|
A physician (to a man whose wife is suffering from intestinal disorders): “Above all, your wife must not eat too much fish. Instead, let her have bread, slightly over-baked, with salt. No wine, but water in which poppies and thyme have been boiled. I suggest moving her bed back into the cubiculum - the atrium is too draughty. Send for me in three days if there is no improvement.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Once the physician had taken his leave, the man summoned his slave. “Phoebe, the Mistress is ill. Take two alabaster amphorae and fill them at the pool of Juturna.”
“As you wish, Master.”
|
The lacus Iuturnae marks one of the most venerable sites in the Forum. It recalls that time, centuries earler, when Rome was but a poor village, and the Forum a soggy marshland between the Palatine and Capitoline hills. In the midst of that marshland swirled a natural spring of exceptionally beneficial waters. In time, when Rome had prospered, an edifice was built around the spring - the lacus Iuturnae - so named after the nymph associated with the waters.
As with all of Rome’s most archaic religious customs, the origins of the cult of Juturna are shrouded in obscurity. No ancient tradition concerning the nymph has survived. The poets Virgil and Ovid composed stories about her ; they may or may not have been inspired by primitive sources. Consequently, Juturna became a character in myths concerning Jupiter, Juno, Janus, the Lares, the heroes Aeneas and Turnus, and of course the Dioscuri.
Servius Honoratus (late fourth century C.E.), who wrote a commentary on the Aeneid, locates Juturna’s health-giving waters “near the river Numicus” (Ad Aen. XII.139) which is thought to refer to a stream near Lavinium, a town south of Rome. Varro, less concerned with mythology but no more informed than the poets, derives the name Juturna from the Latin verb iuvare, to give aid : “Juturna was a nymph whose function was iuvare 'to give help' ; therefore many sick persons, on account of this name, are wont to seek water from her spring.” - De Ling. Lat. V.71. In so doing, he explains the name of the nymph by referring to the properties of the spring itself - believed to have curative powers - thus effectively anthropomorphising it ; for from time immemorial, Romans obtained succuor from the waters themselves and not from its titular deity or from a religious ritual.
Sources
“Juturna,” a 1911 Encyclopaedia entry.
S. B. Platner and T. Ashby, “Lacus Iuturnae,” in Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, Oxford University Press, London, 1929.
Eva M. Steinby (ed.), Lacus Iuturnae I, De Luca Edizioni d'Arte, Rome, 1989.
L. Richardson Jr.’s on-line article at the Digital Roman Forum.
Photo credits : icon a combination of an aedicula and a drawing of a nymph by Jean LePeautre. For other images, see next section.
|
Visitors to this Domus
