Guida Turistica - Benvenuti in Sant'Egidio del MA

The Helvius Fountain
The current name of the fountain derives from the only
inscription, today deteriorated, on the front border.
According to an autoptic examination carried out a
few years ago, integrated by a study reported in a
manuscript dating to 1819, when the inscription was
probably more clearly legible, the inscription would be
interpreted in this way:
P(ublius) HELVIUS P(ublii) f(ilius) IIvir i(ure) d(icundo),
aug(ur)? [----], p(ecunia) s(ua).
The inscription, in synthesis, would testify that the
work was realised by the wishes of Publio Helvio, figlio
di Publio, magistrate (IIvir), with the power to adminster
the law [i(ure) d(icundo)],which he did at his own
expense [p(ecunia) s(ua)].
We are found with a fountain wanted by a member of
the ordo Nucerinus, an important figure in the Nuceria
Constantia one of the two magistrates of the town in
the Augustan period.
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It is the most beautiful and important archaelogical
finding preserved in its entirity in Sant’Egidio today.
Escavated in a single block of marble it is still today fed
by an ancient aqueduct that flows from the mountain
behind which at the origins would have been part of a
wider residential complex that included also a country
villa (Villa Helvius) with extensive land.
The fountain, found in piazza Ferrajoli next to the abbey
of S.Maria Maddalena, dates back to the Augustan
era (1st century BC – 1st century AD) and is particularly
interesting, well as the importance of the cutomer,
for the presence of three beautiful figures sculpted on
the borders that represent the birth, the maturity and
the emergence into the sea of the river Sarno, the river
crossing the entire agro plain and that has given its
name to the valley.
It is this characteristic, that is, the presence of three
bas reliefs that make it an archaelogical document of
great value not even comparable to either Pompeii or
Herculaneum.