Women and Water

The hydraulic infrastructure of Augustan Rome was female -- according to Ovid. Of the seven aqueducts that supplied the city during his lifetime, the only one to interest Ovid is the “water maiden”, the Aqua Virgo (A.A. 3.385-6; Fast. 1.463-4; Tr. 3.12.21-2; Pont. 1.8.37-8), and he consistently personifies the city’s monumental fountains and natural pools as female nymphs (e.g. A.A. 1.81-4, 3.451-2; Fast. 1.707-8, 2.603-4).

Aristophanic comedy offers fertile ground for exploring the associations of women
with water in classical Athens, for his women—lustful wives, smart meddlers, inveterate
gossipers, confirmed imbibers—have a tendency to lose control of their emotions and
appetites, “a tendency encouraged by [their] wet nature and by the liquid or liquefying
nature of emotions and appetites themselves” (Carson 1990: 156). In this paper we
examine whether the traditional view of Aristophanes’ women as comic confections with

Throughout Greek and Latin scientific and medical literatures, women’s bodily fluids are described with metaphorical language evoking the dynamics of rivers and springs. Agricultural language, especially irrigation, also features prominently in metaphors for human reproduction and the female body, emerging in a variety of early Greek sources (see, for example, duBois, 1988). In this paper, I consider the persistence of water metaphors as tools for understanding the reproductive process primarily in scientific and medical literature from the Roman Empire.

On the Ides of March, the Romans celebrated the festival of Anna Perenna, which involves drinking and fraternizing between the sexes on the banks of the Tiber River (Fast 3. 523-542). In the Fasti, Ovid gives three aitia regarding the true identity of the goddess and the origins of the festival. One of these origins connects the deity to Anna, Dido’s sister, who became a nymph by drowning in the Numicus River in Italy after her flight from Carthage (Fast. 3.543-656).

In Plautus’ comedy Miles Gloriosus, a gentleman seeking to hire a prostitute must choose between a “washed” woman (lauta) or one “not yet washed” (nondum lauta) (Plautus, Mil.Gl. I.787). Such a distinction suggests a strong connection between Roman prostitutes and bathing in general, as well as a potential status distinction between prostitutes with ready access to water and those lacking such facilities.