Springs and Wells in Greek and Roman Literature

Front matter

ACPL ITEM DISCARDED

Smith 1222329 < Springs and wells in Greek and Roman literature

PUBLIC LIBRARY

Preface

Even the Queen and the King, in the days of fable, were constrained to visit the sources of water supply quite as forcibly as Mahomet was compelled to the Mountain, and, just as, later, the idler at the village pump, or the more aspiring Spa, learned all the news of the neighborhood, so the reader, who leisurely traces the path that meanders by the numerous fountains of the ancient writers and makes the rounds of the Springs of Mythology, becomes the entertained recipient of all the gossip and the family history of that classic band of beings of the brain that the early poets preserved and transmitted to posterity.

The gossip at each successive Spring widens the reader’s circle of acquaintance, and, before the end of the path is reached, there is little of interest in the records of the masters of make-believe that has not been laid before the literary loiterer and absorbed in the most pleasant manner.

One of the first of the philosophic tenets likely to present itself to the human mind would be Metempsychosis, and Metamorphosis would follow by natural suggestion. Given the factors of facial resemblance, affection and absence, and the germs of the doctrine would inevitably sprout in some thinking brain.

Later, in meditation, fancy and reasoning would find no limit to the guises the vital spirit might assume. When one had seen the yolk of a little egg change into an eagle

Vv vi PREFACE with a six-foot spread of wing and fly away out of sight Heavenward; or had discovered that a tiny acorn could assume the form of a tree and become a giant in size and strength, it was not a stretch for the imagination but rather a pastime to fancy a human being changed into any conceivable object; or even, as in the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, or that of Cadmus, to suppose stones transformed into men and women, or teeth into a fully accoutered army.

A simple plot was thus naturally furnished upon which to ring the changes of a thousand tales, going back even to the creation of the world out of—nothing.

Every country and every tongue produced entertaining fancies of this character, borrowed, interchanged and . elaborated through legendary medium, until, at last, they appeared polished in rhythm, and then in writing.

Such tales came down from Hesiod, Homer and Ovid in their best embellished form, and, among them all, those relating to transformations into Springs are neither the least romantic nor absorbing, for the thread of them is, in many instances, spun from an ardent affection.

In these stories writers sometimes differ in giving names, and, sometimes, more or less in their versions. Perfect agreement among them, however, could hardly be looked for when it is considered that ancient authors frequently had to rely upon memory, as, with the comparatively few manuscripts then in existence, it was often impracticable to verify names and details by referring to the original work from which the account was drawn.

Ovid’s description of the Creation shows a common origin with that of Moses—similarly, he mentions the Springs as the first terrestrial features created—and a serious interest attaches to Mythology from the fre-

PREFACE vil quently overlooked fact that it was for two thousand or more years the religion of millions of people, among whom were some of the brightest intellects of which there is any record. Mythology, giving the genealogy of the gods from the beginning, was the Bible of those people and they accepted its most wonderful relation with no less gravity and respect than pious modern people, Mormons, Mohammedans, and others, accept the miracles in the basic books of their religions.

Temples were frequently built about or above Springs; and on the 13th day of October the Festival of the Fontinalia was held in honor of the divinities that presided over all Springs and fountains.

The nymphs of the Springs were the naiads to whom they were sacred, and this was not only poetical but practical, for, when the Spring is the sole source of supply, its waters need to be carefully protected so that they may be clear and clean at all times, and, among the religiously superstitious Greeks and Romans, such purity was best assured by appealing to their fears and calling them sacred, thus making their pollution an act of sacrilege.

The sacredness of the fountains being thus established, and their waters being perpetual, they became preéminently fitted to be called upon as witnesses when making vows, and they were so called upon even in ordinary assertion and exclamation, as, ‘‘By the Earth and all its Springs,” ‘‘ Now by the Wells whereof our Fathers drank,”’ “‘O Fount of Dirce and thou, spacious Grove, ye are my witnesses.”

Pausanias is one of the most prolific enumerators ot Grecian Springs, but unfortunately he gives little data from which their appearance may be pictured. The poets, however, often portrayed the peculiarities of their vill PREFACE founts with minute detail, and it is to be hoped that their likenesses were true to nature.

