Vase Painting of Women Fetching Water (detail)

This vase painting shows women filling water jugs at a public fountain to take back to their homes. Both freeborn and slave women fetched water for their households, as few Greek homes had running water. Cities built attractive fountain houses such as this one, which dispensed fresh water from springs or piped it in through small aqueducts (compare the large Roman aqueduct). Women often gathered at fountains for conversation with people from outside their household. (Black-figure water jar [hydria] with women at the fountain, Attica, Athens, Archaic Period, c. 520 B.C. [ceramic], Priam Painter [fl. c. 530–510 B.C.] / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA / William Francis Warden Fund / Bridgeman Images.)