r coins we have the swan flying over the rippling waves,
which are represented by the wave moulding. When we examine the chart of
Sicily, made by the Admiralty survey, we find marked down at Camarina, a
lake through which the river Hipparis flows.

We can hardly doubt that the inhabitants of Camarina represented both
their river and their lakes on their coins. The swan flying over the
waves would represent a lake; the figure associated with it being no
doubt the Aphrodite worshipped at that place: the head, in a circle of
wave pattern, may express that part of the river which flows through the
lake.

Fountains are usually represented by a stream of water issuing from a
lion's head in the rock: see a vase (Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb., taf.
CXXXIV.), where Hercules stands, receiving a shower-bath from a hot
spring at Thermae in Sicily. On the coins of Syracuse the fountain
Arethusa is represented by a female head seen to the front; the flowing
lines of her dishevelled hair suggest, though they do not directly
imitate, the bubbling action of the fresh-water spring; the sea in which
it rises is symbolized by the dolphins round the head. This type
presents a striking analogy with that of the Camarina head in the circle
of wave pattern described above.

These are the principal modes of representing water in Greek
mythography. In the art of the Roman period, the same kind of figurative
and symbolic language is employed, but there is a constant tendency to
multiply accessories and details, as we have shown in the later
representations of harbors and river-gods cited above. In these crowded
compositions the eye is fatigued and distracted by the quantity it has
to examine; the language of art becomes more copious but less terse and
emphatic, and addresses itself to minds far less intelligent than the
refined critics who were the contemporaries of Phidias.

Rivers in Roman art are usually represented by reclining male figures,
generally bearded, holding reeds or other plants in their hands, and
leaning on urns from which water is flowing. On the coins of many Syrian
cities, struck in imperial times, the city is represented by a turreted
female figure seated on rocks, and resting her feet on the shoulder of a
youthful male figure, who looks up in her face, stretching out his arms,
and who is sunk in the ground as high as the waist. See Mueller
(Denkmaeler d. A. Kunst, i., taf. 49, No. 220) for a group of this kind
in the Vatican,