The Ten Books on Architecture
example, sulphur springs cure pains in the sinews, by warming up and
burning out the corrupt humours of the body by their heat. Aluminous
springs, used in the treatment of the limbs when enfeebled by paralysis
or the stroke of any such malady, introduce warmth through the open
pores, counter-acting the chill by the opposite effect of their heat,
and thus equably restoring the limbs to their former condition.
Asphaltic springs, taken as purges, cure internal maladies.
5. There is also a kind of cold water containing natron, found for
instance at Penne in the Vestine country, at Cutiliae, and at other
similar places. It is taken as a purge and in passing through the bowels
reduces scrofulous tumours. Copious springs are found where there are
mines of gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, and the like, but they are
very harmful. For they contain, like hot springs, sulphur, alum,
asphalt,... and when it passes into the body in the form of drink, and
spreading through the veins reaches the sinews and joints, it expands
and hardens them. Hence the sinews, swelling with this expansion, are
contracted in length and so give men the cramp or the gout, for the
reason that their veins are saturated with very hard, dense, and cold
substances.
6. There is also a sort of water which, since it contains... that are
not perfectly clear, and it floats like a flower on the surface, in
colour like purple glass. This may be seen particularly in Athens, where
there are aqueducts from places and springs of that sort leading to the
city and the port of Piraeus, from which nobody drinks, for the reason
mentioned, but they use them for bathing and so forth, and drink from
wells, thus avoiding their unwholesomeness. At Troezen it cannot be
avoided, because no other kind of water at all is found, except what the
Cibdeli furnish, and so in that city all or most of the people have
diseases of the feet. At the city of Tarsus in Cilicia is a river named
Cydnus, in which gouty people soak their legs and find relief from pain.
7. There are also many other kinds of water which have peculiar
properties; for example, the river Himera in Sicily, which, after
leaving its source, is divided into two branches. One flows in the
direction of Etruria and has an exceedingly sweet taste on account of a
sweet juice in the soil through which it runs; the other runs through a
country where there are salt pits, and so it has a salt taste. At
Paraetonium, and on the road to Ammon, and at Casius in Egypt there are
marshy lakes which are so salt that they have a crust of salt on the
surface. In many other places there are springs and rivers and lakes
which are necessarily rendered salt because they run through salt pits.
8. Others flow through such greasy veins of soil that they are
overspread with oil when they burst out as springs: for example, at
Soli, a town in Cilicia, the river named Liparis, in which swimmers or
bathers get anointed merely by the water. Likewise there is a lake in
Ethiopia which anoints people who swim in it, and one in India which
emits a great quantity of oil when the sky is clear. At Carthage is a
spring that has oil swimming on its surface and smelling like sawdust
from citrus wood, with which oil sheep are anointed. In Zacynthus and
about Dyrrachium and Apollonia are springs which discharge a great
quantity of pitch with their water. In Babylon, a lake of very great
extent, called Lake Asphaltitis, has liquid asphalt swimming on its
surface, with which asphalt and with burnt brick Semiramis built the
wall surrounding Babylon. At Jaffa in Syria and among the Nomads in
Arabia, are lakes of enormous size that yield very large masses of
asphalt, which are carried off by the inhabitants thereabouts.
9. There is nothing marvellous in this, for quarries of hard asphalt are
numerous there. So, when a quantity of water bursts its way through the
asphaltic soil, it carries asphalt out with it, and after passing out of
the ground, the water is separated and so rejects the asphalt from
itself. Again, in Cappadocia on the road from Mazaca to Tyana, there is
an extensive lake into which if a part of a reed or of some other thing
be plunged, and withdrawn the next day, it will be found that the part
thus withdrawn has turned into stone, while the part which remained
above water retains its original nature.
10. In the same way, at Hierapolis in Phrygia there is a multitude of
boiling hot springs from which water is let into ditches surrounding
gardens and vineyards, and this water becomes an incrustation of stone
at the end of a year. Hence, every year they construct banks of earth to
the right and left, let in the water, and thus out of these
incrustations make walls for their fields. This seems due to natural
causes, since there is a juice having a coagulating potency like rennet
underground in those spots and in that country. When this potency
appears above ground mingled with spring water, the mixture cannot but
be hardened by the heat of the sun and air, as appears in salt pits.
11. There are also springs which issue exceedingly bitter, owing to a
bitter juice in the soil, such as the river Hypanis in Pontus. For about
forty miles from its source its taste is very sweet; then it reaches a
point about one hundred and sixty miles from its mouth, where it is
joined by a very small brook. This runs into it, and at once makes that
vast river bitter, for the reason that the water of the brook becomes
bitter by flowing through the kind of soil and the veins in which there
are sandarach mines.
