water should issue. Not only did simple running fountains exist, but the remains of jets d'eau have been found; and a drawing exists representing a vase with a double jet of water, standing on a pedestal placed in what is supposed to have been the impluvium of a house. There was also a jet d'eau at the eastern end of the peristyle of the Fullonica at Pompeii.