Small fountain

Small fountain originally square in shape, as it can be deduced from the only surviving complete face and from the sides, missing roughly half of their extent. Also lost is the upper part with the laying surface, as shown by the figures carved on either side that are preserved only up to the waist.

The four faces of the block were originally decorated with a central ladder flanked by standing figures set within a moulded frame, as it can be observed on the preserved side, where there survive five steps bordered by a pair of naked standing figures, probably nymphs, with a lateral support; on the two other prospects there are images of satyrs: one has the goat-like legs and hooves characteristic of Pan, while the other is dancing on the tip of his toes the síkinnis, the typical dance of Dionysus’ followers portrayed on numerous sculpted works and painted vases.

In the middle of the fragmentary rear there remains a cavity for the small water-pipe that took the water through the block to the central upper basin, from which it then flowed over the ladders creating a waterfall effect. The loss of both the upper and the lower portions of the fountain prevents us from understanding the entire course of the water.

This small fountain belongs to the fontes salientes type, a form that met large favour in the Roman world as proved by numerous copies found in different geographical contexts. There are examples from Rome in the Vatican Museums and in the Museo Nazionale Romano of Diocletian’s Baths, from Aquileia, as well as from Spain and France. Such fountains were placed over a platform at the centre of a wide rectangular basin or of an impluvium, where the falling rain was collected. They represent, according to Jordan’s widely accepted theory, the miniaturizing of ladder-type monumental fountains and nymphaea, and they can be found in several houses of Pompeii (House of the Large Fountain, House of Loreius Tiburtinus, House of P. Cornelius Teges, House V.III.11, House of the Centenary) and of Ostia (“House of the Fish”) where they were used as a form of garden decoration. The comparison with the cited examples as well as its stylistic features allow to set our fountain within the end of the I and the middle of the II century AD.