Nymphaeums

Ceiling of the nymphaeum in Nero's Domus Aurea,note the cave like stucco surrounding the main fresco
(Photo by Author)

Today the main areas of consumption of water in the private sphere is for the functioning of households, i.e. cooking, cleaning, bathing, and drinking among others. However, in Antiquity private lines from aqueducts, which could only be afforded by the rich, were not used for these mundane tasks, but for the supplying of nymphaeums in the villa.

Originally nymphaeums were a Hellenistic shrine or sacred place to the water goddesses, nymphs (hence the name nymphaeum) within natural springs and grotto’s. Worshiped almost exclusively in rural locations, nymphaeums were exceedingly rare within the city as they required the manipulation of natural architecture that is not found within cities. As time passes however, nymphaeums moved away a strictly religious function and became ornately decorated water feature and a place within the domus for Romans to enjoy the coolness brought by the water and recover from the day.

Nymphaeum off a Garden in a Pompeian Villa
(Photo by Author)

Because of the cost required to build these, they were not found in the typical town house, but as the Romans became more disconnected from the natural landscape and increasingly enamored with man-made architecture they do become more propagated inside the city. In addition, as nymphaeums shift indoors around the time of Augustus, they transform from their initial cave like design to the scaenae-frons style. This style was an elaborate semi-spherical structure based on the elaborately decorated backdrop of the Roman theatre, with small niches for the placement of statues or other items.

Slowly nymphaeums become a household symbol of refined luxury and hedonism, and by the late antiquity have no relation to religious matters at all. Becoming a slave to the decorative aspects of the domus, they become merely another aspect for the wealthy to display their wealth – especially due to the fact that they had to be privately supplied by a fistula.

Bibliography

Aken, A.r.a. Van. "Some Aspects of Nymphaea in Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia."

Mnemosyne 4, no. 1 (1951): 272-Iii. doi:10.1163/156852551x00309.