Pompeii, Its Life and Art

by August Mau

a, b, c. Windows.
d, e. Stairs.

The source from which the city received its water supply has not been discovered. Evidently it did not draw upon the sources of the Sarno; the water channel constructed by Fontana ([p. 25]) runs through the city at a height of less than sixty feet above the level of the sea, while the ancient aqueduct that supplied Pompeii had so great a head that in the highest parts of the city, more than 130 feet above the sea, it forced the water to the top of the water towers, at least twenty feet more. Copious springs can never have existed on the sides of Vesuvius; water must have been brought to the city from the more distant mountains bounding the Campanian plain on the east.

We can hardly believe that the construction of a water channel for so great a distance lay within the resources of so small a town. We find, however, the remains of a great aqueduct which, starting near Avellino, a dozen miles east of Nola, skirted the base of Vesuvius on the north and extended westward, furnishing water not only to Naples but also to Puteoli, Baiae, and Misenum. This ancient structure drew from the same springs, and followed substantially the same route, as the new aqueduct which since 1885 has been bringing water to Naples. No inscription in regard to it has been found, and there is no reference to it in ancient books. The remains—of which the longest section, known as Ponti Rossi, 'Red Bridges,' may be seen near Naples—seem to indicate two styles of construction, extensive repairs having been made after the aqueduct had been partly destroyed; but up to the present time it has not been possible to determine the period to which they belong.

The water system of Pompeii goes back to the time before the founding of the Roman colony. This is evident, not only from the arrangements of the older baths, which contemplated a freer use of water than could well have been provided by cisterns, but also from the existence of three marble supports for fountain basins, which, as shown by their style of workmanship, the use of Oscan letters as mason's marks, and their location in pre-Roman buildings—the temple of Apollo, the Forum Triangulare, and the house of the Faun—belonged to the earlier period. If we may ascribe the building of the great aqueduct to the time of peace and prosperity in Campania between the Second Punic War and the Social War, and suppose that Pompeii, joining with other towns in its construction, was supplied by a branch from it, we have a simple and highly probable solution of the problem. Nothing in the character of the masonry requires us to assign the aqueduct to a later date.

The shrines along the streets, with few exceptions, were dedicated to the guardian deities presiding over thoroughfares, particularly the gods of street crossings, Lares Compitales. The worship of these divinities in Rome was reorganized by Augustus and placed in charge of the precinct wardens, vicorum magistri, who were to see that the worship of his guardian spirit, Genius, was associated with that of the Lares at each shrine. The arrangements at the Capital were naturally followed by the colonies and other cities under Roman rule.

At Pompeii the shrines of the street gods differ greatly in size and character. Sometimes there is a small altar against the side of a building, with two large serpents, personifications of the Genius of the place, painted on the wall near it; one of the serpents, with a conspicuous crest, represents a male, the other, a female.

Frequently the place of the altar is taken by a niche, in which the passer-by could deposit his offering. In our illustration ([Fig. 105]) we see an ancient street altar which was carefully preserved when the Central Baths were built, a niche being made over it in the new wall.

Fig. 105.—Ancient altar in new wall, southeast corner of the Central Baths.