Fontus (Fons)

Sources identify Fontus/Fons as the son of Juturna and Janus. He is attested in Roman topography (an altar, ara Fontis, on the Janiculum where Numa Pompilius was said to have been buried) and in Roman family lore (the gens Fonteia claimed descent from him). These genealogical and topographical notes situate Fontus within Roman mytho-religious frameworks and civic memory.

No anthropomorphic or iconographic description of Fontus is supplied in the cited sources. Attestations of Fontus appear primarily in inscriptions, calendrical observance, festival practice, and literary/cosmographical listings rather than in surviving pictorial representations.

Attested functions/roles: Fontus is presented in sources as the divine figure associated with springs, wells, and fountains (the Latin fons/fontis = spring or source). He is honored on the festival Fontinalia, receives votive and dedicatory attention in civic and religious contexts, and is included among deities receiving expiatory sacrifice (an Arval Brothers record from 224 AD records Fons receiving two wethers). In Mithraic contexts the epithet Fons Perennis appears in inscriptions and narrative imagery where a perennial spring is represented as a source of life-giving water and immortal refreshment; these dedications treat the spring as a cultic, responsive entity analogous to nymphs and healing powers.