Blood and leadpipes

Metaphors can be more or less common. Here's a rather unexpected one (compare it to this picture):


A lead water pipe from Pompeii.

"-"now receive" he said "the flow of my blood too" and he thrusted the sword, which was at hand, it into his groin and with no further delay would he pull it out, dying, from a bleading wound not very different from when a lead water pipe bursts [...]"

Ovidius - Metamorphoses IV
Translated by P. Klingborg and J. Ålander