FOUNTAINS AND UNDERGROUND PIPES
When water was delivered to a Roman house from a public supply in Italy, typically it arrived through underground lead pipes that were connected to a lead distribution box near the door.
From there, lead pipes carried the water to other parts of the house, usually to the impluvium and fountains in the peristyle, where there might be a second distribution box.[638] The castellum plumbeum in D.19.1.38.2 could fit into this arrangement in several ways. It could, for example, represent part of the municipal water distribution system, one of the neighbourhood reservoirs used in Pompeii to regulate pressure.[639] Alternatively the lead basin could be a distribution box or a cistern on the property, possibly fed by roof run-off like the ones commonly found in Pompeian gardens.[640] The bronze basin is likely to have been part of fountain or impluvium, a common feature of Roman houses, or possibly a tank for a bath. Pliny, Letters, 5.6.40, describes a courtyard with fountains running underground and emerging here and there to charming effect (Letters, 5.6.40),[641] whilst in a rural setting, the lead cistern could be a catch basin for a developed spring that supplied the house.[642]While the archaeological evidence helps to reconstruct the configuration of the plumbing in D.19.1.38.2, it is not dispositive. The material that the pipes were made of - ceramic or lead -was key to applying Mucius’ definition of ruta caesa because it determined how they would be attached to the basin and its surrounding masonry. Either ceramic or lead pipes could have been used in all three possible configurations. If the pipes were ceramic, they would not be ruta caesa but part of the property, because this kind of pipe was usually attached by masonry.[643] But the use of the term fistula probably indicates that the pipes were made of lead and joined to the basin by soldering not masonry.[644] According to Mucius’ definition, then, the pipes in D.19.1.38.2 were ruta caesa, and if the buyer wanted to buy them with the property, he would need to use a contract, as Proculus expected. The possibility that pipes could be excluded from the purchase of property seems counter-intuitive, considering that lead pipes were the usual technology, and also considering the desirability of running water. This mismatch between legal categories and social practices could have led to Firmus’ question in D.19.1.38.2 and may also have motivated the continued legal discussion of ruta caesa and its application to different situations at the time when Celsus considered underground pipes.
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