The danger of collecting water

Collecting water has been a fundamental task in the household economy, traditionally assigned to the women of the household. In ancient Greek and Roman society, where it was normal not to have water resources within the home (a well), women went to the nearest public fountain to collect water at least once each day. To transport the liquid, women used different containers, such as the one shown in the image, that is, a hydria or clay container for water, carried on the head, possibly with the help of a coronet made of esparto grass or some other material to hold it more securely.

Due to the concurrence of women there, the fountain became a place for women to socialize. As shown in the image, women from different houses met there, and it was one of the few places and occasions where they could talk to each other freely to share news, ask for advice or favors, pass on messages or simply greet each other. The image represents a group of young women who come to collect water, some of them alone, others in pairs, all of them waiting their turn to access the fountain’s single spout, greeting each other as they meet. 

The image does not reveal the social class of these women, but some literary texts report that in Classical Athens and in Rome, the female slaves were in charge of hauling water. Female slaves performed this task whenever a family of citizens had the economic resources to have a slave or slaves, though evidently this was not always the case. In such circumstances, it was the mother of the family or the daughters who had to go to the fountain for water. 

Fountains were usually located in busy public spaces, such as the crossroads of broad avenues, town squares or places with important public buildings (temples, curia, gymnasiums, theaters, etc.). They were located in such places because fountains, like other public buildings, provided an image and propaganda for the politician who had brought about their construction. In fact, fountains usually appear on the hydriae are richly decorated, with spouts that resemble animal figures (in the image, a lion), and covered with porticoes, to provide a comfortable place to wait in the shade. As a public building, therefore, the fountain carried a political message and its construction celebrated the progress and well-being of the community. 

Precisely because of this function of political image, fountains in both the Hellenic and Roman worlds were usually located in well-frequented areas, and this means a high presence of men, since women rarely left the home, only out of necessity, and with a suitable companion. In current feminist terminology, fountains were a gendered location, that is, marked by gender, given that women especially went to them. At the same time, the locations where the fountains were located, such as squares, were also gendered locations, transited almost exclusively by men. In antiquity, in the agora or forum or public square or market, it was the men who carried out their business in the central hours of the day, so the women most probably went to these places at times when there would be less male traffic. Although paradoxical, since fountain and square are both marked by gender, their marking of the opposing sex leads us to suppose a staggered time distribution for men and women to use these spaces. (The same idea can be applied to the baths: Roman baths admitted men and women at different hours, as do present-day Arab baths.) In the early morning and at dusk would be the times when female slaves and women of lesser means would supposedly go out to fetch water, times when there would a reduced male presence in the square. 

Nonetheless, the fountain could also be used by men, specifically, by slaves in charge of carrying water. These men knew the routines of the young women and would take advantage of these more solitary moments to approach them. In these cases, the fountains became denied places, that is, hot spots or dangerous places where women were in danger of some kind of attack, especially rape, if they went alone. Interestingly, many of the preserved hydriae, all of them Greek and from the Ancient period (6th century BCE onward), depict scenes of women being raped by gods or satyrs. Beyond the ritual or religious meaning that representations of gods or Greek mythological figures may have, hydriae decorated with rape scenes may also convey a realistic message, describing possible dangerous situations at the fountain, and therefore warning of these dangers. The hydria illustrated in this text offers women a strategy that is easy to carry out in a threatening situation: going to the fountain in the company of another slave or another woman of the house, at least as a deterrent.

The hydriae carried by the women in the illustration are not decorated with any image, because they are real hydriae, that is, humble everyday objects. However, the luxurious preserved hydriae, which today can be observed in museums, prompt the question of who they were made for, that is, who would actually see those images of women attacked by some satyr, next to the fountain. They may have been intended for contemplation by royal women; since they are luxury objects, we have to suppose that they would be seen by women belonging to the noble families of the city, possibly in a context of nuptial rite or as dowry for a future wedding. They would also be seen by youths who delivered the object as a gift, or were the bridegroom receiving it, so one may speculate that representations of women next to the fountain also hold an ideological message in a patriarchal society, whether it be Greek, Roman, or our current society. These images of women, who assisted in the household economy by carrying water, offer the model of a woman desirable for marriage, the industrious woman.  At the same time, the images warn of lurking danger, and tell us that the male stalkers, whether free men or slaves, are aware of the women’s vulnerability.

In modern Western or Westernized societies, there are no fountains where women go to collect water; but there are bus stops in isolated areas, or in parks or industrial districts, where traffic dies away after a certain hour, and they become dangerous places for women. There are also recreational spaces, such as discotheques, where satyrs lurk in the form of extroverted young men, ready to bend a woman’s will and subject her to sexual abuse by making use of some drug applied to their unwitting victim. Today, however, there are no longer hydriae to warn of the danger, but we do have social networks that constitute a popular, democratic instrument that, at the least, fulfills these functions of warning and counsel. 

Rosario López Gregoris is Associate Professor at the Department of Classical Philology, School of Philosophy and Letters,  Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM, Spain). She is a member of the Marginalia project (PID2019-107253GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and of the Institute of Women’s Studies of the UAM. 

For more information on this topic, see the following publications: 

López Gregoris, Rosario. 2023. ‘La creación del espacio doméstico y del espacio urbano negado en las comedias latinas’ [The creation of domestic space and denied urban space in Latin comedies]. Places of violence against women, in ‘Imaginarios y espacios de violencia política contra las mujeres’, Rosario López, Esperanza Mo, Clara Gutiérrez and Andrea Pagès (eds.), UAM Ediciones, Madrid. (In press)

Mirón Pérez, María Dolores. 2003. ‘Mujeres en la fuente en la iconografía ateniense’ [Women at the fountain, in Athenian iconography], in ‘Representación, construcción e interpretación de la imagen visual de las mujeres’, M. del Pilar Amador and M. del Rosario Ruiz (coords.), AEIHM, Granada, pp. 57-76.

Mirón Pérez, María Dolores. 2014. ‘Entre la casa y el ágora; género, espacio y poder en la polis griega’ [Between the home and the agora; gender, space and power in the Greek polis], La Aljaba 18, pp. 11-33.