12. These waters are given their different flavours by the properties of
the soil, as is also seen in the case of fruits. If the roots of trees,
vines, or other plants did not produce their fruits by drawing juices
from soil of different properties, the flowers of all would be of the
same kind in all places and districts. But we find in the island of
Lesbos the protropum wine, in Maeonia, the catacecaumenites, in Lydia,
the Tmolian, in Sicily, the Mamertine, in Campania, the Falernian,
between Terracina and Fondi, the Caecuban, and wines of countless
varieties and qualities produced in many other places. This could not be
the case, were it not that the juice of the soil, introduced with its
proper flavours into the roots, feeds the stem, and, mounting along it
to the top, imparts a flavour to the fruit which is peculiar to its
situation and kind.
13. If soils were not different and unlike in their kinds of juices,
Syria and Arabia would not be the only places in which the reeds,
rushes, and all the plants are aromatic, and in which there are trees
bearing frankincense or yielding pepper berries and lumps of myrrh, nor
would assafoetida be found only in the stalks growing in Cyrene, but
everything would be of the same sort, and produced in the soil of all
countries. It is the inclination of the firmament and the force of the
sun, as it draws nearer or recedes in its course, that make these
diversities such as we find them in different countries and places,
through the nature of the soil and it's juices. And not only in the case
of the things mentioned, but also in that of sheep and cattle. These
diversities would not exist if the different properties of soils and
their juices were not qualified by the power of the sun.
14. For instance, there are in Boeotia the rivers Cephisus and Melas, in
Lucania, the Crathis, in Troy, the Xanthus, and certain springs in the
country of the Clazomenians, the Erythraeans, and the Laodiceans. When
sheep are ready for breeding at the proper season of the year, they are
driven every day during that season to those rivers to drink, and the
result is that, however white they may be, they beget in some places
whity-brown lambs, in other places gray, and in others black as a raven.
Thus, the peculiar character of the liquid, entering their body,
produces in each case the quality with which it is imbued. Hence, it is
said that the people of Ilium gave the river Xanthus its name because
reddish cattle and whity-brown sheep are found in the plains of Troy
near that river.
15. Deadly kinds of water are also found, which run through soil
containing a noxious juice, and take in its poisonous quality: for
instance, there is said to have been a spring at Terracina, called the
spring of Neptune, which caused the death of those who thoughtlessly
drank from it. In consequence, it is said that the ancients stopped it
up. At Chrobs in Thrace there is a lake which causes the death not only
of those who drink of it, but also of those who bathe in it. In Thessaly
there is a gushing fount of which sheep never taste, nor does any sort
of creature draw near to it, and close by this fount there is a tree
with crimson flowers.
16. In Macedonia, at the place where Euripides is buried, two streams
approach from the right and left of his tomb, and unite. By one of
these, travellers are in the habit of lying down and taking luncheon,
because its water is good; but nobody goes near the stream on the other
side of the tomb, because its water is said to be death-dealing. In
Arcadia there is a tract of land called Nonacris, which has extremely
cold water trickling from a rock in the mountains. This water is called
"Water of the Styx," and no vessel, whether of silver, bronze, or iron,
can stand it without flying to pieces and breaking up. Nothing but a
mule's hoof can keep it together and hold it, and tradition says that it
was thus conveyed by Antipater through his son Iollas into the province
where Alexander was staying, and that the king was killed by him with
this water.
17. Among the Alps in the kingdom of Cottius there is a water those who
taste of which immediately fall lifeless. In the Faliscan country on the
Via Campana in the Campus Cornetus is a grove in which rises a spring,
and there the bones of birds and of lizards and other reptiles are seen
lying.
Some springs are acid, as at Lyncestus and in Italy in the Velian
country, at Teano in Campania, and in many other places. These when used
as drinks have the power of breaking up stones in the bladder, which
form in the human body.
18. This seems to be due to natural causes, as there is a sharp and acid
juice contained in the soil there, which imparts a sharpness to these
springs as they issue from it; and so, on entering the body, they
disperse all the deposits and concretions, due to the use of other
waters, which they find in the body. Why such things are broken up by
acid waters we can see from the following experiments. If an egg is left
for some time in vinegar, its shell will soften and dissolve. Again, if
a piece of lead, which is very flexible and heavy, is put in a vase and
vinegar poured over it, and the vase covered and sealed up, the lead
will be dissolved and turn into white lead.
19. On the same principle, copper, which is naturally more solid, will
disperse and turn into verdigris if similarly treated. So, also, a
pearl. Even rocks of lava, which neither iron nor fire alone can
dissolve, split into pieces and dissolve when heated with fire and then
sprinkled with vinegar. Hence, since we see these things taking place
before our very eyes, we can infer that on the same principle even
patients with the stone may, in the nature of things, be cured in like
manner by means of acid waters, on account of the sharpness of the
potion.
20. Then there are springs in which wine seems to be mingled, like the
one in Paphlagonia, the water of which intoxicates those who drink of
the spring alone without wine. The Aequians in Italy and the tribe of
the Medulli in the Alps have a kind of water which causes swellings in
the throats of those who drink it.
21. In Arcadia is the well-known town of Clitor, in whose territory is a