Water for everyday use
Paolo Squatriti
Domestic water supply, or the obtaining of reliable enough in quantity and tolerable quality to satisfy drinking, cooking, washing needs a household community, is always pressing problem. Lugubrious Old Testament prophets knew sense hopelessness which gripped Mediterranean people, even privileged folk, when their customary sources ran dry. In early medieval Italy those deprived supply for domestic felt as disheartened people have such circumstances. Solutions problem procurement were various. Virgilian mood, Lombard historian Paul Deacon presented inhabitants Italy's cities drinkers various rivers: riverine drank established identity. Certainly rivers, brooks, other natural courses provided many households with water, perhaps more so rural districts, where these resources accessible “purer” than cities. Yet mention appears surprisingly little documents, do appear circumstances are exceptional. We may observe turning streams similar primarily emergencies, during wars, normal supplies had been subverted. surviving record springs, whose “purity” was less questionable rivers into sewage flushed, not often approached by though they presumably frequented used specific purposes, like clothes.
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