Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-51388-4 — Fountains and Water Culture in Byzantium Edited by Brooke Shilling , Paul Stephenson Excerpt More Information I n t r o d u c t i o n Brooke Shilling and Paul Stephenson Th e papers in this volume were all delivered at a conference held 28 June to 1 July 2012 at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul and the Netherlands Institute in Turkey. Th e event was conceived and planned by Paul Stephenson and Ingela Nilsson, and sponsored very generously by the Swedish National Bank’s Tercentenary Fund. Th e volume begins, as did the fi rst day of the conference, with Julian Richard’s paper on the discovery and recording of nymphaea across the Eastern Mediterranean world, and the limitations of scholarship to date. Richard off ers an extended refl ection on the nature and shortcomings of the study of Roman fountains , begin- ning in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with etchings, expeditions and grand excavation campaigns in Greece and Asia Minor, notably at Olympia , Corinth and Miletos . It is shown that a distinction was drawn early and has persisted between aqueducts , water pipelines and baths , which have been subjected more frequently to technical studies by archaeologists and engineers, and fountains, which have been considered the preserve of art and architectural historians. As Richard notes, into the 1980s, ‘the traditional trilogy – architecture, sculpture, inscriptions – struc- tured the majority of publications’, with eff orts directed at description and classifi cation, rather than the explanation and contextualisation of individ- ual structures. In short, fountains were imagined elements in establishing an architectural typology, each imagined at the moment of its construction and denied any historical existence. Richard highlights, and decries, the fact that too frequently fountains have been treated simply as objects of display, rather than as the end point of the delivery system for water. To that extent, the study of ornate nym- phaea has been determined by one aspect of their history, and the fame of certain monumental public fountains that became singular landmarks or symbols has exacerbated this tendency. Th e chapter by Paul Stephenson and Ragnar Hedlund indulges in this tendency, introducing two famous monumental fountains of Rome as comparanda for those established in the city of Constantine , the Septizodium and the Meta Sudans . Although Constantine is known to have restored the Meta Sudans, almost nothing is known for certain about the building or restoration of monumental 1 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-51388-4 — Fountains and Water Culture in Byzantium Edited by Brooke Shilling , Paul Stephenson Excerpt More Information 2 Brooke Shilling and Paul Stephenson waterworks in early fourth- century Constantinople . Fortunately, a clearer picture emerges from archaeology and texts beginning in the middle of the fourth century. Stephenson and Hedlund consider a variety of mon- umental waterworks, including aqueducts , baths , nymphaea , reservoirs , cisterns and fountains. We learn of their maintenance and lack of main- tenance by city offi cials, designated water guards ( hydrophylakes ) in late antiquity, and by their imperial successors, the counts and chamberlains of the middle Byzantine period. Stephenson and Hedlund conclude with a look at surviving fountains, for the most part ancient victory monu- ments and columns converted into fountains, including the Th eodosian Obelisk , the Serpent Column and the Masonry Obelisk in the hippo- drome . Before these monuments were erected here, the so- called Baths of Zeuxippos occupied an adjacent site. Stephenson and Hedlund challenge the traditional Severan dating of the bath complex, placing it instead in the later third century. As Gerda de Kleijn notes in her chapter, despite a recent substantial and substantive monograph on the water supply system of Constantinople , we still know very little about many of its key elements. It seems clear that the system followed that of eastern parts of the empire, employing principally terracotta pipes to distribute water, and that these would have been con- nected to lead pipes only when a bronze stopcock or turncock was to be installed, to allow the fl ow of water to be stopped, to change its direction or to create small spouts at a fountain. Lead pipes would be stamped to indi- cate the grantee and by whose authority the water was granted. However, only a single stamped lead fi stula has been discovered in Istanbul, and its inscription, as de Kleijn shows, does not conform to stamps on lead fi s- tulae known from Rome. Given the dearth of direct evidence, de Kleijn off ers important comparative material and informed conjecture based on the administration of the water supply system in Rome, before turning to the preserved legislation of