Springs and wells, year-round sources ofwater, were always a precious resource in the Mediterranean, for humans and animals alike. In most parts of Greece and southern Italy rivers are seasonal, ranging from raging torrents in winter to dry beds used as roads in the summer. This is almost certainly the problem in Demosthenes 55, a speech from a fourth-century Athenian court case in which the speaker has been accused of obstructing a dry riverbed with a wall so that it flooded the field of his neighbour in winter:
For the space between my property and theirs is a road, and as a hilly country encircles them, unluckily for the farms, the water that flows down runs, as it happens, partly into the road, and partly on to the fields. And in particular, that which pours into the road, whenever it has free course, flows down along the road, but when there is any stoppage, then it of necessity overflows upon the fields. Now this particular piece of land, as it happened, was inundated after a heavy downpour had occurred. As a result of neglect, when my father was not yet in possession of the land, but a man held it who utterly disliked the neighbourhood, and preferred to live in the city, the water overflowed two or three times, wrought damage to the land, and was more and more making itself a path. For this reason my father, when he saw it (so I am informed by those acquainted with the circumstances), inasmuch as the neighbours also began to encroach upon the property and walk across it, built around it this enclosing wall. (Demosthenes 55.10-11)
Even the mighty Eurotas of Lakonia shrinks to a sluggish stream lurking in the reed beds around the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in high summer. In some areas it is possible to slow down the flow of water in winter so that more sinks into the ground. Riverbeds may even then be used as plots for cultivation, though these are exposed to the risk of summertime flash floods. In areas where there were few permanent springs and wells, such as Methana, the inhabitants depended upon cisterns to collect rainfall in winter, often exploiting the runoff from tiled roofs. It is not surprising that springs may become sacred places, as in the case of the Pantenello spring at Metapontion. Equally understandable is the way in which rights of access to water may become a matter of contention.
World History
