Fontus or Fons (
pl.: Fontes, "Font" or "Source") was a god of wells and springs in
ancient Roman religion. A
religious festival called the Fontinalia was held on October 13 in his honor. Throughout the city, fountains and
wellheads were adorned with garlands.[1]
Fontus was the son of
Juturna and
Janus.[2]Numa Pompilius, second
king of Rome, was supposed to have been buried near the altar of Fontus (
ara Fontis) on the
Janiculum.[3]William Warde Fowler observed that between 259 and 241 BC, cults were founded for Juturna, Fons, and the
Tempestates, all having to do with sources of water.[4] As a god of pure water, Fons can be placed in opposition to
Liber as a god of wine identified with
Bacchus.[5]
An inscription includes Fons among a series of deities who received expiatory sacrifices by the
Arval Brothers in 224 AD, when several trees in the
sacred grove of
Dea Dia, their chief deity, had been struck by lightning and burnt. Fons received two
wethers.[6] Fons was not among the deities depicted on coinage of the
Roman Republic.[7]
The
gens Fonteia claimed to be Fontus' descendants.
Water as a source of regeneration played a role in the
Mithraic mysteries, and inscriptions to Fons Perennis ("Eternal Spring" or "Never-Failing Stream") have been found in
mithraea. In one of the scenes of the Mithraic cycle, the god strikes a rock, which then gushes water. A Mithraic text explains that the stream was a source of life-giving water and immortal refreshment.[9] Dedications to "inanimate entities" from Mithraic narrative ritual, such as Fons Perennis and Petra Genetrix ("Generative Rock"), treat them as divine and capable of hearing, like the
nymphs and healing powers to whom these are more often made.[10]
^Stephen L. Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait of an Ancient City (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), p. 228. Described by Varro, De lingua latina 6.3: "The Fontanalia [is named after] Fontus, because it's his holiday (dies
feriae); on account of him then they toss wreaths into fountains and garland
puteals" (Fontanalia a Fonte, quod is dies feriae eius; ab eo tum et in fontes coronas iaciunt et puteos coronant).
Festus also mentions the rites (
sacra).
^As when two characters argue over which holds imperium in
Plautus's Stichus, line 696ff.; Thomas Habinek, The World of Roman Song (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), p. 186.
^Mary Beard, J.A. North, and S.R.F. Price, Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 152.
^Michael H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage (Cambridge University Press, 1974, 2001), p. 914.
^Vivienne J. Walters, The Cult of Mithras in the Roman Provinces of Gaul (Brill, 1974), p. 47.
^Richard Gordon, "Institutionalized Religious Options: Mithraism," in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 398.
^Fontus Lake. SCAR Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica
Further reading
Visočnik, Julijana. "
Čaščenje Nimf in Fontana v vzhodnoalpskem prostoru" [Worship of the Nymphs and Fontanus in the Eastern Alps] In: Studia Historica Slovenica: Časopis za humanistične in družboslovne študije [Humanities and Social Studies Review], letnik 20 (2020), št. 1, pp. 11-40. DOI: 10.32874/SHS.2020-01