Constantinople itself. Clearly, as in Rome, in the late fourth and fi ft h centuries, the grant of water to a private individual was an imperial prerogative. Th e size of a grant of water to a private individual was in accordance with his status, the size of his property and the presence of baths . Th e grant was calculated and recorded as the specifi c diameter of a water conduit to be connected to the private residence or baths. Again, as in Rome, this relied on the employment of a permanent and dedicated staff of water inspectors , whose hands were branded with the mark of their authority and responsibility. But this was not a suffi cient guarantee against fraud when something as precious and prestigious as a private water con- nection was concerned. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-51388-4 — Fountains and Water Culture in Byzantium Edited by Brooke Shilling , Paul Stephenson Excerpt More Information Introduction 3 Th e so- called Silahtarağa fountain was located in the vicinity of Constantinople . Hitherto it has been considered a construction of the Antonine age ( ad 138– 93), but Brenda Longfellow demonstrates that it is far more likely to have been a product of the later fourth century, develop- ing a suggestion made by Bente Kiilerich and Hjalmar Torp. Longfellow commends an analysis by Marianne Bergmann, which posited a workshop active in Constantinople that was responsible also for the carved bases of the Th eodosian Obelisk . She develops the hypothesis with numerous tell- ing comparanda and posits a blended workshop, comprising artists from Constantinople and Aphrodisias . Th e Silahtarağa statues include snaky- legged giants, and Longfellow places these within the fuller context of Constantinople ’s serpentine imagery, notably in the Forum of Constantine and the Hippodrome , exploring a renascence of interest in such composi- tions in the later fourth and fi ft h centuries. Longfellow also fi nds no fi rm evidence that the Silahtarağa group adorned a fountain, although she does not rule out that possibility, and certainly water displays, like serpents, were popular in the Th eodosian period. A bronze goose , whose origins are obscure, is believed to have come from the hippodrome of Constantinople when it was donated to the British Museum in 1859. If its location on the euripos cannot be proven, Rowena Loverance, in a fascinating study informed by new analysis at the British Museum, shows that it is well worth considering the tableau in which such a piece would have been displayed. She suggests that the bronze goose may have been a companion to Artemis, or may have been shown with compan- ions pulling a chariot, or it may have taken a starring role within a depiction of the Rape of the Sabine Women. Th e last possibility receives supplemen- tary support from an association with a tale that emerged in Byzantion, later established among the foundation myths of Constantinople by Hesychios of Miletos , and from an intriguing possibility, that the goose once emitted not water but sound. However, this would remove another fountain from the few we have identifi ed for medieval Constantinople , just as analysis conducted by the British Museum shows no material evidence that a pipe, recorded in the nineteenth century, still exists in the goose , nor that one was ever attached. If Loverance shows there is little evidence to support a claim oft en made for the goose , that it once served as a fountain, then Stephenson proves that the Serpent Column did once, and probably for centuries, expel water. Th e column stands on a marble base with a large hole drilled through it. A lead pipe was directed through this hole, directing water from a conduit beneath the column into the bronze. Water certainly emerged from the base of the © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-51388-4 — Fountains and Water Culture in Byzantium Edited by Brooke Shilling , Paul Stephenson Excerpt More Information 4 Brooke Shilling and Paul Stephenson column, where a hole was cut into the bronze and a channel was carved into the marble base onto which the column is fi xed by a lead footing. Th ere is, however, no fi rm evidence that pipes carried this water up to the mouths of the serpents, more than six metres high. Still, as early as the fourteenth century, a legend had emerged that the fountain once expelled diff erent liq- uids from each serpent’s mouth, most commonly reported as water, wine and milk. Th ese liquids had scriptural signifi cance, but the stories may have inspired, or in turn may have been inspired by, the construction of a ‘magic fountain’ at the court of the Mongol ruler, Möngke Khan (1209– 59), from which fl owed water, wine, mares’ milk and mead. Stephenson shows that serpentine fountains were frequently portrayed in manuscript illuminations produced in Constantinople in the twelft h century as a fi nial formed from entwined snakes expelling water.