Pausanias did little more than enumerate, and his book might be called a catalog of ruins from which one who is not on the spot can seldom draw any but a hazy outline of what he saw. The greater part of the temples and towns that he seems to have seen had been in ruins for centuries before he wrote about them, and were in a more dilapidated condition than the cities and cathedrals in the war-stricken districts of Europe in 1918. The best of the statuary had been carried off by conquerors, or was buried in the wreckage of roofless temples, and such wooden works of ancient art as remained were mutilated and rotting with age.

It would be interesting to know where he spent his nights on the road through these ruins, and on what he subsisted; he mentions no caravansary and no wine shop—but one can almost tell how often he quenched his thirst, by the names of the Springs he jotted down in his diary.

In fact, mountains, Springs and watercourses are now the best guides to the route he took in his travels. The mountains and the rivers are shown more or less meagerly in such atlases as furnish a very small scale map of ““Ancient’’ this or that, but no one can get an idea of the whereabouts of the Springs without perusing the pages of old travelers, or those of the poets, or laboriously and often in vain going through Geographical Dictionaries, and the present is the first attempt to group together many of the Springs that classic authors of prose and poetry have thought worthy of mention.

After the deluge of the Greeks, who perhaps derived much of their mythology from the Egyptians, Deucalion and Pyrrha, the leaders of such as had survived with the

PREFACE ix animals, not in a ship, but by seeking the heights of Mt. Parnassus, descended the mountain and began repeopling the country in the vicinity of the Spring of Castalia.

That Spring, having been erroneously endowed by the Roman poets with inspirational properties, has become the most famous Spring in the literary world, so that, though there is no fable of any transformation as its origin, it may be regarded as the origin of many transformations.

But incalculable harm has thereby been done to the Spring of Aganippe, and it is time she came into her own.

Still, as Castalia, up to the present, has enjoyed the honor of being the most noted Spring in the world, and neither sought the undue honor nor could protest against it, it would seem to deserve first mention in a list of Springs. Its history, however, commences with the flood, and there are antediluvian fountains whose age claims precedence, especially those of Arcadia, as to whose residents a suggestion is hazarded in the Foreword to The Springs of Thessaly.

Greece was a dwarf country whose distances were impressively magnified by the measure that was used to express them; thus the great stretch of 1400 stadia, both in length and in breadth, that was assigned to the Peloponnesus, represents 175 miles when the stadia are taken at their modern value of a furlong each and eight of them are reckoned to the mile.

In all languages ‘‘Spring”’ and “‘Well”’ are often used interchangeably and the ‘‘ Well”’ of the classics is nearly always a Spring; when, in rare cases, it is really a driven well this is usually made clear either by the context, or by the reports of modern describers who have rediscovered the shaft.

An ancient author is cited in every case as a base x PREFACE from which the history and fortunes of any particular fountain may be followed down in detail.

A series of intimate impressions of ancient springs as modern features having been interrupted by the outbreak of the recent war, that phase of the subject has for the most part been drawn from reports of scholarly travelers of the 17th century and subsequent years; and a concrete list of their names is substituted for several thousand scattered references, to them and to ancient writers, which have been deleted as being unduly cumbersome in a book for popular reading.

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NEw York, December, 1920.

AUTHORITIES CITED FOR LEGENDS OR ANCIENT LOCATIONS

About B.C. A.D. About B.C. A.D.

Aischylus 525 .. | Martial se 43 Apollodorus 443 an Ovid ay 18 Apollonius Pausanias Lae bz

Rhodius 235 .. | Philostratus erie Oe Aristophanes 444 a latattis 254 i: Athenzeus ne eoon) Punys Callimachus 260 ae the elder ibe 79 Cicero 106 sat Pliny: Claudian e400 the younger .. 110 Diodorus 50 .. | Propertius i 14 Euripides * 406 pene Ptolemy, ne LOO Florus 65 .. | Servius ‘a0 400 Herodotus 400 .. | Strabo a 24 Hesiod 850 .. | Suetonius F (40 Homer 950 .. | Theocritus 300 Horace - 65 .. | Theophrastus 350 Hyginus 10 .. | Thucydides 471 Juvenal sit 96 | Virgil 19 Livy 59 .. | Vitruvius 100 Lucan ne 65 | Xenophon 435

AUTHORITIES FOR MODERN LOCATIONS

Dodwell, Edward Smith, Dr. Wm.

Fellows, C. Spon & Wheeler Hamilton, W. J. Texier, C. F. M.