Celebrated on the October 13th, the Romans dedicated the Fontinalia to Fons, the guardian god of wells and springs. 

Celebrating the Fontinalia

According to Varro, the Fontinalia was the ‘festival of the springs’. The day was a holiday,  and as such dedicated to the god of springs, a deity known as Fons. Celebrants would throw ‘garlands into the springs and place them on well tops.’  This Roman well dressing occurred all over the city of Rome itself but concentrated around the springs found outside the Porta Fontinalis, a gate in the Servian wall of the city, on the northern slopes of the Capitoline Hill.

Who was Fons?

 Fons was an obscure deity, but from the little we know of him, we can piece together several facts. His name appears amongst a list of deities who received expiatory sacrifices from the Arval brothers in 224AD. All of the other gods were early Roman gods. So, Fon’s inclusion suggests he was equally as ancient and well-rooted in Roman tradition.   

In mythology, Fons was a son of Janus, the god of beginnings and ends and Juturna, a Lavinian goddess who was adopted by the Romans. Juturna became the patron of a spring in Rome which fed the lacus juturnae in the forum near the temple of Castor.  

So, Fon’s inherited his watery connections from his mother. However, in Dumezils’ opinion, his father Janus was equally significant. For Janus was the God of Beginnings and Ends– and springs marked the beginning of the Roman water supply. 

Fons was certainly a significant diety. Besides his festival, he had an ara or altar on the Janiculum hill, as well as a temple, established in 231BC just outside the Porta Fontinalis. The springs and their god were sufficiently noteworthy to give their name to the gate. But why were Fons and his springs so important?

The Importance of Water

Dumezil states that the Roman’s did not assign great importance to water. Aside from Fons and Juturna, the only other notable deities included Neptune as the god of the sea and Tiberinus as the genius of the river Tiber.

 But Fowler points out that between 259BC and 241 BC,  around the time of the first punic war, cults were founded to Juturna, Fons and Tempestates. All were gods of spring water. Springwater was important. It was the primary water used in lustrations and must have been one of the earliest sources of water in the growing city. The position of Fons springs on one of the chief hills of Rome and its central importance to the rites of the Fontinalia point to its significance within the city’s everyday and religious life.

Sources

Cicero  The Nature of the Gods, Penguin Classics, 1972

Dumezil, G (1996 ed) Archaic Roman Religion: Vol 1 and 2, John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London

Varro, De lingua Latina 6. 22  

W Warde Fowler, (1899) The Roman Festivals at the Period of the Republic, Macmillan and Co.