:INFO
The Salted Spring
In 1997 a dig at a Roman spa town in southern Gaul uncovered a sealed bath house, a wealthy patron dead at the basin, and a drinking cup tipped into the water. The record of the day wrote fever. The bones say otherwise. This board reopens the case and lays the evidence out for you to connect.


:MAP
43.8374,4.3601,The bath house
43.838,4.3592,The patron's villa
43.8361,4.3618,The spring source
43.8355,4.363,The lead works upstream

:GALLERY

:NOTE
Clue one. The cup beside the body is lead, and the residue inside it tested positive for sapa, the sweet grape syrup Romans boiled down in lead pots. A delicacy, and a slow poison.
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:NOTE
Clue two. The patron's bones carry lead at ten times the level of the labourers buried nearby. Whatever killed him, he had been taking it in for years, not hours.


:TIMELINE
🏛️🍷🧪
79-03-01 | The patron funds the new bath house and diverts the spring through lead pipe.
81-06-01 | Town records note his worsening tremor, pallor and temper. Physicians blame the air.
83-09-01 | He collapses at the basin during a private bathing. The bath house is sealed that week.
83-10-01 | A rival is accused, tried and acquitted. The case is closed with no cause of death.

:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:inscription on the patron's tomb]
He gave the town its waters and the waters took him. Let no one drink alone.
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:NOTE
The anomaly. If the lead pipe and the sweet syrup were killing him slowly, why was the bath house sealed in a single week, and why was a rival put on trial at all? Someone wanted a culprit faster than a slow poison allows.


:COUNTER
3 of 4 suspects ruled out by the bones
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:THREAD

:LINK
https://www.google.com/search?q=Roman+lead+poisoning+sapa+defrutum
The Roman taste for lead